BJJ Hacks for Beginners

BJJ Hacks & Tips for Beginners

How I got very average at Jiu Jitsu
I’ll get some more videos uploaded soon…

BJJ Strength & Conditioning for Beginners

Technique is more important than strength & fitness but…having very explosive hips will make your escapes from bottom, so much easier!

Do some weighted butt-bridges & weighted jumps from a deep squat position (mind your back though, weighted jumps are high impact).

Ideally you’d train Olympic Lifting and develop explosive hips with power cleans, snatches etc. but it’s a big invested in time & energy – and you’d probably be better of using that time to learn technique.

See our BJJ Workout blog post here for more exercises

BJJ Beginners – Learn to Break Grips / Grip Fighting

Grips start virtually every technique in BJJ. In gi BJJ especially, it’s hard to break and fight grips without proper technique.

Before someone starts a sweep, transition or submission, they normally need to have control of or 2 of your limbs with effective grips.

I’ve made a specific grip-fighting youtube playlist here:

Learn to Escape & Hold Positions Before Worrying about Fancy Submissions

Try and avoid mount and side control (obviously) – it is very difficult though!
This is a good video on how to avoid the mount:

– Learn 2 good mount escapes

This video featuring Martin Kampman has some very good mount escapes:

– Learn 2 good side control escapes

-Bridge and bring your knee and elbow in
– Bridge and turn to your knees

– 1 Good Technique from Butterfly guard Bottom

– Head snap and sit out. Pull down on the guy’s head and stand up by throwing your feet back and getting to your knees.

Learn A Good Chain of Technique from Bottom Guard

– Chest to chest sweep
– Sit out –

– Guillotine (Garcia choke)

Be active with your legs in guard, break the guy’s posture as often as possible by bringing your knees to your head etc.

– Don’t pull guard, go to your knees.
And learn how to finish from the bottom position:

Learn the sit through:

There is also a great technique to counter a sprawl with a headlock or double underhooks by:
– basing out on your left foot
– Reaching your left hand around the guy’s back
– Pivot to face the same way as the opponent
– Drop your left knee to the floor

Please Note that if you use this all the time (like I do) you’ll never develop a good guard.

It’s effective for short & powerful people, but you definitely want to learn to ‘play guard’ and fight from your back too.

Dean Lister Guard Pass:

Guillotine Defence

Defend any arm chokes by “answering the phone”.
If your right arm is trapped, place your right hand on your right ear, and push on your right elbow with your left hand: