Life isn't fair – and neither should be your Jiu Jitsu: The whole point of Jiu Jitsu is to create an unfair advantage over your opponent – Jiu Jitsu is the art of making things as unfair in your favor as possible within the rules. The most well known and important means of creating an unfair playing field is POSITION. If you get a dominant position on an opponent from where you can attack him whilst he cannot attack you, that is clearly going to make for a much easier match for you. Of all the various positions in sport Jiu Jitsu, I favor the back above all, and make it the centerpiece of our positional training. A big theme of my teaching is to GO BEYOND POSITION as a means of creating advantage and start bringing in other elements that create STILL GREATER ADVANTAGE until the fight becomes completely unfair in your favor. Here, Gordon Ryan, a true master of creating unfair advantage from the back, goes far beyond positional advantage and ties up both of his opponents defensive arms whilst leaving one of his arms free to strangle. Such is the effect of the arm traps he is using that one hand proved to be sufficient to finish this strangle in the final of the ADCC world championships against a very tough opponent. Look always to go beyond position and constantly seek to enlarge and improve your understanding of advantage in Jiu Jitsu. Understand always that the entire sport is built upon this philosophy and that the deeper your understanding of how to get mechanical and tactical advantage over an opponent the easier and more impressive your Jiu Jitsu will appear.
