Key Jiu Jitsu Positions and Why They Matter

Key Jiu Jitsu Positions and Why They Matter

Jiu Jitsu makes a lot more sense when you understand position.

Before the submissions, sweeps, and escapes, there is position.

That is what helps you know who is safe, who is in trouble, and what each person is trying to do next.

If you have ever watched Jiu Jitsu and thought, “I do not really know what I am looking at,” this is usually the missing piece.

Once you understand the main positions, the whole art starts to feel a lot less random.

That is why these positions matter so much. They are the map. They help you understand where you are, what kind of control is possible, and what the next good move might be.

Why Position Comes First

A lot of people think Jiu Jitsu is mostly about submissions.

Submissions matter, but position comes first.

Why?

Because good position gives you control.

Control gives you time.

Time gives you options.

If you are in a strong position, it becomes easier to attack, defend, stay balanced, and wear the other person down. If you are in a weak position, your first job is usually to escape and recover.

That is one of the biggest ideas in Jiu Jitsu.

Before you can do more, you need to understand where you are.

The Guard

The guard is one of the most important positions in Jiu Jitsu.

It happens when you are on the bottom and using your legs to control the person on top.

At first, that may seem strange. In most situations, being on your back sounds like a bad place to be.

In Jiu Jitsu, it can still be a strong position if you know how to use it.

The guard matters because it helps you:

  • control distance
  • break posture
  • slow the person on top down
  • set up sweeps and submissions
  • stop the pass

This is one of the first big lessons in Jiu Jitsu. Even from the bottom, you are not helpless.

Closed Guard

Closed guard is when your legs are wrapped around your partner and your ankles are locked.

Why it matters:

It gives a lot of control. It can slow the top person down and make it harder for them to move freely.

Open Guard

Open guard is when your legs are not locked, and you use your feet and legs more actively to manage distance and movement.

Why it matters:

It gives you more mobility. It can create more angles, more movement, and more chances to off-balance the person on top.

Side Control

Side control is a top position where you are beside your partner, using pressure to pin them.

This is one of the clearest control positions in Jiu Jitsu.

You are past the legs. That matters because the legs are one of the main ways people defend, move, and create distance.

When you get to side control, you are in a place where you can start to settle the exchange down and make the other person carry your weight.

Why side control matters:

  • it removes a lot of movement
  • it creates strong control from the top
  • it opens up submissions
  • it can lead to mount or the back

If you are on the bottom, side control usually means it is time to escape. If you are on top, it means you are in a strong place to build from.

Mount

Mount is when you are on top, facing your partner, while sitting on their torso.

This is one of the most powerful positions in Jiu Jitsu.

Why?

Because you are on top, centered, and able to control a lot of the body at once.

The person on bottom has to carry your weight while also protecting themselves.

Why mount matters:

  • it gives strong top control
  • it creates pressure
  • it limits the bottom person’s movement
  • it opens high-value attacks

Mount is a position people often recognize right away because it looks dominant. In Jiu Jitsu, it is dominant because of control, balance, and the number of attacks it creates.

Back Mount

Back mount is when you are behind your partner with control around the body.

Many people see this as one of the best positions in Jiu Jitsu.

That is because you are controlling someone from a place where they cannot easily see you, face you, or use their strongest frames the same way.

Why back mount matters:

  • it gives excellent control
  • it makes escape difficult
  • it creates strong choke opportunities
  • it keeps you away from many of their strongest counters

This is one of the clearest examples of Jiu Jitsu’s logic. You are not winning because of speed or force alone. You are winning because the position is unfair in your favor.

Half Guard

Half guard is when one leg is trapped and the other is free.

This position is important because it sits between control and escape. It is not as strong as full guard, but it is not as bad as being fully passed either.

That is why half guard shows up so often.

Why half guard matters:

  • it can slow a pass down
  • it can be used to recover full guard
  • it can create sweeps
  • it gives both people real options

Half guard teaches an important truth about Jiu Jitsu. Not every position is fully winning or fully losing. Some positions are battles for direction.

Knee On Belly

Knee on belly is a top position where one knee is placed across the torso while control is kept with the upper body.

It is a pressure position.

It often feels uncomfortable fast.

That discomfort is part of why it works.

Why knee on belly matters:

  • it creates pressure without fully settling
  • it makes movement hard
  • it forces reactions
  • it opens quick attacks and transitions

This position is useful because it combines control with mobility. It lets you stay heavy enough to bother the other person while still being ready to move.

