week 1 = open guard offense
week 2 = upright guard offense upright guard vs combat base
week 3 =  offensive closed guard bottom
week 4 = closed guard defense & opening closed guard, standing in closed guard
week 5 = open guard defense
week 6 = upright guard defense
week 7 = crossides top
week 8 = half guard top/ passing
week 9 = half guard bottom
week 10 = headlock & head and arm escapes
week 11 = escapes from crossides
week 12 = 1/4 position bottom/ back escapes, quarter bottom frames escape
week 13 = 1/4 position top
week 14 = back control & attacks, defending the slump
week 15 = back escapes
week 16 = north/south off & def
week 17 = mount off & def and holding mount top, mount bottom,
mount bottom postures, pressure, frames
week 18 = knee ride off & def, knee ride bottom
week 19 = takedowns & stand up defense
week 20 = strategy & gamesmanship- how to roll

I’ll use this section to link to individual posts detailing each weeks topic.

Surviving bad posture is a necessary thing to teach but should not be the first thing you teach beginners! Why? If you teach beginners how to survive from bad posture then they’ll go right to the bad posture when they roll because that’s all they know! I’ve seen this quite a lot. Of course this is problematic. We don’t want students to build their game based on escaping from bad postures.

With this in mind I decided this week to teach half guard bottom from the best possible posture. My goal was to have students work and internalize this posture so that when they are in half guard bottom they are working always towards great posture instead of trying to escape from bad. What you’ll see below is a simple game (I like simple) that works extremely well from this good posture.

Posture

The posture is simple. We want an upright posture up on one hip. Playing flat on your back is OK if you have an awesome guard but I never want to build a game based on being good at Jiu Jitsu. The posture looks a lot like clinch game. We have a deep low underhook, head in the pocket and good front shoulder contact. We move constantly to the back. This will set up our attacks and keep the other guy from being able to grab our rear posting hand.

Here's the basic posture we'll be working. Upright with low underhook.

Head in the pocket. Good shoulder contact. Arm builds base. Keep moving to the back.

Pressure

Pressure 1 is the shrimp. Shrimping means moving he hip away from our partner. Because I have the leg trapped this will effectively split her base wide and affect her balance.

Moving the hip away from the top guy. This causes them to do the "split" which breaks down their balance.

Taking top from here is as easy as driving forward hard. You can also grab the far knee or arm as you drive to make it work better.

The 2nd pressure from here is the upa. An upa is moving your hips towards your opponent. Because you have a good angle on the other guy’s hips from this posture a sharp upa into the hips will cause them to lose balance. Simply drive your hips hard and fast upwards and at an angle towards their hips. If the angles are right they’ll go right over.

Upa. Driving my hips forward and into hers. Notice her balance being affected here.

These two pressures work very well from this posture. Sometimes the top guy will open their base really wide and load up their weight on the trapped leg to minimize your ability to work these pressures. When they do this they are immediately open for the next pressure. The 3rd pressure I call the dive in pressure. What I look for is a big opening. Their base is extremely wide. Wide enough that I could dive into the hole between the legs.

This pressure is most effective if done right off one of the other pressures. It works best off of the shrimp pressure because this one tends to open up the base. When the hole opens up we’ll dive right under. Our hips will face the ceiling. Our head will go right to and contact the hip, and our base arm will dive as far as it can go between the legs. As soon as we hit this posture we’ll bridge over our outside shoulder and complete the reversal.

Rolling reversal. Head on hip and arm deep between the legs.

If the reversal gets stuffed you have time to come back out and build your posture again if you act quickly. They will either go right away or they won’t. No reason to ever hang out in the posture because it’s a momentum move. You only get the momentum once so if you don’t hit the reversal right away bail and go back to posture. You should be able to do this if you move right away.

That’s it! Simple but effective game to teach beginners. I’ve seen this really sharpen up new student’s half guard bottom game quite a lot in a short period of time. Once students feel good about this game you can introduce escaping from bad postures. They now have a good posture base from which to better understand what bad posture looks like.

