Mini Ep. 54: Controlling the Distance

Speaker 1: 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. Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. And today in this mini episode, I want to unpack a very fundamental concept in Jiu-Jitsu, controlling the distance. Range and distance management are fundamental to Jiu-Jitsu, and they affect pretty much every technique or position you could attempt. And it's something that does get talked about, but I have discovered recently that exploring how distance management works is actually a lot more complicated than it might seem at first glance. I recently did an episode with my coach Emily Kwok about controlling the distance, and the relationship between being near your opponent versus far away from your opponent. We did this on a premium service, and the whole the conversation took about an hour. There was a lot to unpack. So I'm going to try to kind of hit the highlights here really, really quickly. Now, in Jiu-Jitsu, again, like with most combat sports, we understand that controlling the distance is important, basically the space relationship between you and your opponent. Speaker 1: At the absolute simplest level, you've probably heard an instructor tell you at some point that you should take away space when you're attacking, and you should create space when you're defending. So to illustrate that as an example, if you are on top of someone in side control, you're probably going to try to take away as much space as possible so that you can get that chest-to-chest connection, keep them pinned on the mat, and prevent them from moving. On the other hand, if you're the person on the bottom, you're probably trying to make space because you need that space to escape. And that's why you do things like use frames. Part of the purpose of a frame is to create space with your opponent so that they can't easily get too close to you within that range where it gets difficult to fight. So that idea of taking away space when attacking and creating space when defending, it's a good overall guideline, but you'll realize pretty quickly in Jiu-Jitsu that it's actually a bit more complicated than that, and there are exceptions to that so-called rule. Speaker 1: As an example, part of your body might be near, and part of your body might be far away. So it's not like you're all near or all far. Sometimes you want to take away space in some places, but create space in others. A common example, if you're playing neon belly, you might be trying to take away space around their neck. Of course, you're trying to make a close knee connection with them with the leg that you have on top of their belly, but your far leg, you want to keep away from them because that helps you establish base, and it prevents them from being able to grab that far leg, which is how a lot of escapes and reversals from bottom neon belly happen. So this is an interesting example of where part of your body is close, and part of your body is far. Another thing to think about, there are times when being close is good, but there's other times when it's not as universally good. There may be advantages to being a little bit farther away. The common example where this comes up is guard passing strategies. There are a lot of different ways to pass someone's guard, but we can generally break them down into three different ranges. You can do very close range passes, like a stack pass, um, or an over-under pass. These kinds of close range passes work by trying to crowd the person so closely that it's hard for them to get out. Speaker 1: You can also do long range passes where you are at a distance, and this prevents people from easily getting a hold of you while you're trying to pass their guard. So things like a Toreando pass or a long step pass are examples of passes that happen at a bit of a distance. And then there's also this middle zone. Sometimes you're neither near nor far, you're kind of in between, and that can have its own advantages as well. So if we're talking about the engagement phase of guard, which is where neither you nor your opponent have solid controlling grips on each other and a specific guard has not been established, then you might find good success being in a middle zone where you're neither too close nor too far away. It can be advantageous to be in that middle zone when you're setting up a guard pass because if you get too close to someone while you're trying to set up a guard pass, then they can grab onto you and enter a guard. But if you're too far away, then they can just get up and you're not really controlling them. So often when you're setting up a guard pass, you want to be in this middle zone where you can grip them, but they can't easily grip you. I've made some content with Stephan Kesting from Grapple Arts where I refer to this as the Goldilocks zone. You want to find that middle zone where you can get the grips on them, but they cannot get good control over you. Speaker 1: Once you've done that, then when you start entering into an actual guard pass, you might want to get in real close for those close range passes, or you might want to back out for an outside pass where it's easy to go around their legs. And both of those are valid options. So again, we have different competing situations, one where near is good and one where far is good. And this can make it really hard for beginners to find and establish an overall rule for distance management because the example that people give about take away space when you're attacking, create space when you're defending, it's mostly true, but there are clearly many exceptions to that. So how do we balance this? I would say your goal with distance management, regardless of the position, whether you're on top of the person, on bottom, whether you're standing, your goal is to be in a situation where you can get good control of them, but it's hard for them to get counter control of you. And that might mean you're really close to the person. It might also mean that you have to make a bit of space. It's going to depend on what you're doing with your hands and what you're doing with your feet. So don't just think about your own body placement, think about your opponent's body placement. What are they doing? And where can you position your body so that you can check those boxes, so that you can easily control them, but they cannot easily control you. Speaker 1: In some cases, it might be good to get in real close, where you're trying to get chest-to-chest with them because at that range where you're that close, it can be really hard for the person to use their arms. Or you might be trying to back out for a guard pass because as long as you can control their legs, you can prevent them from standing up, and it might be really hard for them to grab onto you if you're at a distance. So again, no single rule for near or far, which is better, but I would say overall, your goal with distance is you want to stay in a range where you're able to control them and they're not able to control you. And often that means you're not staying at the same range. Sometimes you're weaving in and out. You're getting close, then you're getting far away. And in fact, if you just stay at the same range all the time, it can make you predictable and it can make it easy for your opponent to play their game against you. If you're a bit more unpredictable where you are altering the range, it can open up situations where you can get at limbs that you might not otherwise be able to get at, and it can also make it very hard for your opponent to lock onto you. So I hope this is kind of a helpful explanation. Distance management is a lot more complicated than it appears at first glance. So again, just to recap this, the concept that you will often be taught as a beginner is that when you are attacking, you should take away space. When you are defending, you should create space. That is often true, but not always true. Speaker 1: If you want to generalize this further, I would say you always want to stay at a distance where you can control them, but they cannot control you, and that might mean changing the distance, going in, out, and maybe at that Goldilocks zone in the middle. This is a really important thing for people to understand. Um, if you have any questions about distance management or if you want to check out that premium episode that I talked about, all of that is at BJJ Mental Models.com. Sign up for BJJ Mental Models premium, you'll get a free seven-day trial and you can grab that episode with me and Emily Kwok. Um, definitely recommend doing that. Beyond that, BJJ Mental Models.com is also where you go to get all of our free episodes of our public podcast, mini episodes like this, and the amazing BJJ Mental Models newsletter. You can sign up for all of those for free. Thanks again for listening. I hope this was helpful and I'll see you next time.