One of the keys to the success of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in MMA events is its emphasis on attaining and maintaining good position at all times in the course of a fight. This is always taught at our Chicago Jiu Jitsu training gym. By doing this you nullify the offense of your opponent while setting up your own offense of your opponent successfully attacking you while maximizing the chance of your attacks striking home.
Often there is debate over which of the two main skills in grappling, positional skills or submission skills, is the more important. Submission skill pertains to the ability to attain and hold a dominant position in a ground grappling situation. If you had only submission skills, it would be difficult to successfully employ them, since these generally require you to be able to attain and hold a good position long enough to apply them. On the other hand, if you had only positional skill and lacked submission skills, you could control your opponent but would lack the means to cleanly and efficiently end the fight. Clearly then, both are needed. While positional skills lack the glamorous nature of submissions, they are just as essential, indeed, it can be argued that they are the more important of the two, since it is almost always the case that gaining a good position is prerequisite to submitting an opponent. Moreover, it is extremely difficult to successfully employ a submission hold on an opponent who is dominating you in terms of position. Considerations like these often give rise to the view that position precedes submissions. In order to outline this positional strategy we need to look at the basic positions of ground grappling.
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