Video of Concepts

He had the satisfaction of winning 3rd place in his division. A huge accomplishment. He had no points scored on him in any of his matches. None. He lost his last match by advantages. He proved that he is a world class athlete and can compete with the very best out there.

An interesting thing that he told me was that all the top guys in his bracket were full time athletes. Every single one. They were either full time gym owners, MMA fighters, or young guys who live at the gym. I was shocked that even at purple belt level guys have to train full time to be competitive. It was also a testament to our guy’s BJJ training that he could compete effectively with those full time athletes while still training part time.

Having said that though, his part time training was still way more than most of us could or would endure. If someone told me that I had to now train at that intensity level all the time I’d probably leave the art. That kind of training would take all the enjoyment out of it for me and would make it another chore to add to the list of chores I already dread doing. It’s this way for many of us. We have found an intensity level and frequency of training that fits comfortably in our lives. We manage to find a balance that keeps us healthy and happy and still ensures steady progress. Our training is a positive influence on our lives and personal relationships. It does not harm them.

For many of us taking time to train at that elite athlete level would mean giving up things that are far too important like time with children. Maybe our personal relationships would suffer. Or even our health. It just would not be in our best interest to put aside large chunks of our lives and replace them with BJJ training. This is why the vast majority of us will never progress beyond the level of hobbyist.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t be very good at the art though. It doesn’t even mean that I can’t have better BJJ than the world class competitive athletes. It only means I won’t have world class COMPETITION BJJ. I’m OK with that. As are many who train with me. For those of us who think this way a slightly different path is required. We need a way to get good that doesn’t require full time high intensity training. For that here are some ideas that I propose:

Tips on being a great mediocre grappler-

1. Be consistent. Training 2 times a week every week is going to pay off more than training very intensely for short periods followed by stretches of time off. Of course I have no scientific data to back this up but I’ve seen it play out over and over again at the gym. Enough to confidently make this claim.
2. Focus on fundamentals. At it’s core fundamentals can be broken down into Posture, Pressure, and Possibilities. Building a library of techniques is not a great or efficient way to get good. You only have so much room on your bookshelf. At a certain point the shelf will be filled and you’ll have to throw some out to make room for new ones. In my personal experience I’ve rarely seen anyone who is good at more than about 5 submissions at one time. They may know way more than that but their A game is mostly limited to the top 5. Adding 50 more moves won’t help your game much.
3. Focus on Posture most of all.I tell students that the posture should do about 80% of the work for you. You should always be asking yourself “Am I in posture?” If the answer is no then you know what you have to do. If posture does 80% of the work then you should be spending most of your time either working to get posture, improving the posture you have, or fighting to keep it. If you are doing this then BJJ will be way easier.Focusing on posture means getting the best possible posture you can get WHILE putting the other person in the worst possible posture you can. If you create this posture imbalance then you don’t have to be good at BJJ in order to beat the other guy. Remember, the posture does 80% of the work.
4. Don’t roll above 70%.(Link to post on 70%) I you go all out all the time then you will be building a game that requires that you go all out all the time. That’s hard to do if you aren’t young and in super shape. Instead try building a posture based game that REQUIRES that you move slower and concentrate on simply building good posture along the way. A good goal is to build efficient postures that use leverage and structure instead of muscle strength. To use efficient motion that requires less intensity of movement. And to use fewer movements in your overall game. My goal is to win by moving less and less until eventually you won’t even notice that I’m moving at all.
5. Focus on breathing. If you can’t devote lots of extra time to conditioning exercises you need to be very mindful of your breathing. Stop and check during a roll. Are you breathing heavier than the other guy? If the answer is yes then you need to slow down and focus on posture. Catch your breath before you exert too much energy. Breathing heavy is a sure sign that you are not attending to posture effectively.
6. Simplify the game. Can I use the same posture in mount bottom that I use in cross sides bottom? How many ways can I use this triangle submission? Finding multiple uses for things that you already do well is a great way to improve your game without having to put a tremendous amount of extra time in. As you learn new things try to relate them to things you already know and look for commonalities wherever you can.
7. Don’t keep score. The worst thing you can do for your game is to keep track of who you tapped and who tapped you. It’s counter productive and probably the worst way to measure progress. If you focus on the tap you miss most of the joy of BJJ. You won’t notice the beautiful guard pass, the gorgeous butterfly sweep, the perfectly timed escape… All the things that happen in a roll that show mastery of the game. A gym where nobody keeps score is a healthy gym. If you are in a gym where there are a lot of side conversations about who tapped who you’ll find the atmosphere unhealthy. A tap should only be treated as an event that happens in grappling that tells you when to stop. Nothing more. There are many better ways to measure progress.
8. Enjoy the journey. In only every case those who enjoy it more are better at it. Train in a way that is healthy, smart, and most of all fun. Will power will get you a year of training at best. If you aren’t having a blast on the mat you won’t stick around or train in a way that will allow you to make much progress. This is perhaps the most important rule. It’s certainly not about “dedication” or “work ethic” as some will describe. Look around you. What looks like dedication is actually someone following their bliss. They are doing it because it’s the most enjoyable and rewarding thing they can think of to do. This is only always the case.