What These Positions Teach You

The biggest value in learning these positions is not just memorizing names.

It is learning what Jiu Jitsu is really about.

These positions teach you that Jiu Jitsu is about:

  • control before attack
  • pressure before panic
  • timing over force
  • solving one problem at a time

That is what makes the art so interesting.

Once you understand the main positions, you stop seeing random movement. You start seeing goals, choices, and patterns.

That is when training starts to feel much more rewarding.

Ready to Learn How Jiu Jitsu Really Works?

The more you understand position, the more Jiu Jitsu starts to click.

You begin to see why certain movements matter. You begin to notice what each person is trying to do. And you start to understand how control creates opportunity.

That is a big part of what makes Jiu Jitsu so rewarding to learn.

If you want to train Jiu Jitsu in Laurel, MD in a way that is clear, practical, and easy to follow, schedule your free trial class and come see how it feels.

Why Most Adults Never Start Jiu Jitsu (And Why You Should)

Why Most Adults Never Start Jiu Jitsu (And Why the Reasons Are Not What You Think)

Most adults who want to try Jiu Jitsu never do.

Not because they lack the time. Not because they cannot afford it. Not because they are too old or too out of shape.

They do not start because starting something you know nothing about, as a grown adult, is genuinely uncomfortable. And nobody talks about that part honestly.

This is an attempt to do that.

The Real Reason Adults Do Not Start
In class moment from 4 pm BJJ class
It is not the fitness concern. Most people know that excuse is not real.

The actual reason is harder to say out loud.

Adults do not like being bad at things. Children accept being beginners because they are always beginners at something. Adults have spent years building competence in their careers, their relationships, their routines. Walking into a room where everyone is better than you, and staying anyway, goes against everything adult life trains you to do.

Jiu Jitsu asks you to be a beginner again. Completely. Without shortcuts.

That is what stops people. Not the fitness. Not the age. The ego.

And the interesting thing is that working through that discomfort is most of what makes Jiu Jitsu worth doing in the first place.

What Actually Happens in the First Few Weeks
The first class is disorienting. There is no way around that.

You will not know where to stand, how to fall, or what to do with your hands. Someone will put you in a position you cannot get out of and it will feel completely unfamiliar. None of that means anything about whether you belong there.

What most new students do not expect is how quickly that disorientation fades. Not because Jiu Jitsu gets easier, but because your brain starts building a map. You begin to recognize what is happening. You stop reacting and start thinking.

That shift, from chaos to pattern recognition, usually takes about three to four weeks. Most people who quit do so before that shift happens. Most people who stay past it never want to leave.

Why It Holds Attention When Nothing Else Has

Most forms of exercise fail adults for the same reason. There is no problem to solve. You are just moving until the clock runs out.

Jiu Jitsu is different because every round is a live puzzle with another person actively trying to stop you from solving it. Your brain cannot wander. There is no room to think about work, or your phone, or what you are making for dinner. The only thing that exists is the person in front of you and the problem you are both trying to solve.

That full absorption is rare. Most adults have not experienced it since they were children playing a sport that actually mattered to them. It is a significant part of why people who train regularly describe it less like a workout and more like the best hour of their week.

There is also something that happens over months of training that is difficult to explain to someone who has not experienced it. You become harder to rattle. Not because you become more aggressive, but because you have spent hundreds of hours in uncomfortable positions and figured your way out. That composure does not stay on the mat. It follows you.

See how our Jiu Jitsu classes in Laurel work.

What Jiu Jitsu Actually Develops
The physical benefits are real but they are not the reason people stay for years.

What people stay for is harder to put on a flyer. It is the experience of working on something that has no ceiling. You cannot finish Jiu Jitsu. There is no point at which you have learned everything. A black belt is not the end. It is closer to a driver’s license. Most of the real learning happens after.

For adults who have spent years in careers where growth is incremental and hard to see, that kind of open-ended improvement is genuinely unusual. You can feel yourself getting better in ways that have nothing to do with how you look or what the scale says.

What You Need to Start
A t-shirt and athletic shorts.

That is the complete list.

If you try Gi Jiu Jitsu we have loaner uniforms. You do not need to buy anything before your first class. You do not need to prepare. The first class is guided from start to finish.

The One Thing Worth Knowing Before You Decide

Every person at 2nd Gear who has been training for more than a year says some version of the same thing when you ask them about starting.

They wish they had done it sooner.

