Free Fighter's Mind, A by Sam Sheridan Page A

my armpits and raining down punches—think “bully in grade school” position. This is obviously a very dominant position for you, although it’s a little less stable. I have a better chance of sweeping you and reversing things from here than I did from side control.
    The final step is if I turn over to avoid damage and you “take my back.” You climb onto my back, your chest on my back, and attack me from there. There are hundreds of other ways to take my back, from all kinds of other positions. The back is perhaps the most dominant position in MMA, but only if you get your “hooks” in, meaning you get your legs wrapped around my waist from the back so you can cling to me and control my hips and match my movements to stay on my back. Otherwise, I’ll turn and get you off, then you’ll be on your back and I’ll end up in your guard. So as you take my back it’s critical to get your hooks in, and from there you usually start working the choke. Fighters have gotten a lot better at defending their backs, so whereas it used to be the end now it’s not always such a sure thing.
    That’s basically the progression of position in jiu-jitsu and ground fighting in MMA (with apologies to all those who know the game; I know there’s a lot I left out, but I’m trying to keep this basic). Guard to half-guard to side control to mount to the back. Of course, there are hundreds of variations and hundreds of ways to get to any of these positions, and there are ways to skip steps and go right from guard to mount, for example. There are many different styles of guard, with names such as “butterfly” and “rubber” and “x-guard.” There are countless positions for the hands and arms, underhooks and overhooks, and arm drags and so forth. It is this immense variety that gives jiu-jitsu and ground fighting artistic depth. It’s a dialogue between minds, bodies meshed and communicating in a subtle, endless game—a game fueled by a desperate life-and-death urgency, where joints get smashed and fighters choked unconscious.
     
    The ground game jiu-jitsu still seems more mysterious to me than stand-up fighting (punching and kicking, range and footwork). I understand what I don’t understand in stand-up fighting, whereas watching high-level jiu-jitsu I often don’t even know what questions to ask. I’m getting better, although my training is still interrupted by my ribs popping out with mind-numbing regularity (a recurring injury).
    When I first started studying jiu-jitsu, the first thought in my mind was, wow this is just like chess . And it is, in a sense, because chess also has a strong positional component. In chess, you understand the board, take a strong position, and good things happen. You don’t necessarily see the way you’re going to win, but with a dominant position you start to force your opponent to do things like take bad positions until you capture material. In the beginning you do good things, such as occupying the center of the board, and you position your pieces where they have open files to attack. You develop with tempo, you improve your position and force him to retreat, which builds in a time advantage for you that will show up later, in chances to take pieces.
    Jiu-jitsu (and fighting in general) has this element; you may not be sure what submission you’ll get, but getting into a dominant position is a major step toward winning. And in MMA position is its own reward, because the better your position, the more effectively you can punch and elbow and soften up your opponent.
    What I’ve realized since then is that jiu-jitsu differs from chess in major ways. There is a huge physical component, where strength and speed and conditioning matter, but muscle memory (not a part of chess) plays a titanic role. Moving through positions happens too fast to think. Your body has to have learned what to do, how to protect your arms, how to shift weight to avoid a sweep. In order to be good, you need to log in