This is my list. It’s what has kept me in the game for the last 14 years or so. It has also allowed me to find a balance where my BJJ training is a positive influence on my life. It doesn’t get in the way of my other responsibilities and relationships. It also has a positive effect on my physical and mental health. I’m happier and healthier and still competitive in the gym. The young guys know that they are in for all kinds of hell when they roll with me. My game is improving at a pace that I’m very comfortable with. That’s important. This way of training has set me on the path to achieving my goal of being the best mediocre grappler in the gym. Happy training!

Here’s a list of things I’ve learned from experience make a huge difference in getting good at BJJ. In no particular order-

1. Slow down! I tend to try and roll at 70% or less most of the time. If you roll any harder than that you are most likely using strength, speed, and athleticism to cover mistakes. This will allow you to escape, win, tap the other guy but it won’t help you to learn BJJ. Slow things down to a pace where you are relying on your good BJJ to get you through.
2. Focus on posture over everything else. For beginners this is sage advice. Don’t worry about learning tons of techniques. The best thing you can be doing is focusing on how to posture in all the different positions. The definition of a blue belt is someone who builds good posture no matter the position. Once you have good posture the rest is much easier.
3. Let the posture do the work. The posture should take care of about 80%. Pressure from the posture should take care of the other 20. This means that you are constantly checking to see if you are in posture. If you aren’t then you prioritize that over everything else. The posture will take care of putting you in a spot where you can access the techniques that you know. Not the other way around. If you are doing it this way the other guy should be breathing harder than you.
4. Check your breathing. Is the other guy breathing harder than you? If he is it isn’t because he’s in worse shape. It’s because you have better posture. The guy who is consistently building better posture won’t be tired or out of breath. Remember the 80% rule? The posture does 80% all by itself. You only need 20% pressure if your posture is good. What this means is that you won’t be working as hard as the other guy. Your breathing will tell you a lot about your posture.
5. Don’t get behind on your breathing. There is a point of no return where getting behind on your breathing means you are done. You’ll have to tap just to catch your breath. Don’t let this happen. When I’m getting close to this line (because I’m not attending to posture) I will focus on breath management over posture. You have to at this point. Your body is like a car and breath is like gas. It won’t run without it. If you find yourself struggling to breathe then stop wherever you are and hunker down. Let your breathing even out. THEN go back to building your posture.
6. Simplify the game. BJJ is not built by adding techniques and positions to your game. It’s built by finding connections and simplifying the routes. I want to learn simple principles that work all over BJJ. Things like- keep the elbows close to the body, the person who controls the hips is winning, build frames and move away from them etc. These are principles that we apply to all different postures, positions and situations. Finding more universal posture points, frames, and pressures allows you to make a game that is more intuitive and easier to access. That way you aren’t having to learn something different for every different scenario  you may encounter. To use the map analogy I want the game to go through routes that I know very well and land in locations that I’ve spent a lot of time. No side trips to places I haven’t been.
7. Don’t keep score. Focusing on the tap is the worst way to improve your game. It should only be a marker to tell you when to stop rolling. All the stuff that happened before the tap is way more important. Keeping score makes you too timid a grappler and could tempt you to not roll with some people who would be good training partners. You have to always be ready to throw your hat into the ring and see what happens.
8. Have fun! This is really the most important one. If you aren’t having a lot of fun you won’t progress. Will power will get you about a year of training if you are lucky. If you aren’t having fun you’ll leave after that. It’s just too hard to do if you aren’t enjoying it. The best BJJ guys I know all have one thing in common. They love what they do. They have a blast on the mat. It’s really important to train in a way that you are having fun too. For me it means that I have to limit my training. I can’t come in 5 nights a week. This wouldn’t be fun for me. It also means that I don’t watch a bunch of videos and obsess about BJJ when off the mat. I have found the right kind of boundaries that make it extremely enjoyable when I’m there. Because of that I’ll still be training 10 years from now when most other guys around me have gone away.
9. Measure your progress but don’t get too caught up in it. I have found over the years that it’s very difficult to measure my own progress. Everyone around me is improving so using someone else as a measure is trying to hit a moving target. There are some ways to measure progress that are effective but we shouldn’t get too caught up in them. Relax and enjoy the ride. Your instructors know what they are doing. Just showing up on the mat and participating in class will insure that you are making progress. Over time you will see a huge difference.
10. Make some friends. The people I know from my gym are some of my favorite people in the world. They really enrich my life tremendously. If you are a person who comes into the gym and is all about business you are missing out. BJJ is a social activity. A roll is a conversation and a relationship. Your gym is a tribe and a family. You should take advantage of this. The people who tend to stick around and get good are the ones who enjoy friendships and the social aspects of the gym atmosphere.

