BJJ Positions 101: Guard, Mount, Side Control, and Back Control

New students often expect jiu-jitsu to be mostly about submissions — the armbars and chokes that end a match. In reality, the sport is built around something more foundational: position. A famous saying in BJJ sums it up perfectly: "position before submission." Before you can reliably tap someone out, you need control, and control comes from occupying one of a handful of dominant positions on the ground. Here are the four every beginner should know first.

Guard: the great equalizer

Guard is the position where the person on the bottom uses their legs to control the opponent between them, most commonly by wrapping the legs around the opponent's torso (closed guard). It's a defining feature of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu compared to many other grappling arts — being on your back isn't automatically a losing position, because a skilled guard player can sweep the opponent to reverse position, attack with submissions, or simply neutralize the opponent's offense from below. This is the position that made BJJ famous: a smaller person on the bottom, safely controlling and even threatening a bigger person on top.

Mount: top dominance

Mount is exactly what it sounds like — one person sitting on top of the opponent's torso, with both knees on the mat, controlling the hips and upper body from above. It's widely considered one of the most dominant positions in the sport, since the player on top has excellent control over the opponent's movement, strong access to submissions, and (in a self-defense or MMA context) a strong position to strike from. Escaping mount is one of the very first skills every white belt has to learn, because getting stuck there against a skilled opponent is a rough place to be.

Side control: control without exposure

Side control is a pinning position where the top player controls the opponent's torso from the side, generally perpendicular to them, pinning their hips and shoulders to the mat. It doesn't offer quite as many submission options as mount, but it's often considered even more stable and secure, since the bottom player has fewer ways to escape or reverse the position. Side control is frequently the position a jiu-jitsu practitioner will pass into on the way to mount or back control.

Back control: the most dominant position in the sport

Back control (or back mount) is widely regarded as the single most dominant position in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. From the back, one grappler controls the opponent from behind, typically with hooks (feet tucked inside the opponent's thighs) or a body triangle, and often with "seatbelt" grip control across the chest and one arm. From here, the opponent has almost no way to see incoming attacks and very limited ability to counter, making the rear naked choke — set up directly from this position — one of the highest-percentage submissions in the entire sport.

• Guard — bottom position, legs used to control and attack; least disadvantaged bottom position
• Side control — top pin from the side; stable, limited submissions for the top player
• Mount — top position straddling the torso; strong control and submission access
• Back control — behind the opponent with hooks in; the most dominant position in the sport

Why the hierarchy matters more than any single submission

Ranking positions this way isn't just an academic exercise — it shapes how BJJ is actually taught and trained. A beginner's first goal in any given roll isn't "find a submission." It's "improve position." Escape a bad spot, advance from guard to side control, advance from side control to mount, and advance from mount to the back. Submissions become dramatically easier — and far more likely to actually work — once you've secured a truly dominant position first. That's why instructors spend so much early class time drilling escapes and transitions rather than jumping straight to finishing holds.

Understanding this hierarchy is one of the fastest ways to make sense of what's actually happening during a live roll, whether you're watching from the sidelines or living it from underneath someone twice your size. If you want to feel these positions for yourself instead of just reading about them, our Fundamentals program teaches exactly this progression from day one, and your first class is free.