BJJ Basics: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Simplified

I’ve put together a simple yet comprehensive way to understand Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for you.  This overly simple breakdown of BJJ is an attempt to help beginners understand this complex and often confusing martial art.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Begins When You Fall

BJJ starts when you fall on the ground. Let’s say you are fighting with your training partner or opponent. Then for whatever reason, you fall down on the ground. Maybe your opponent takes you down, or maybe you trip and fall. Either way, now you are down on the ground.

This is probably the worst position to be in in a fight.  You can’t immediately run away and you now have a violent attacker directly over top of you.  BJJ is really the only martial art on the planet that addresses this problem.

Give Your Opponent Your Legs

From here, you always want to give your opponent your legs. You never want your legs pointed away from opponent. You never want your head close to them, so that they could easily smoke you in the face. You want to keep the longest, strongest parts of your body closest to your opponent. It’s imperative to keep your legs between your opponent and your face.

From here were have Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

This video below breaks everything down for you.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Defined – Part 2

Furthermore, in BJJ, I always want to give my opponent my legs, and I want to stay away from his legs. Today, I’m going to give you an example of this simple BJJ concept.

Let’s say that my opponent is in mount. Here, my opponent is giving me his legs, and my legs are actually behind him. I can’t be offensive from here, it’s impossible. But my opponent can punch me, or attack me with with an arm bar. That’s brutal.

So when my opponent is in mount, I need to try to escape. When I’m down here, I need to try to keep my opponent’s hands on the ground because I don’t want him to attack me. To do this, I’m going to use a move called the bridge to get his hands on the ground. Then, I’m going to try and control his ankle. I will then slowly try to migrate up and wrap my legs around his waist.

Now, I’ve given my opponent my legs. This is what’s called the Guard. It’s kind of a goofy position. However, if we’re fighting from here, I can give my opponent my legs and try to control his arm.

I always want to stay away from my opponent’s legs, and I always want to give him my legs.

That is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in a single sentence.

Here’s a quick video explaining what I mean.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Defined – Part 3

Conversely, in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I need to stay away from my opponent’s/training partner’s legs.

If you’re a complete newbie to BJJ, this is totally going to help you.

Let’s say that I’m in my opponent’s closed guard. From this position, my opponent can be exceptionally offensive. If I give him my arm by accident, he could absolutely break it with an arm bar. So I need to get away from the longest, strongest parts of his body.

So how do I do this?

If I’m in my opponent’s closed guard, I could grab his wrist. Then I can stand up. Once I’ve stood up, I can pry his legs apart. From here, I can start jockeying for position where I can slide my leg all the way through his guard. Now I’ve gotten away from his legs.

Once I’m here, now I can start to be offensive. I could do an Armbar of my own. Now I’m giving my opponent my legs, and his legs are far away from mine.

I will always stay away from my opponent’s legs, and give him my legs. That’s Jiu Jitsu in a single sentence. 

I explain this further and provide a cool example in this video.

I hope this simplification of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has helped! 😊