Posture

There are a few key points to north south bottom posture. Your hands are in boxing position. This makes your arms harder to harvest and it allows you to create an initial frame. You want your elbows to be as close together as possible. This keeps the top guy from getting chest to chest contact. Bring your feet up as close to your rear as possible. This gets you ready for an upa.

Elbows close together. This prevents bottom guy from getting chest to chest contact.

Pressure

Our initial pressure is an upa. We use the upa for one thing only at this point. We are using it to build frames. The frames are used to create some space for hip movement. Our frames are built with our elbows (short frames). We can place them in different spots depending on how deep the top guy is.

Basically you upa hard and extend your elbows from your body while in the top of the upa. Then you drop your hips but leave your elbows where they are. The top guy is resting on your elbows.

Upa pressure to set up frames.

Upa pressure to set up frames.

Potential

Once you build your frames you have room for your hips to move. Use a pendulum motion to get up on your side. As you do this shoot your bottom arm under your body and tuck it into your hip.

Tuck in the bottom elbow hard. Get up on your side.

Pendulum pressure in action. Extend the legs out and keep them together. Move them back and forth like a pendulum to generate momentum.

Tuck posture built.

Leg catch: This is the best conclusion to the turn to quarter position. Instead of hunkering down in quarter position bottom and trying to fight from there I find it way more productive to instead immediately look for the ankle when you get to your knees. You can circle to that side as you reach with your hand to find the ankle. This will allow you to drive forward hard and end up on top.

Reaching for the anke here as I circle to that side.

Circling towards the captured ankle.

Foot goes over and replaces the hand on the ankle. This will allow me to get an underhook and drive hard.

Underhook obtained. Ready to drive.

Forward drive forces bottom guy to go over.

That’s the basic escape sequence from north south bottom. Everything else that people teach can hang onto that sequence. This is what I teach to beginners and what I use in my personal game. I think it’s the most high percentage way to deal with this particular position. The video below explains all these concepts and goes into a bit more detail.

I shot a quick video after class the other night outlining some material I covered in class that night. Specifically I worked on holding the back from a seated position with harness grip. I wanted to work on how to defend when the other guy slumps down as a defensive posture. It’s a fairly common defense and if you don’t know what do it can be really tough to launch an attack from here.

Hooks and harness from the seated position.