Not because they were missing out on fitness. Because they were missing out on something that turned out to matter more to them than they expected. A skill that compounds. A room full of people who want each other to improve. A version of themselves they did not know was available.

That version does not require you to be ready. It just requires you to show up once.

Try a free class and see how it feels.

What BJJ Competition Teaches You That the Gym Never Will

What BJJ Competition Teaches You That the Gym Never Will

Most people who train jiu jitsu for the first time are not thinking about competition. They are thinking about whether they can survive a class, whether they will embarrass themselves, and whether any of this will click. Competition feels like a conversation for later, maybe much later.

But here is something worth knowing early. The mat on competition day is a completely different classroom than the mat you train on every week. What you learn there is not available anywhere else. And it has nothing to do with winning.

This article is for anyone who has ever thought about competing but talked themselves out of it. These are the real reasons to sign up, even if you do not feel ready.

You Find Out Which Parts of Your Game Actually Work
Jen wins silver at Grappling Industries

In practice, patterns develop that you might not notice. You tend to train with the same people. You know their tendencies and they know yours. Over time, what feels like progress is sometimes just familiarity.

Competition removes all of that. Your opponent does not know your timing. They have their own habits, their own pressure, their own reactions. When a technique works in that environment, you know it actually works. When it does not, you know exactly what to go back and fix.

This is the kind of feedback that is very hard to get in a gym where everyone trains together regularly. A competition gives you an honest look at where you actually are.

Pressure Changes How You Think on the Mat
There is a version of jiu jitsu you do when you feel relaxed and a version you do when something real is on the line. They are not the same thing.

Under pressure, your brain does not work the same way. Techniques you have drilled dozens of times can disappear. Simple decisions take longer. Your body tightens up in ways you do not expect. This is not a character flaw. It is just how people work when the stakes feel higher.

The only way to get better at thinking clearly under pressure is to practice being under pressure. Competition is one of the only environments where that pressure is real and where nothing about it is personal. No one on the other side of that match is your training partner. That changes something in your head, and that change is useful.

Losing Gives You Something a Win Cannot
There is a difference between gambling and investing. When you gamble, losing means you got nothing. When you invest, even a loss produces something you can use.

Competing in Jiu Jitsu is an investment. A match you lose almost always teaches you more than one you win. A win can be explained by a lot of things: your opponent had a bad day, the timing worked out, you got lucky with a position. A loss is harder to explain away. It points directly at something specific.

Most competitors who take the sport seriously will tell you that their losses shaped them more than anything else. Not because losing feels good, but because it is difficult to ignore the lesson when it is right in front of you.

It Forces You to Train With a Purpose
Open-ended training is fine. Showing up to class, rolling, going home. There is nothing wrong with that rhythm and a lot of people maintain it for years.

But when a competition is on the calendar, something changes. You stop just drilling and start drilling with a reason. You think about the positions you keep getting stuck in. You notice the submissions you keep missing. You start to ask better questions in class because you have a deadline and a context.

That shift in focus tends to speed things up. Students who compete regularly tend to develop faster than those who do not, not because they are more talented, but because they are more intentional about their time on the mat.

You Stop Being Afraid of Hard Situations
One of the quieter benefits of competing is what happens to your tolerance for difficult moments.

When you compete enough times, you get used to being in uncomfortable positions. You get used to being behind on points, being in a bad spot, feeling like there is no way out. And you learn, slowly and through experience, that there is almost always something you can do. You just have to stay calm enough to find it.

That shift does not stay on the mat. People who compete regularly describe becoming more patient in difficult situations outside of training as well. Not dramatically, but noticeably. The practice of not panicking when things go wrong turns out to be useful in more than one area of life.

You Do Not Have to Be Ready to Start
The most common reason people wait to compete is that they do not feel ready. The problem with that logic is that ready is not a place you arrive at. It is something you build by doing things before you feel prepared.

Your first competition will be uncomfortable. You will probably make mistakes you already know how to avoid. You will feel nervous in a way that surprises you. And when it is over, you will have something no amount of practice can give you, which is the experience of having actually done it.

Every competitor you have ever watched who looked calm and focused got there by being the nervous beginner first. The only difference between them and someone who never competed is that they signed up anyway.

Thinking About Competing?
At 2nd Gear Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai in Laurel, Maryland, we have had students compete at every level, from their first tournament with just a few months of training to more experienced competitors looking to test themselves at higher levels. We support both.

If you are curious about what competing might look like for you, the first step is simply getting on the mat. You do not need to commit to a tournament today. You just need to start training and let the rest develop from there.

