BJJ Positions
All Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu positions with descriptions, categories, and related techniques
Closed Guard
The foundational bottom position where you control your opponent by locking your ankles behind their back. Closed guard limits your opponent's posture and mobility while giving you access to sweeps, submissions, and transitions. It is the first guard most practitioners learn.
Open Guard
A broad category of guard positions where your legs are not locked around the opponent. You use your feet, knees, and grips to create frames and maintain distance. Open guard is highly dynamic and serves as a hub connecting many specialized guards.
Half Guard
You are on bottom with one of your opponent's legs trapped between yours. Half guard is a versatile position offering underhook battles, knee shield frames, and sweeping opportunities. Modern half guard is an offensive weapon, not just a defensive fallback.
Butterfly Guard
A seated open guard where both feet are hooked inside your opponent's thighs. Butterfly guard is one of the best positions for elevating and off-balancing your opponent for sweeps. It transitions seamlessly into single leg X, X-guard, and various upper body attacks.
De La Riva Guard
An open guard where one leg hooks around the outside of your opponent's lead leg with your foot on their far hip. Named after Ricardo de la Riva, this guard provides excellent distance management and sets up berimbolo, back takes, and technical sweeps. A staple of modern sport BJJ.
Spider Guard
A gi-specific open guard where you grip both sleeves and place your feet on the opponent's biceps. Spider guard creates a web of control that makes passing extremely difficult. It offers triangle setups, omoplata attacks, and sweep chains from distance.
Lasso Guard
A variation of spider guard where one leg wraps around the opponent's arm from the outside, threading through and gripping the sleeve. The lasso creates a powerful anchor that disrupts the passer's posture and enables sweeps, omoplatas, and triangles.
Rubber Guard
A no-gi closed guard system popularized by Eddie Bravo where you use overhook control and high flexibility to trap the opponent's posture. Rubber guard eliminates the need for gi grips by using your own legs as anchors, setting up gogoplatas, omoplatas, and triangles.
X-Guard
A powerful sweeping guard where you sit underneath your standing opponent with both legs forming an X shape across their lead leg. X-guard provides massive leverage for off-balancing and sweeping even much larger opponents. Common entries come from butterfly guard and single leg X.
Single Leg X
Also called ashi garami or SLX, this position has you on your back with both legs controlling one of your opponent's legs. Single leg X is a critical hub for leg lock entries and technical stand-ups. It bridges the gap between guard play and the modern leg lock game.
Deep Half Guard
An advanced half guard position where you scoot deep underneath your opponent, hugging their trapped leg close to your chest. Deep half neutralizes heavy pressure passers and creates sweep opportunities by elevating their base. Popularized by Jeff Glover and Ryan Hall.
50/50 Guard
A symmetrical leg entanglement where both players have equal control over each other's leg. The 50/50 is a double-edged sword: it offers heel hook and knee bar entries for both players simultaneously. Competitors use it strategically, but it requires careful management to avoid giving up advantages.
Mount
The quintessential dominant position where you sit on top of your opponent's torso with both knees on the ground. Mount gives you gravity, posture, and access to a huge variety of submissions including armbars, chokes, and americanas. Maintaining mount is about hip pressure and anticipating escapes.
S-Mount
A high mount variation where one leg is posted up near the opponent's head with your shin across their chest. S-mount creates crushing pressure and isolates one arm for armbar and triangle finishes. It is a finishing position that's extremely difficult to escape once secured.
Side Control
A fundamental pin where you are chest-to-chest with your opponent, perpendicular to their body, with no legs entangled. Side control is the most common position reached after passing guard. From here you can transition to mount, knee on belly, north-south, or attack with kimuras, americanas, and chokes.
North-South
A top control position where you are head-to-head with your opponent, your chest on theirs, facing opposite directions. North-south is an excellent pin for heavy pressure players and opens up the north-south choke, kimura, and transitions to other dominant positions.
Knee on Belly
A dynamic top position where you place one knee on your opponent's stomach or chest while keeping your other foot posted wide. Knee on belly generates enormous pressure that forces reactions, opening up submissions, back takes, and transitions to mount. It is also worth points in competition.
Back Mount
Widely considered the most dominant position in BJJ. You are behind your opponent with your hooks (feet) inside their thighs and seatbelt grip controlling their upper body. From back mount, you have access to the rear naked choke, bow and arrow choke, and armbar while your opponent has no direct attacks.
Turtle (Top)
You are on top of an opponent who has assumed the turtle position (all fours, elbows tucked). From turtle top you work to break them down, insert hooks for back mount, or attack with clock chokes, front headlock submissions, and turnovers. Patience and heavy hips are key.
Turtle (Bottom)
A defensive shell position on all fours with elbows tight and chin tucked. Bottom turtle is used to prevent guard passes and recover guard. While it protects against immediate submissions, you must actively work to re-guard or stand up, as a skilled opponent will attack the back.
Standing
The starting position for most matches. Both players are on their feet, fighting for grips, angles, and takedowns. Standing encompasses wrestling ties, judo gripping sequences, and guard pull setups. Good standup fundamentals are essential for dictating where the match takes place.