In the context of Jiu Jitsu, position is everything.

It’s an important statement, so I’ll state it again:

In the context of Jiu Jitsu, POSITION is everything.

Position is of course the basis of understanding Jiu Jitsu. You’ve heard it in any Jiu Jitsu class taught anywhere, and if you haven’t taken a Jiu Jitsu class before, I’ll repeat it a third time:

In the context of Jiu Jitsu, position is EVERYTHING.

Okay, so I think I’ve emphasized the importance of position in Jiu Jitsu quite a bit, but I won’t take credit for the statement. As fundamental of a concept as this is, heck I’ll go as far as to say this is a concept declare this to be a cornerstone to our beliefs about Jiu Jitsu, this statement is certainly warrants further investigation.

First thing we can do is break down the word “Position”. In this case seeking a dictionary definition isn’t a whole lot of help in the matter. Webster’s online dicitionary (http://webster.com/dictionary/position) offers five possible interpretations, only two of which seem to be of any possible value:

1 : an act of placing or arranging: as a : the laying down of a proposition or thesis b : an arranging in order

and

3 a : the point or area occupied by a physical object : LOCATION b : a certain arrangement of bodily parts

Hmm, for right now we will hold off on defining position more and ask another important question:

In the context of Jiu Jitsu, whose position is important: your position, or your opponent’s position?

The answer is, of course, that both the position of yourself and the position of your opponent is important, the tricky part is how those positions are interrelated. Here are two more questions to consider.

Is it possible for both you and your opponent to have “good” position?

Is it possible for both you and your opponent to have “bad” position?


The Hierarchy of Position

Time to revisit the definition of position as it relates to Jiu Jitsu. While there are a seemingly infinite number of techniques within Jiu Jitsu, there are really only four major positions within Jiu Jitsu (ground positions) to consider:

The Guard
Side Control
The Mount
The Back

You could argue there is a fifth position in Jiu Jitsu (it’s not what you are initially thinking however); we’ll talk about that later. For now, let’s examine the four positions a little more in depth. There are of course, many different variations on each of these positions, but what we are looking for is the commonalities within each of these positions first:

The Guard: Opponents face each other. Bottom fighter has use of both his or her arms and legs in manipulating/controlling their opponent. Within a pure grappling context the bottom fighter has many offenses and options. The top fighter has less options and offenses, but more options may present themselves as the situation and rules become less controlled from a pure grappling match to a MMA contest to an all out street fight. Has MANY different variations on this theme including, but not limited to closed guard, open guard, half guard, spider guard, butterfly guard, quarter guard, De La Riva Guard and many more.

Side Control: Opponents face each other. Contact between opponents is largely between upper bodies. Legs are used for blocking or leverage, but not really in direct contact with their opponent (except in case of knee on stomach). Top fighter has a number of offenses and options, bottom fighter has very little in terms of offense and is largely obligated to escape. For purposes of this discussion, we will include in this category traditional side mount, north south positions, and knee on stomach.

The Mount: Opponents face each other. Top fighter has use of both his or her arms and legs in manipulating/controlling their opponent, and is clear of the bottom fighter’s legs. Top position has a number of options and offenses, bottom fighter must escape this position. There are a few variations of this position, including, but not limited to standard mount, high mount, S-mount and others.

The Back: One opponent has control and full view of the other and the other opponent less to no view and little control. First opponent has a myriad of options and offenses at their disposal, where as the second opponent has to be able to both escape and face his or her opponent. Variations are informally named, but vary based on which fighter is on “top” and which is on “bottom”.

Each of these major positions will receive more in depth coverage in separate columns.

For now, you will notice that each of these positions has something in common: they refer to someone utilizing the position and someone who it is being utilized on. In other words, you cannot have two fighters using the same position on each other. Both fighters will be aspects of the same position; for example one fighter will be utilizing the guard, the other fighter will be inside the guard. If you take that the order of positions given so far indicate a general rank of effectiveness Guard-->Side Control-->Mount-->Back then we have a clear hierarchy that emerges that begins to look like this in the context of two opponents (from worst to best or more accurate least o most offensive):

Having your Back taken
Being underneath Mount
Being underneath Side Control
Being Inside the Guard
*Neutral
Establishing the Guard
Taking Side Control
Taking