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It wasn’t until I started training Judo that I realized most people don’t know how to move on their feet.

Even more recently, a former D1 wrestler offered to teach wrestling classes and had the same reaction… He was stunned.

“Do people not even understand the basics of how to move on their feet?”

I held back a laugh and said “yeah, it’s scary isn’t it?”

Moving in jiu-jitsu in a standing position isn’t that difficult. It’s actually pretty natural. The problem is, most people do not move naturally.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

Often times, I’ll demonstrate a technique, say a foot sweep. I’ll tug on someone’s collar and rather than take a step (we step to keep balance), my training partner bent at the hips and resisted backward. Stepping forward to maintain balance is more natural than bending at the hip —we do this everyday when we walk. Every time we take a step we are off-balancing ourselves in order to propel our body forward. As we do this, our body subconsciously keeps our feet, hips, shoulders and head aligned.

Stepping is just one part of grappling ambulation in jiu-jitsu.

Another is having a correct posture and stance necessary for the movements of the sport.

In my experience, here are a few types of people:

Wherever you’re at on that spectrum above, in order to understand how to stand and how to move in jiu-jitsu, you’ll need to understand what we are doing and perhaps more importantly, what we are not doing.

So, let’s talk briefly about some of the basics.

First off, we are not striking. We are grappling.

As a grappling art, Jiu-jitsu derives its takedowns primarily from Judo and Wrestling.

Judo is a grappling art that basically takes advantage of a person’s natural movement patterns. As you unbalance your opponent, their goal is to stay “upright” and maintain proper posture. They’re attempting to walk with you and not resist —if you resist against a well-trained judo player, you leave yourself open to some of the bigger throws. One of my best students is a judo black belt who is insanely good at capitalizing on this resistance.

Here are some cues we get from the Judo player:

The overall purpose of your posture in Judo is intended to be balanced and relaxed, staying light on your feet and able to move quickly in any direction. It is an ANTERIOR posture, which means we’re moving forward.

Wrestling is similar except, in wrestling, you can expect a much more crouched posture. Of course, there are differences in stance for freestyle and Greco-Roman but the overall idea is the same. Here we’ll be speaking specifically about freestyle wrestling.

The goal of the wrestling stance is to defend against leg grabs (freestyle) or upper body holds (Greco-Roman) while also putting yourself in a position to shoot for your own attacks.

The cues for the wrestler are:

The goal for the wrestler will be to pressure forward and manipulate the hands and posture to shoot in for the legs. The crouched position allows the wrestler to protect the legs but does expose the head more. Similar to Judo, you’ll be hand fighting and aiming to off-balance and control posture, except you’re not wearing a kimono in wrestling.

Now both of the above are grappling based stances. Note, they are not striking based stances so you do not have to defend against strikes.

Grappling stances and fighting stances are different in their purpose and execution.

A grappling stance is designed for use in sports like wrestling, judo, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, where the primary objective is to take an opponent down to the ground and gain control through grappling techniques. The stance is intended to provide a strong base for defending against takedowns and maintaining balance while executing throws and grappling techniques.

On the other hand, a fighting stance is used in striking-based martial arts like boxing and kickboxing. The objective here is to strike an opponent with punches, kicks, and other strikes while avoiding or blocking their attacks. A fighting stance is usually higher than a grappling stance, with the fighter standing upright. When you’re crouched, your face will be more exposed to getting hit.

The stance is intended to provide mobility for moving in and out of range to strike, as well as provide balance and defense against an opponent's strikes. It is NOT to take an opponent to the ground so you won’t have to be based or prepared for “grip fighting” or “posture control”.

Instead, the purpose of the fighting stance will be to move in and out of striking range and strike while also keeping arms and legs in a position to defend against oncoming strikes (more inward versus outwards).

So now that we understand what a grappling stance IS versus what it is NOT, let’s talk about some of the specifics of the grappling stance.

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What you’ll get below are 4 videos:

Let’s dive in!

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