In the video I focus on regaining your grips and re-establishing your posture. At the end of the video I show one option for when the other guy slumps WAY down. If they get a really deep slump it can be difficult to pull them back up or establish your starting position. In the video I show a great alternative position for this scenario.

I hope to be able to update the blog a bit more in the coming months. Anyway, enjoy!

Steve Whittier (SBGi Blackbelt) and Matt Thornton both use this analogy quite a bit. I think it fits well with BJJ. I look at it as a map with routes and locations. The routes are the movements and the locations are postures and rest spots. My job as a BJJ guy is to make sure we are taking the route that I know very well and that we stop at the rest stops that I feel comfortable with. If I can get you to take my routes with me I can beat you. I know that territory very well. If you take me off path and put me on a different route that I don’t know so well I get lost. I have to rely on stamina, wit, and cunning to figure it out. I don’t want to do that.

Our half guard route today is a fairly straight one. Not many side routes to take if we do it right. There are only 3 stops. They are the leg, the hips and the shoulders. You’ll see how we get to stop and rest at those points as we progress through the journey. So, here goes…

Step 1- The Leg

The first step in half guard top is controlling the leg. If you don’t control the trapped leg a good guy will simply pull it out and take full guard. We can hold the bottom leg 3 ways:

1. With our weight. Sit on it and be heavy. Squeeze your knees together. Point your outside knee towards his hip.
2. With your hand. Reach way back between your legs. Grab his gi pants at the knee and staple the cloth to the mat. Be sure to keep your arm straight. Lean forward a bit and put the shoulder of the grabbing arm against his chest if needed. Be sure to squeeze your knees together.
3. With your foot. Either one… Foot must be above knee. Squeeze knees together.

Step 2- Control the Hip

Step 3- Flatten Him Out

Step 4- Lock down the shoulders

In the world of education right now performance standards are all the rage. I think they are a breath of fresh air and are fundamentally changing the way we teach. I think they could have the same impact in our BJJ classes. If we approach a specific lesson with students by thinking about what performance we’d like to see from them we can be far more specific about what we need to teach. For example if I wanted to do a lesson on mount bottom I can start with a performance objective-

After completing the night’s mount bottom class students will be able to- effectively upa from posture in order to create escape pressure.

This gives me something concrete to work with. It’s a much different starting spot than to start with the idea that I’ll show upa escape from mount bottom. My objective is not that students learn the upa escape. It’s that students upa effectively from posture. Because of this I’ll pay way more attention to posture and pressure.

Now I have to break down the performance standard.

Effectively Upa- What does an effective upa look like? What is the purpose of the upa? How do I know if the upa was effective?

From Posture- What does the posture look like? Where do I put my arms and legs? Why does this posture work? What does poor posture look like?

Escape Pressure- What does the escape pressure look like? How does the pressure create an escape opportunity?

Each of these questions can lead to a drill if necessary. The drills would be a way of determining if the students can meet the performance standard. We may start out by testing the individual pieces of the standard separately before combining them into an integrated whole.

Example Drills:

A good posture drill is to first show students what good mount bottom posture looks like. I’d have them practice it a bit with a partner in intro stage. Then I’d have them drill it in isolation stage. The top guy works on breaking down the posture and the bottom guy works on simply reclaiming their broken posture. This gives me a chance to see if everyone can build the posture under pressure.

A second drill may be to have students start in posture and work to apply upa pressure. The goal is to get the top guy to lunge forward and have to post his hands on the mat in order to prevent getting rolled. If the top guy can maintain his position without having to post with his hands I can tell that the bottom guy isn’t applying an effective upa.

A summative assessment drill would be to simply have the bottom guy attempt to escape the mount using the upa escape and the top guy would work to prevent. A summative assessment takes all the micro skills and applies them in an integrated way. We are working the posture, pressure, and objective (possibilities) all at once.

So, the drills for me are ways of giving students time to test out the postures and pressures against resistance. This causes real learning. It also gives me a chance to test to see whether or not they are getting the material.

This performance based model is great because it really allows me to objectively measure performance gains over the course of one class period. I don’t have to wonder if students are getting the material. I can create a test and see for myself right on the spot. The performance objective gives me the what and the drill gives me the how. In the end I can leave class knowing whether or not I had a successful coaching session.