7 Things That Surprise People Most When They Start Jiu Jitsu

7 Things That Surprise People Most When They Start Jiu Jitsu

Most people who try jiu jitsu for the first time did not expect to like it as much as they did. Some of them spent months thinking about it before they actually showed up. A few of them almost talked themselves out of it entirely.

What they found when they got on the mat was usually different from what they had imagined. Not easier, not harder, just different in ways that are difficult to describe until you experience them yourself.

This article is a straightforward look at what beginners actually notice when they start training jiu jitsu. Not promises, not hype. Just what tends to happen when someone shows up and puts in consistent time on the mat.

Your Body Works Harder Than You Expect and Recovers Faster Than You Think
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in action
Jiu jitsu is a full body workout in a way that most exercise is not. You are not just using your arms or your legs. You are using everything at once, including muscles you rarely think about, to move, brace, shift, and respond.

The first few classes feel like a lot. Your grip will tire out. Your hips will be sore in places that no gym machine has ever touched. You will finish a round and feel like you ran a mile without moving ten feet.

What surprises most beginners is how quickly that changes. Within a few weeks, the same rounds that left you winded start to feel more manageable. Your body adapts fast because it has to. Every class demands something slightly different, so you never plateau the way you do on a treadmill or a fixed lifting routine.

It Teaches You to Stay Calm When Things Go Wrong
The guillotine choke at no-gi class.
There is a version of panic that happens when someone puts pressure on you that you cannot immediately remove. It is instinctive. Your breathing speeds up, your muscles tighten, and your thinking gets worse exactly when you need it to get better.

Jiu jitsu puts you in that situation repeatedly, in a safe environment, with a training partner who is not trying to hurt you. Over time, you learn to breathe through it. You learn that the pressure is manageable and that there is usually something useful you can do even when nothing seems available.

That skill does not stay on the mat. People who train consistently describe becoming noticeably more patient in difficult situations outside of the gym. Not dramatically, not overnight, but steadily. The practice of not panicking when things feel out of control turns out to have a much wider application than most people anticipate when they first start.

You Find Out Quickly What You Are Actually Good At
Most fitness activities do not give you honest feedback. You lift a weight or run a distance and the result is a number. Jiu jitsu gives you a live partner who responds to everything you do.

If a technique works, you feel it working. If it does not, you know immediately and you know approximately why. That feedback loop is fast and specific in a way that most training environments never are.

This is one of the reasons beginners tend to improve quickly in the early months. The gap between what you are doing and what you should be doing is visible every single class. That kind of clarity is unusual and it makes the learning process feel real in a way that keeps people coming back.

The People You Train With Become Part of Your Routine
The crew at 2nd Gear Jiu Jitsu
Jiu jitsu training involves a level of physical closeness and mutual trust that is unlike most other social environments. You are working with someone who is trying to submit you while you try to submit them, and then you shake hands and do it again.

That shared experience creates a specific kind of connection. It is not sentimental. It is practical. You learn to trust your training partners quickly because the training requires it, and that trust tends to extend beyond the mat.

Most people who train consistently for six months or more describe their training partners as some of the more genuine relationships in their life. Not because jiu jitsu is magic, but because there is very little room for pretense when you are on the mat together. You see who people actually are and they see who you actually are.

It Is One of the Few Workouts That Demands Your Full Attention
Training Jiu Jitsu and Martial Arts Is Always A Joy
Most exercise leaves your mind free to wander. You can run and think about work. You can lift and check your phone between sets. That is not necessarily a problem, but it does mean the mental break that exercise can provide is often incomplete.

Jiu jitsu requires your complete attention for the entire class. You cannot think about your inbox while someone is working to pass your guard. That forced presence is one of the things people notice first and appreciate most. You walk off the mat and the things that were weighing on you before class are still there, but they have less weight. An hour of being completely present has a way of resetting your perspective.

You Do Not Have to Be in Shape to Start, But You Will Be in Better Shape After
This is one of the most common concerns people have before their first class and one of the first things they stop worrying about once they show up.

Nobody arrives at their first jiu jitsu class in peak condition. Most beginners arrive having not done serious physical activity in a while. That is normal and it is not a problem. Classes at 2nd Gear are structured for beginners, and the pace of training scales to where you actually are, not where you think you should be.

What does happen over time is that your conditioning improves as a byproduct of showing up consistently. You are not thinking about getting fit. You are thinking about learning the technique in front of you. The fitness follows the training, and for a lot of people, that is the first time exercise has ever felt like something other than a chore.

There Is Always Something New to Work On, No Matter How Long You Have Trained
Jiu jitsu does not have a ceiling. There are black belts who have trained for twenty years and still come to class to work on specific problems they have not solved yet.

For a beginner, this is actually reassuring rather than overwhelming. You are not behind. You are at the beginning of something that has a very long road ahead, and that road has clear markers along the way. Each class teaches something specific. Each week builds on the last. Progress is visible and it is earned, which makes it mean something.

The people who stick with jiu jitsu long term are rarely the ones who were naturals at the start. They are the ones who found the process of getting better at something difficult to be worth the effort. That turns out to be a more common feeling than most people expect when they walk in for the first time.

Ready to See What Your First Class Feels Like?
At 2nd Gear Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai in Laurel, Maryland, our adult jiu jitsu program is built around beginners. You do not need experience, a certain fitness level, or any background in martial arts. You just need to show up once and find out what it actually feels like.

We offer a free trial class so you can experience the training before you commit to anything. Come in, move around, and see which of these seven things surprise you first.

Why the Wrist Lock Works for Older and Smaller Grapplers

Why the Wrist Lock Works Especially Well for Older and Smaller Grapplers

The wrist lock has a reputation for being sneaky. That is accurate, but it undersells what actually makes it useful.

The real reason the wrist lock is worth learning, especially if you are not the biggest or youngest person on the mat, is that it does not require you to be stronger than your opponent. It requires you to understand one specific condition. If the elbow cannot move, the wrist becomes vulnerable. That is the whole principle. Everything else is just the application of it.

The setup in the video below uses an armdrag to create that condition from guard. Joc, a student at 2nd Gear who is known for applying this attack with a level of consistency that makes training partners very uncomfortable, demonstrates how it works.

Why This Combination Works the Way It Does
The armdrag and the wrist lock are a natural pairing because the armdrag already does most of the setup work for you.

When you armdrag an opponent, you pull their arm across your body and shift your hips toward the same side. The goal of the armdrag is typically to get to their back. But in doing that, you also drive their elbow toward the mat. Once the elbow is pinned to the ground and locked in place with your body, you have already created the core condition the wrist lock needs.

Your opponent is usually focused on defending the back take at this moment. They are not thinking about their wrist. That misdirection is not accidental. It is part of why this combination works so consistently.

How to Execute It Step by Step

Start by establishing control on the arm you want to attack. Use a cross grip on the sleeve, which means your left hand grips their right sleeve or your right hand grips their left. Your other hand gets behind their tricep on the same arm. Those two grips together give you the leverage to move the arm.

From there, shift your hips toward the same side as the arm you are attacking and pull it across your body. The goal is to drive their elbow all the way to the mat. Use your body weight and position to lock it there. Your hips and your weight do the work. Your grip alone is not enough.

Once the elbow is pinned, switch the tricep grip to an overhook. Your hand cups their bicep from the outside. This overhook is what keeps the elbow in place and takes away their ability to pull out.

Now slide your sleeve grip up from the wrist toward the hand. With their elbow locked and their arm extended, you apply pressure by forcing their hand to flex toward the wrist. The joint has nowhere to go and the submission is there.

The One Concept That Makes This Whole Category of Techniques Click

Wrist locks are legal in most jiu jitsu rulesets at blue belt and above, which means newer students are often on the receiving end of them before they have thought much about using them.

The reason they work across so many positions is that the principle never changes. Elbow mobility blocked plus wrist pressure equals submission. The armdrag from guard is one way to create that condition. But once you understand the underlying rule, you start to see it available in other places too, from side control, from mount, from standing grip fighting.

This is how jiu jitsu tends to work at every level. You learn a specific technique, and if you understand why it works, the technique teaches you something broader that applies in situations you have not even encountered yet. The wrist lock is a clean example of that process.

One practical note worth keeping in mind. Once wrist locks enter the training relationship between you and a partner, the dynamic shifts. Both people become more aware of wrist and elbow positioning throughout the roll. That awareness makes you both better grapplers. It also means intensity tends to go up. Tap early on these. The joint does not give you much warning.

Hitting the Wristlock Off Of The  Armdrag
Want to Learn Techniques Like This in a Structured Environment?

At 2nd Gear Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai in Laurel, Maryland, we teach techniques in context. Not just the steps, but the reasoning behind them, so you understand when and why to use them in a live roll.

