Your first day of BJJ training goes something like this.
You walk in. Shake hands. Somebody throws you on the ground. A guy half your size wraps his legs around your waist and starts controlling you like a puppet. You don't know what just happened. You tap. You reset. It happens again.
And the weird part? You come back the next day.
That's BJJ. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is the one martial art where a smaller person can absolutely wreck a bigger, stronger opponent — if they know what they're doing. The problem is, when you're brand new, you don't know what you're doing. And the sheer number of techniques floating around the internet can make your head spin.
Here's what I wish somebody told me when I started: you don't need 500 techniques. You need maybe 15. And you need to understand positions before you start chasing submissions. This guide is going to give you the roadmap.
Why BJJ Training Starts on Your Back
This trips up every new student. You walk into a BJJ gym expecting to learn how to take somebody down and submit them. And your instructor puts you on your back.
There's a reason for that.
As Scott Sullivan explains in his Closed Guard 101 course: "The goal of Jiu-Jitsu is to fight on the ground and end up on top. But of course, life doesn't always go your way. Even when you're trained, given all the chaos and stuff in a fight, maybe you're fighting a guy who's bigger and stronger than you... he might knock you off."
That's reality. In a self-defense situation, you WILL end up on your back at some point. Most untrained people panic here. BJJ guys? This is where they go to work.
The closed guard is your home base. Your legs are wrapped around the other guy's waist, ankles crossed behind his back. From here, your legs — the longest, strongest limbs on your body — become offensive weapons. Sweeps. Submissions. Reversals. The guy on top thinks he's winning. He's not.
Scott puts it simply: "When you have your legs available like this, you can use them for defense, you can use them for sweeps, submissions, all kinds of cool stuff. If he were to get my legs out of the way... he can just have his will."
That one concept — use your legs, don't let them neutralize your legs — is about 80% of what you need to understand as a beginner.
The 5 BJJ Beginner Moves That Actually Matter
Every technique list on the internet gives you 16 or 30 or 90 moves you "need" to learn. That's overwhelming and, honestly, counterproductive. When you're starting out, you need a handful of high-percentage techniques that you can actually hit under pressure.
Here are the five that will cover you in most situations:
1. The hip escape (shrimp). This is THE fundamental BJJ movement. Every escape, every guard recovery, every time you need to create space — it starts with a shrimp. You push your hips away from your opponent while turning to your side. Simple to describe, takes months to make automatic. Do it at the start of every training session until it's in your bones.
2. Bridge and roll escape. When somebody gets mount on you — sitting on your chest — this is how you get out. Plant your feet, explode your hips upward, and roll them over your shoulder. Scott's escape curriculum teaches a specific version where you bridge UP first to shift the weight, then go sideways. "That takes kind of the weight off your chest a little bit and puts it up there. Then I go sideways." Up, then over. Two steps.
3. The armbar from guard. Your first submission from the bottom. One leg over his head, one over his waist. Squeeze his upper arm with your thighs. Keep your butt close. Thumb pointed up so the elbow faces down. Then just lift your hips. Scott nails the most common mistake: "Beginners will lift their hips, but they lift the arm at the same time. You don't want to do that. Keep this down and lift the middle up." That single correction is the difference between finishing and getting stacked.
4. The guillotine choke. "It accounts for a high percentage of tap outs and choke outs in MMA fighting," Scott says in his Closed Guard 101 course. Around the neck — no arms trapped — thumb up, forearm parallel to the floor. Grab your own wrist and lift straight up like an elevator. The entry works from the hip bump position. If you feel some space behind his neck... that's your green light.
5. The triangle choke. A signature BJJ submission where your legs do all the work. The bow-and-arrow setup is the easiest entry: control both wrists, pull one arm out while pushing the other into his body. Swing your leg over. Lock it up. Scott's triangle advice for white belts is gold: "Think of more of a slow squeeze and give the choke a chance to work. If I've got him here in my triangle choke, I don't just want to go ballistic. Squeeze with 75% power, proper mechanics, and just wait."
That patience piece is HUGE. And it applies to every submission in your arsenal.
BJJ Beginner Tips: The Mistakes That Slow You Down
After watching thousands of white belts come through the door, patterns emerge. Same mistakes. Every time.
Mistake #1: Going 100% on everything. You grab a submission and squeeze like your life depends on it. Three seconds later you're gassed. Your training partner escapes because you burned all your energy. Scott's advice on the triangle applies to your entire game: squeeze at 75%, use proper mechanics, and let the technique do the work. You're not arm-wrestling. You're using leverage.
Mistake #2: Chasing submissions before learning position. You saw a cool armbar on YouTube. Now you're diving for arms every round and getting swept, passed, and submitted for your trouble. Slow down. Can you hold guard for a full round? Can you escape mount without panicking? Can you maintain side control for 30 seconds? If not, you don't have any business hunting submissions yet.
