Position before submission is a cliché you may or may not hear in your gym from time to time. I wanted to share my experience with it, and how it totally changed my game. First of all, on the surface level it is a great concept for new players to grasp, the idea that they should focus on holding and advancing good positions instead of focusing on the submissions. This is important because the better you control a position, the higher the percentage your submission attempts will be. It’s also one of the main reasons beginners will continuously lose their position and get swept in a mad, sloppy attempt for a submission. However the important of this phrase goes much deeper for me.
When I started Jiu Jitsu after a few months I started to get some sweeps and gain top position. Once I got there I just kept telling myself that I needed to hold that position instead of getting swept back into a terrible position again where I would undoubtedly flounder away wasting my energy. I was so focused on holding the position I would stall there and just pray I could maintain that control until the timer went off. After awhile I started thinking about the big picture and how this was affecting my game. I came to the conclusion that not only were my escapes not getting any better while doing this, but I was also not attempting submissions because I was so afraid of getting rolled.
This was a major eye opener for me because I realized that to have a great offense, you need a great defense. If I am truly comfortable in my escapes and transitions, and I mean truly comfortable, then I can go for a risky submission because I have confidence that if it doesn’t work out, and I end up on bottom, that I can get back to where I was. I am still, and always will be, in the process of developing my escapes and sweeps because I’m a firm believer that it will make my offense better as well.
Over the years as my escapes improved, I started finding myself in a dominant position more and more, and thus was able to win more matches. In a weird way it was the “position before submission” ideology that initially held me back but ultimately sprung me forward. The big take away here for me was that if you want to really develop your submissions in jiu jitsu it helps tremendously to first develop rock solid sweeps and escapes. Only then can you have the confidence necessary to risk position for a submission.
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