Aspects of Control in Jiu-jitsu: "2 out of 3 Ain't Bad"
“Wow. That’s bad.”
I stared at my doctor.
“Thanks”.
I had to schedule a bit of an “emergency” follow up visit for a staph infection that wasn’t responding to the antibiotics a few days before.
After getting it incised and drained and given another prescription for antibiotics, I had a quick chat with the doctor. I kept trying to rationalize in the infection in my head; I went over things I did… things I didn’t do… et cetera.
He shrugged and said “Man, this is just bad luck.”
Of all the things I wanted to control about the situation, I kind of realized that as a jiu-jitsu athlete, being on the wrong end of a staph infection was kind of out of my control
Tell that to the person ( or any other jiujitsu practitioner) who makes his living trying to control his training partners from takedown right to submission.
Control is important to us.
Control allows us to immobilize our training partners and opponents so that we can isolate a limb and submit.
This is the whole point of jiu-jitsu, or as Danaher describes it, “the art of control that leads to submission.”
So how do we control opponents?
In my opinion, there are three major aspects of control.
We can control the use of our opponent’s hands (I call this “Utility”).
We can control our opponent’s posture (“Stability)
We can control our opponent’s ability to move (“Mobility”)
So, what do we do with this info.
Consider that the goal of jiu-jitsu is to take down an opponent, pass his guard and then isolate a limb and submit. This is what I’ve called “The Jiu-jitsu Funnel” and you can read about it in my first book here (if you haven’t already).
If, for example, you took your opponent to the ground and you are the guard passer. Your job is to kill the legs (control their ability to defend through the use of their legs; “utility”) so that you can enter a pin position which then kills their mobility, or ability to move away. From here, your job is to isolate a limb and submit.
This is pretty straight forward because when your opponent is supine, you’re already limiting their mobility (because they’re on the floor) and their utility (people don’t use their legs as well as their arms). But what happens when you’re supine and your opponent is passing?
This is where these aspects of control get much more important.
In today’s email, I’m going to be talking about these aspects of control and how you can use them to be a more effective guard player.
A little hint: You can control, at best, 2 out of 3, but you can never control all 3.
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Alright, let’s dive in!
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