The Fav

There can be no such thing as a favourite move in Jiu-Jitsu.

Oh, of course there are in the short term, but to get married to anything just never works out.

I have a few go-to moves. Sadly, I sometimes get quite attached to them, but eventually they all start to fail.

Let's say you get on top of me, holding me down in side control. You'll probably end up with my elbow driving into your neck. It will feel crappy, and any of a number of responses from you end up with me on top. Around here, everybody has had to pretty much put up with this situation, but that recently started to change.

In a recent slice-variant buried deep within a BBS3 technique was a counter-move to my beloved side-control-bottom-annoying-elbow. Nobody else seemed to notice, but alarm bells went off in my head.

How long will it be before somebody else sees it, too? It doesn't mean my move will no longer work, but it will entail a significant risk. I won't be using it as much, or with such free abandon. It will still be effective against most people, but will have to be much tighter. The risk isn't just that it won't work, or work as well, but rather that my arm can be put into red-zone danger of a submission.

All it took to wreck my move, or at least to make it potentially suicidal, was a little more progress in our standard curriculum.

Every move holds the potential for its own demise. Some can be defeated with ridiculous ease. At least my old favourite move is somewhat tricky to reverse.

There is this guy who visits our class sometimes. He is from some sport variant of Jiu-Jitsu, and is absolutely in love with a thing called a sit-up-sweep. As a result, he likes to end up on the bottom of the guard. Once there, he WILL attempt a sit-up-sweep. He has specialized so much in this that his sweep is just about perfect, but he has done so at the sacrifice of all other bottom-of-the-guard techniques.

The problem for him is that sit-up-sweep is relatively easy to counter if you know it is likely coming. He used the move successfully a bunch of times on Scott, and then it stopped working on him altogether. Scott mentioned what had happened, and the move doesn't work on anybody else around here either.

The guy keeps on trying, and it doesn't work. He loves it too much. I guess it works for him back at his home school. Even if he were to drop it when with us, he has worked it so hard that he has neglected everything else as a result.

Almost every one of our Blue Belts has had to break off their love affair with the Mount position. They arrive from the beginner class all excited. For a year or so they have worked a self-defence curriculum where attaining the Mount is the ultimate road to victory.

They end up facing more experienced students, and work hard to get the mount, and to then launch their well-trained Americanas, or twisting-arm-control, or straight-armlocks. None of these work, as their partner knows a slew of defences to each. They also know well how to reverse the situation at will, and to put the new Blue Belt easily on the bottom, and helpless.

Staying in love with the Mount only shows a suborn refusal to recognize reality. Suddenly, a lot of other things are much better in comparison.

After learning a bit more, Mount gains back a bunch more effectiveness and stability, and can be welcomed back into one's heart, but that takes a while.

Jiu-Jitsu is like that.

I used to want to get the top of the Mount, then Guard bottom was the place to be, and most recently preferred the bottom of Side-Mount. If I lose any more bits of my Side-Mount-bottom game, I'll need to find a new go-to position.

So there can be no favourite moves in Jiu-Jitsu, or at least none that stay favourite forever. Things change and evolve too quickly for that.

Even if someone were to reach Black Belt, and kept going past that, and magically managed to learn everything that exists in Jiu-Jitsu, they still wouldn't be able to decide on a favourite-position-for-all-time. Somebody would just end up devising something brand new that would make the entire art evolve, and mess up the favourite again.

I like getting Back Mount. It's hard as can be to submit a skilled person from there, but it's fun to control them. I like it when they get me the same way, as it's really rewarding to stifle their attacks, and to escape altogether.

Side Mount is good. From the bottom I play my anti-control stuff, and try to escape, and from the top I like the submissions.

Leg Locks are challenging, as are defending them. That whole category of technique is pretty scary, as nasty accidents can occur.

I have a hard time keeping top-Mount when I get it, but love the armbar opportunities. Being underneath makes me defend big-time, and work escapes and reversals.

Guard used to be my favourite, and I still like it. When it's my Guard, I work hard to submit. When it's somebody else's, I have to defend hard and to work on passes.

I am perfectly comfortable when held in Half-Guard, and try and get out, and when it's my Half-Guard, try and trap partners hard until they make a mistake trying to pass, and to reverse them.

Standing? I try and get people to stay up and contest for the takedown, but usually they just plop on their butts and we fight from there.

That's all of the seven positions. All have their pluses and minuses, which evolve with the knowledge of the participants. For me, the favourites come and go; morphing as required.

It's more important to be mentally adaptable than it is to be flexible physically.