The hierarchy of positions in BJJ is extremely important and should never be overlooked. In sport BJJ more emphasis is placed on the hierarchy, with IBJJF rules heavily favouring positional dominance over submission attempts. The lowest amount of points to be scored from a position in IBJJF ruleset is 2, with the maximum being 4 (although a sweep to mount would be an instant 6, this is technically 2 movements/positions). If for example, you got extremely close to tapping your opponent with an armbar, this would only score 1 advantage (0 points).
More modern submission only tournaments have become popular in recent years. In these tournaments, there is often no points system and no score for getting a dominant position on your opponent. You will often see the competitors doing things they wouldn’t normally do such as drop backwards for leg locks. In these tournaments fundamental BJJ is often overlooked, although the participants are just as skilled, the hierarchy of positions does not really matter all that much.
In high level sub-only tournaments, the competitors are still well aware of position before submission and are only trying to submit from inferior positions due to the ruleset. If you were to advise white belts, it would be never value submission before position until you are a blue belt.
By doing this you will get a very solid fundamental base and not rely on low percentage gimmicks. It is frustrating to see how many white belts reach blue, and still do not have an understanding of BJJ hierarchy. Their submissions may be very good, but their positional and overall BJJ is very poor. As a result they will suffer tremendously until they learn these major details.
As an example, if you were to attempt a reverse triangle every time someone got you in side control, or drop back for a footlock every time you opened a closed guard. You would become very bad at these positions over time and get surpassed by your peers. You would get a submission every now and then, but your passing would be severely limited. As you begin to face tougher opponents, these submissions will no longer work and you will be in trouble.
List Of Positions (Best To Worst) & Points List
Back Mount (4 points)
Mount ( 4 points)
Side control (3 points for passing the guard)
Knee on belly (3 points when held)
Top Half Guard
Neutral (Various even positions such as 50/50)
Bottom Half Guard (debatable for this to be here, but we will assume your knee is crushed already).
Bottom Side Control
Bottom Mount
Opponent on your back
Please note that you will also score 2 points for sweeps from bottom to top (reversals do not score points). It should also be added that beginners should understand these positions only score points when solidified. If you immediately vacate the position to advance for another, you will not score the points.
I remember when I was a white belt, I thought that being in the turtle position was just as bad as having your back taken, so I would prefer to be in bottom side control. This is a terrible concept have, as nobody explained the difference between back mount and turtle. The turtle position is still OK and can be escaped with relative ease compared to side control.
Table of Contents
Why a guard is ALWAYS better than no guard
The list above mentions that bottom half guard is not necessarily a bad position. This is because half guard is a varying position, there are half guard experts such as Craig Jones & Jeff Glover who will have an aggressive style to get to the top or look for heel hook entries.
Another example of this is Eduardo Telles using his turtle as an aggressive position, rather than a stalling position, or a position which is then cracked and your back is taken. Whilst I wouldn’t recommend a complete beginner to copy Telles style, it should 100% be noted that turtle is far superior to being in side control or being mounted. There are still lots of ways to reach the top and get 2 points
.
In summary, guards are ways used to recover to better positions. If you do not have a guard it is far more difficult for you to get back to an even position. Whilst you can always recover from bottom side control or mount, you are often relying on your opponent to make a mistake before you can improve position. If you have a guard you can always force this positional improvement by yourself.
Neutral Positions
There are A LOT of neutral positions in the BJJ hierarchy, so much that I cannot name them all. Most of these positions will be when someone is entering a guard position (other than closed guard).
As an example, one person sits into a butterfly guard and then the other person tries to pass the sitting guard player. In BJJ, we would consider this a neutral position. This position will change very rapidly depending on who has various underhooks, overhooks, arm control, wrist control, head control or leg control. To continue the example, if the person who sat the butterfly guard now fully controls the left arm of the guard passer, he will have a big advantage in this position even though it is neutral. Very soon this would not be a neutral position.
Another example of a neutral position would be a scramble. In this situation one person might have the other in a very loose and sloppy side control. After the bottom player escapes from this situation they may turn in and face the opponent, thus resulting in a neutral position, they could even stand up and the top player follows them. This would also result in a neutral stand up position.
Dominant Positions
These are the point scoring positions at the very top of the list. If you are a complete beginner to BJJ, these are the positions that you will want to look for submissions from. As these positions are at the very top of the hierarchy, you will definitely want to use submissions from your various guards when you are no longer a beginner, but if you have just started, your guard will be so poor that this is simply a waste of learning time. You should focus 100% on positional dominance and then focus on submissions after this.
It should go without saying that being on the opponents back is the best position in BJJ. From here you are able to attack without being attacked yourself. It will probably feel like a very natural thing to be able to choke another human from the back, even if you find you cannot do this well because your technique is poor to begin with. It should feel like you at least know what you can attempt from this position.
Below is an excellent video from BJJ legend Ryan Hall on how to attack the back:
Bad Positions
These positions should be quite obvious when you are in them. They are not comfortable and the opponent has a lot of control over you, from here they should be looking for submissions of their own.
It should go without saying that you should only be looking to escape from here, yet some white belts still make the mistake of looking for submissions from these positions. They may have seen one UFC fight where a guy got submitted from top mount. What is being overlooked is that there are thousands of MMA fights where the person on the bottom is submitted or knocked unconscious due to head strikes. The probability of you finding a submission from the bottom of mount is not worth thinking about.
From these poor positions, you should be looking to get back to a neutral position, or a guard if you can. At the start this will seem like an impossible task since you will not know how to do this properly until you have trained for months.
This will improve over time and you will eventually be able to start turning poor positions in to neutral positions.
As a brief summary, the hierarchy of BJJ positions is extremely important. It is not enough just to know them, you must understand them and put them in to practice. The biggest mistake I see people make is knowing which positions are better, yet not trying to change their position. Instead, they value submission over position, in the long run this makes their BJJ a lot worse.
In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu you should ALWAYS be looking to improve your position until a possible submission chance reveals itself. If you follow this simple rule you will improve very fast and probably enjoy your training more since you will be doing a lot better than other people.