If you are curious about starting, we offer a free trial class for new students. No experience required. Come in and see how it feels.

How the Reverse Shrimp Gets You Out of the Armbar from Mount

How the Reverse Shrimp Gets You Out of the Armbar from Mount

The armbar from mount is one of the most common submissions in jiu jitsu at every level. Studies on black belt matches at the highest level tournaments have consistently ranked it among the top two most common submission finishes. That is not because it is flashy. It is because it works, and it works against people who know it is coming.

If you train jiu jitsu long enough, you will get caught in this position. Your opponent is on top of you in mount, they have isolated your arm, and they are starting to transition to the finish. At that moment, most people do one of two things. They panic and start muscling against the submission, which accelerates the tap. Or they freeze and wait for the submission to finish.

There is a third option. There is a window, a specific moment just before the finish becomes unavoidable, where one movement changes the entire situation. That movement is the reverse shrimp.

The video below covers how to do the reverse shrimp and how to apply it in this specific situation. The written breakdown after it explains why the movement works and what you need to understand to use it consistently.

Why Most Grapplers Have Never Drilled This Movement
The regular shrimp, which most people know as the hip escape, is one of the foundational movements in jiu jitsu. It shows up in warmups at almost every gym. Students drill it from their first week on the mat.

The reverse shrimp is its less practiced counterpart. It moves in the opposite direction and it solves a different set of problems, but it does not get the same consistent drilling attention that the regular shrimp does. As a result, most grapplers know it exists but cannot execute it reliably when it matters.

This is worth knowing because a movement you have not drilled regularly will not show up when you need it in a live roll. Your body defaults to what it has practiced. If the reverse shrimp is not in your warmup rotation and not something you have drilled deliberately, it will not be available to you when you are under pressure.

That gap between knowing about a technique and being able to use it is one of the more honest things jiu jitsu reveals about how people learn. Awareness is not the same as preparation.

What the Reverse Shrimp Actually Does to the Armbar Transition
To understand why the reverse shrimp works here, it helps to understand what your opponent is trying to do during the armbar transition from mount.

When someone transitions to an armbar from mount, they are moving their weight toward your head and angling their body across yours to isolate your arm. That movement is directional. They are committing their weight in a specific direction to create the leverage they need for the submission.

The reverse shrimp works by moving with that direction rather than against it. Instead of trying to pull your arm back, which fights the leverage your opponent is creating, the reverse shrimp moves your body in the same direction their weight is traveling. When you do that correctly, you remove the base they are building toward and their transition collapses before it can be completed.

This is the same principle that shows up throughout jiu jitsu. Redirecting force works better than resisting it. The reverse shrimp is a clean application of that idea in a specific and high-stakes situation.

How to Do the Movement
The reverse shrimp is the opposite of the regular hip escape in terms of direction. Instead of pushing your hips away from your opponent, you are pulling them toward the side your opponent is transitioning to.

The key details are these. Your bottom foot pushes into the mat to generate the movement, the same foot you would use in a regular shrimp. Your hips rotate toward the direction of the attack rather than away from it. Your top knee drives across your body to create the momentum of the rotation. The movement needs to happen at the right moment in the transition, which is why drilling it until it becomes instinctive matters more than understanding it intellectually.

The timing window is real and it closes. If the armbar is already fully set and your opponent’s weight is properly distributed, the reverse shrimp is much harder to execute. The movement is most effective during the transition itself, when your opponent’s base is still shifting and their weight is not yet settled into the finish position.

A Note on Learning This the Right Way
I did not learn the reverse shrimp until I was a purple belt. I picked it up at a seminar in western Maryland and immediately understood why it had been missing from my game. The movement is not difficult once you understand the mechanics, but it also does not show up automatically just because someone shows it to you once.

The grapplers who use this movement reliably in rolls are the ones who drilled it deliberately until the body knew what to do without having to think about it. That is the only way to make a technique available under pressure.

If you are earlier in your jiu jitsu training, adding the reverse shrimp to your movement practice now means it will be there when you need it, instead of being something you remembered reading about after the fact.

Want to Train Movements Like This in a Structured Class?

At 2nd Gear Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai in Laurel, Maryland, we build fundamentals into every class. That includes the movements that do not always get covered at other gyms, the ones that make a real difference when a roll goes somewhere uncomfortable.

If you are new to Jiu Jitsu or thinking about starting, we offer a free trial class. No experience needed. Come in and find out what consistent, structured training actually feels like.