Mistake #3: Leaving your arms exposed. Scott drills this relentlessly in his escape courses: "The best way to get out of this is not to get put in it. Seriously." When someone comes around to side control, your elbow goes to the floor. "It's very difficult for him to pull that elbow off the ground." Prevention beats the best escape technique ever invented. Every single time.
Mistake #4: Ignoring defense because it's not flashy. Here's the thing. If you can't be submitted, you can't lose. If you can't be held down, you'll always find a way back to a good position. The guys who progress fastest are the ones who spend their first six months getting really, really hard to tap. The submissions come later. They come faster when you have a defensive foundation.
My buddy Babu, a black belt from Rio who's been coaching for decades, puts the principle this way: use fewer steps for each move. "In the middle of the fight, it fights too fast. If you make too many steps for a move, you can lose yourself." Keep it simple. Two or three steps per technique. Not seven.
How to Start BJJ: Your First Month Game Plan
Forget about belts for now. Forget about competitions. Here's what your first month should look like if you want to build a real foundation.
Week 1-2: Survival mode. Your only job is to learn how to tap (early and often), understand the guard position, and learn one mount escape. That's it. You're going to get submitted every round. That's not failure — that's exactly how this works. Pay attention to what happened right BEFORE you got caught. That's where the lesson lives.
Week 3-4: Pick your weapons. Add two or three specific techniques to drill. The armbar from guard. The hip bump sweep. A basic guard pass. Don't try to learn everything your instructor shows. Pick two things and rep them until they start showing up in live rolling without you thinking about it.
Training frequency: Two to three sessions per week. That gives you enough repetition to retain what you learn without destroying your body. More than four sessions a week as a beginner usually leads to injuries or burnout. Consistency beats intensity. Every time.
What to wear: Athletic shorts and a rash guard or snug t-shirt for your first class. No pockets, zippers, or anything that can catch a finger. Trim your nails — fingers AND toes. Shower before class. Most gyms will loan you a gi if they train in one.
And if you're 40, 50, or older — you're fine. The tap system means you decide when a technique stops. Communicate with your training partners about pace. Focus on technique over athleticism. I've seen guys start at 55 and end up sharper than dudes half their age because they couldn't muscle through anything. They had to learn the right way from day one.
Speaking of getting warmed up properly, check out our BJJ warm-up drills guide so you show up ready to train.
BJJ Techniques for Beginners: Positions Before Submissions
This is the part most beginners skip. And it's the part that matters most.
BJJ has a position hierarchy. Understanding it is like having a GPS for every roll. You always know where you are, where you want to go, and what you should be doing.
From worst to best position:
Bottom mount / bottom back control — you're in trouble. Defend your neck, protect your arms, and escape. Bridge and roll or elbow-knee escape. Nothing else matters until you're out.
Side control bottom — bad, but not as bad as mount. Frame with your arms to create space. Hip escape to recover guard. Don't let them advance to mount.
Guard (bottom) — this is neutral-to-offensive for you. Your legs are in play. Start working sweeps, submissions, back takes. This is where BJJ guys thrive.
Side control top — you're winning. Maintain pressure. Look for submissions like the kimura or advance to mount.
Mount — dominant position. Keep your weight low, knees squeezing their hips. Attack arms and neck. If they bridge, ride it out.
Back control — the best position in BJJ. Chest to their shoulder blades, hooks in, seatbelt grip. Rear naked choke territory. They have almost nothing from here. You have everything.
Every round, ask yourself two questions: what position am I in, and is it good or bad? If it's bad — defend first, then escape. If it's good — maintain first, then attack. Beginners constantly skip the first step. They try to escape before they're safe, or attack before they're stable. And they get caught.
The half guard is a position you'll find yourself in constantly. Learn it early. It sits right between guard and side control and offers opportunities from both top and bottom.
Where to Go From Here
You've got the roadmap now. Positions. Escapes. A handful of techniques that actually work. A month-by-month game plan.
But a roadmap only works if you follow it. And learning from text and video alone will only take you so far. What makes the real difference is having a coach walk you through each technique step by step, correcting the small details that separate a technique that works from one that doesn't.
That's exactly what Scott Sullivan built with the BJJ 101 System. It starts with the fundamentals — closed guard, escapes, basic submissions — and walks you through everything at a pace that makes sense for beginners. My buddy Babu's guard work goes deeper into the details that separate good guard players from great ones. And when you're ready for the next level, Master Anibal Braga's advanced program picks up where the basics leave off.
The whole system lives inside the BJJ training library. Step-by-step video instruction. Real coaching cues. The kind of detail you only get from guys who've been on the mat for decades.
I hope you check it out.
Talk soon,
-Scott