When things are going right for me though and I’m able to keep the ego monster at bay I really love rolling at that level. It’s just the right spot for me where I can use Ju Jitsu rather than attributes to get me out of sticky situations. If I can beat you at 70% I know it was because I used good Ju Jitsu. It’s just simply more enjoyable. Joy is absolutely the best measure of success I know. Now I know that joy may be hard to find when someone is grinding their shin into your cheek bone, or when you are getting crushed hard by a heavy top game. By and large though if I feel pleasure endorphins after a session at the gym then I know I did some good work.

Is the 70% number the right number for everyone? Not sure. I know that the desire to win can be a double edged sword. I have seen quite a few students who don’t progress in Ju Jitsu until they let go of the desire to win and embrace the desire to learn the art. Sometimes those two things are in sync. Sometimes trying hard to win is exactly the way to get better. At other times though it can be the biggest impediment on your game. If you find yourself going balls out every roll you may take a hard look and see if you are trying to win at the expense of learning Ju Jitsu. If you think of it that way it will be easy to find your number.

What does this 70% do for me? It gets me tapped out a bunch. For that I’m usually thankful. Ju Jitsu would be boring if I didn’t get to tap out. Not that I wouldn’t be getting tapped out all the time if I was going 100%, but the 70% improves the chances. I get to work defense a lot. It automatically puts me on more even footing with some students who I’d have an easier time with if I was going all out looking for the win. In short, it gives me better training partners. Instead of me being on offense all the time with more inexperienced players I can work both offense and defense.

It probably means I’ll never be Mundial champion. I don’t understand the competition training as much as those who compete. Is going all out necessary for competition practice? Probably. The competition game is way more attribute based than the in class friendly roll. You aren’t there to learn Jiu Jitsu. You are there to win. If you don’t experience that level of competition often in training you won’t be ready for it. I don’t think that level of training in the gym gets you better at Jiu Jitsu though. I think it only gets you better at that level of pressure.

2 Poastures

The two postures are designed to be a platform from which you can stay safe AND launch escape attempts. Basically if you aren’t in one of these two postures you need to get to them in order to begin an escape attempt.

Posture 1

This is your flat on your back posture. It’s key points are the following:

• feet up close to your rear end. Up on your toes. Best to get inside the top guys feet so he can’t touch his toes together.
• Elbows on the mat. Keep them on the mat as they should be framing against the knees. They also need to go on the inside of the knees and not the outside.
• Close up the space behind the neck. Don’t let the top guy underhook your head.

Posture2

This is your up on your side posture. In this posture you drop your front leg and make it flat to the mat. Get your back side hip up and get on your side. Your back side elbow has to move up to the hip and frame there. You are still closing off the space behind your head to prevent the crossface.

2 Pressures

The 2 big pressures from here are the upa and the shrimp. Upas are important because they activate frames. The upa creates the space and the frame holds the space while you withdraw. Often the shrimp is used to withdraw. Make sure that when you upa you upa into your opponent and not straight up into the air. In the case of mount make your upa favor one side. Don’t upa straight upwards. This won’t give you the proper space to insert your frames and move away.

2 Frames

In BJJ there are only 2 kinds of frames. We have short frames using the elbow and long frames using the straight arm. That’s it! A frame is a structure that you build with your arms. It is put in place by an upa. Once in place you move your body away from it. It is designed to hold space once you make it. Without the frame the other guy can quickly close up the space once you create it.

Short frame

Short frames on the knees using the elbows.

Long Frame

Long frame from posture 1. Framing against the hips. Using upa to put the frames in place.

Long frame from posture 2. Using the fully extended arm to frame against the knee. Shrimp pressure to escape the hips.

2 Frame Locations

In mount bottom the 2 locations for your frames are on the knee and on the hip. Never frame above the hip as this will make your arms available for harvesting. You can use the short or long frames in these places depending on how much room you have.

Video of Concepts

Mount Bottom Postures, Pressures, and Frames from cane prevost on Vimeo.