BJJ Glossary: The Terms Every Beginner Hears

Training terms

• Rolling. Sparring. Two people grapple live, each trying to control and submit the other. The core of BJJ training, and nothing to do with somersaults.
• Tap / tapping out. How you concede when a submission catches you: tap your partner or the mat, or say "tap." Your partner releases immediately. Both of you are responsible for the tap, the one giving it early and the one respecting it instantly.
• Positional sparring. Controlled rounds that start from a set position and reset when the position is lost or advanced. How beginners usually get their first live training.
• Randori. An organized session of rolling in rounds. You'll hear it more at judo-flavored gyms.
• Open mat. A scheduled session with no lesson plan: people show up and roll with whoever's there, often including visitors from other gyms. We wrote a whole guide on open mat etiquette.
• Uke and tori. In drilling, the partner receiving the technique (uke) and the one performing it (tori).

Gear and culture

• Gi. The traditional uniform: heavy woven jacket, reinforced pants, and a belt. Grabbing it is part of the game.
• No-gi. Training without the uniform, in a rash guard and shorts, where you grip the body instead of fabric. The differences are bigger than the outfit; see our gi vs no-gi guide.
• Oss. The all-purpose word of BJJ culture: used as agreement, greeting, congratulations, or encouragement. It traces to Japanese martial arts phrases about perseverance under pressure, and what it means depends entirely on when it's said.
• Belts and stripes. Adults go white, blue, purple, brown, black, with up to four stripes per belt along the way. The full ladder, including the coral and red belts past black, is in our belt system guide.

Positions

• Guard. Any position where you're on your back with your legs between you and your opponent. The bottom player is far from defeated here; the guard is an attacking position.
• Closed guard. Guard with your legs wrapped around your opponent's waist, ankles crossed behind their back.
• Open guard. The umbrella term for guards where your legs aren't locked around them: butterfly, spider, de la Riva, and a dozen more you'll meet later.
• Half guard. You've got both of your legs wrapped around one of theirs.
• Mount. Sitting on your opponent's torso, knees on the mat on either side. One of the most dominant positions in the sport.
• Side control. A top position past the guard: chest to chest, perpendicular to your opponent, usually controlling the head.
• Back control. Behind your opponent with both feet hooked inside their hips and upper-body control. The best place to be and the worst place to be, depending which of you is which.

Movements

• Shrimp (hip escape). The scooting movement from every warm-up: on your back, bridge, turn to a shoulder, and push your hips away to make space. The most-used defensive movement in the sport.
• Bridge. Heels planted, hips driven to the ceiling until only your heels and shoulders touch the mat. The engine under most escapes.
• Sweep. Using your guard to tip or knock the person on top over, ending with you on top. Worth two points in competition.
• Guard pass. The top player's counterpart: getting around the bottom player's legs into a controlling position like side control.

Submissions

• Submission. Any hold that forces the tap: chokes, which cut blood flow, and joint locks, which bend a joint the wrong way.
• Armbar. The classic joint lock: your whole body against one of their arms, hyperextending the elbow.
• Rear naked choke. From back control, one arm wraps the neck with the chin at your elbow, the hand grabbing your other bicep.
• Triangle. A choke applied with your legs from guard, trapping their head and one arm.
• Kimura. A shoulder lock: their arm bent at roughly a right angle, wrist driven down toward their hip.
• Guillotine. A front choke: face to face, their head under your armpit, your arm wrapped around the neck.

That's more than enough vocabulary to survive month one. The rest arrives naturally, usually while it's being applied to you.