Mini Ep. 79: Points of Control

Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member, has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in jiu-jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in jiu-jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access. And if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free. Go to BJJ Mental Models.com and check it out today. Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models. I am Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent jiu-jitsu approach. And in this mini episode, I want to introduce a concept called points of control. It's a tool for understanding the different regions of your opponent's body that can be used to control them and the pros and cons of each. So, with the points of control in jiu-jitsu, we can break these down into two broad categories. There is torso control and lever control. Torso control is when we connect with our opponent's torso, and lever control is when we generate leverage using their torso's extremities, which means one of their arms, one of their legs, or their head. So, in the case of torso control, you're attaching yourself to your opponent's torso. There's two main ways that you can do this. You can either clamp onto it or you can hook it. When you clamp onto your opponent's torso, think of a body lock or a bear hug, you're usually doing this because you want to stop your opponent from moving or at least move with them. A common example of this, the body lock pass, is where you clamp your opponent's torso onto the ground so that you can execute the pass. When you hook onto your opponent's torso, it's normally so that you can track their movement, not halt their movement. A common example is the wrestle up. You underhook their torso so that you can rotate around it and get up, ideally beside or behind them. If you didn't have the underhook, then when you try to get up, they could just flatten you and pin you again. The main issue with torso control is lack of leverage. Torso control is best used when you're not trying to move your opponent, but you want to move around them. It is possible to move somebody by their torso. Think of the German suplex where you pop your hips under their center of gravity and then you use your hips as a fulcrum to throw them. But because these moves aren't using maximal leverage, you'll find when you're moving someone using their torso, this often relies more on athleticism and it's harder to do when you're at a size disadvantage. For these reasons, torso control is somewhat limited. So this opens up the topic of lever control. Leverage is a fundamental concept in jiu-jitsu and it's about turning your opponent's body into levers so that you can multiply your force generated. So this would mean their arms, their legs, and their head. And this is useful not just for submissions, but for many movements in jiu-jitsu, which involve some degree of lever control. Leverage is very efficient. The secret to lever control is how many levers you attack. So let's say you're attacking a single lever. This means you're primarily attacking one of their limbs or their head. A single lever attack generates more force, but it can sacrifice some control. Alternately, you could attack multiple levers at the same time. Think a head and arm triangle or a double leg takedown. When you attack multiple levers at once, this may reduce the individual force you can generate against each of those targets, but it can increase control. So for example, let's talk about the triangle choke. This is a multi-lever attack. You are splitting your focus between attacking their head and one of their arms. Now, it is possible to break someone's posture with the triangle, but it's harder to break the posture of a larger person. And that's why you don't often see smaller grapplers use triangles against bigger grapplers. And this is because as a multi-lever attack, you are splitting the force generated between their head and their arm, and that can make it more difficult to break their posture than if you only focused on their head or only focused on one of their arms. So the question becomes, do you want more force or do you want more control? And this is going to depend on the context and on your goals. If I am a smaller grappler and I am struggling to move my opponent around, I might want more force. That's why techniques like single leg X-guard are so popular against bigger grapplers because when you are smaller, you can use your entire body against one of their limbs. However, sometimes control is more important than force, especially for techniques that are not submissions. As an example, you may be familiar with the double trouble concept, where if you attack one of their limbs, you may want to also control the opposite one. When you do this, it can be hard to get finishing force, but it can be easier to control your opponent. This is because when you control a limb on both sides of your opponent's body, they can't easily rotate. And body rotation is one of the more common late stage escapes. Think of the hitchhiker escape where your opponent rotates their torso to escape the arm bar. If you look at techniques that smaller people favor when grappling larger opponents, you'll notice they often rely on single levers. Guillotines, rear naked chokes, heel hooks, arm bars, single leg X-guards, single leg takedowns are examples of single lever attacks where you are focusing primarily on one body extremity. However, if you don't need all of that force, maybe you prefer focusing on control. And this is where multiple lever attacks can be very helpful. If you've ever tried to escape a head and arm triangle, you know how powerful the control of a multi-lever attack can be because by pinning the head and the arm, it can be very difficult to escape. And you'll notice that often when larger grapplers are competing against smaller grapplers, they may prefer multi-lever attacks because the extra control allows them to prevent the smaller grappler's movement. And the larger grappler may not need all of their force to complete the technique that they want to complete. So you may often see with smaller grapplers against larger grapplers, they may prefer single lever attacks to generate more force. With larger grapplers against smaller grapplers, they may prefer multi-lever attacks to maximize control. So these are not hard and fast rules. There are many times when a smaller competitor may use a multi-lever attack. There are many times when a larger competitor will use a single lever attack. This is just an important consideration that can help you identify in advance if your strategy is going to be successful. If you have competed against people much larger than you and you look at the techniques you have done that have worked successfully, I would guess that many of them would be single lever attacks. It is hard to use a multi-lever attack against someone who's bigger and stronger than you because you may not be able to generate enough force to move their limbs the way that you want if your attention is split. On the converse, if you're grappling a smaller or faster person and your focus is on holding them in position, that's when a multi-lever attack may be more effective. Now, in addition to single lever attacks like the guillotine choke and double lever attacks like the head and arm triangle, there are also triple lever attacks. The cry angle is an example of this. But attacking three or more levers at once is pretty rare. It's hard to get your body into those positions. An overall guideline that you should be looking at when you're trying to get leverage on your opponent is focusing on one lever will probably give you more force and focusing on multiple levers at once will probably give you more control. So just to recap this, there's two broad ways that you can control your opponent's body, either by the torso or by a lever. Torso control is where you clamp or hook onto your opponent with the objective of either holding them in position or rotating around their torso. Lever control is when you attack the arms, legs, or head for the purpose of creating leverage. If you attack a single lever, you generate more force, possibly at the expense of control. If you attack multiple levers at once, you may generate more control, possibly at the expense of force. If you like concepts like this, there's more of it at BJJ Mental Models.com. Our mini episodes like this, plus our full length podcast episodes and our newsletter are completely free. And I would encourage you to level up with us at BJJ Mental Models Premium. It is the world's largest library of jiu-jitsu audio educational content and the first week is free. All of this can be found at BJJ Mental Models.com. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this and I'll talk to you soon.