The philosophy and art of grip fighting: part 1- introduction

BJJ is a grappling art. You also hear "grip fight! grip fight!" a lot. Yet, it is a criminally neglected subject. Hopefully I can provide insight on the matter.



First off, why do you even get grips? Well, yes, to prepare a technique (e.g. certain techniques tell you to grip there and there, so you grip there and there) is certainly a big reason, but let us actually think about this.

• Gripping for overall control/dominance (i.e. you are just trying to get a handle on them, not necessarily trying to pull off a specific "technique" in mind).
• Gripping the collar can have two meanings- either to destroy spinal alignment (a.k.a. break their posture) or as an anchor to keep yourself attached to the opponent (e.g. guard passes)
• In no-gi, the "collar tie" where you grab their back of the neck (or even head!) serves the posture breaking purpose, and depending on the situation at hand, either stapling the biceps or underhooking the armpit serves the anchoring purpose. 
• Grabbing the opponent's sleeve/wrist such that your hand is above their wrist allows you a considerable degree of hand dominance.
• In the gi, make sure to really remove the slack.
• TWO ARMS DOMINATE ONE ARM. Remember this and abuse this as much as you can.
• Ditto for Kimura control, Russian tie, and double motorcycle grip.
• Gripping for executing a technique. 
• You grab and move a body part to execute a technique. Duh.
• Gripping for defence. 
• Joint locks on the arm often involve isolating the arm in some way. If you hold onto something, you may stall long enough for your opponent to give up. Think about how true this is for defending the key lock, armbar, etc.
• Gripping to establish a clinch/tie-up. 
• You see two athletes locked up with let's say, collar and sleeve grips, yet they are both simply waiting for and observing the other guy. 
• Similarly, in no-gi, you would see both athletes locked up in a collar tie. The athletes both have tie-ups on each other, from which both of them have established threats for a takedown or even a flying submission. The higher stake the match, the more cautious and defensive both athletes would be.
• "Clinches" can be observed in grounded cases as well:
• In gi, you would see the guarder in some kind of DLR/RDLR with the hook popped and holding onto the passer with a pant and collar grip, while the passer, parked in Headquarters, would have a sleeve and collar of the guarder.
• In gi, you would see the guarder playing spider, while the passer grips the pants of the guarder. 
• Against certain DLR variants, most notably DLR-X and worm, you see guard passers actually sitting down on the ground, framing with one hand, while gripping the guarder's collar with the other hand. This is a form of a "clinch" as well.
• That you can interpret certain situations on the ground as "ground clinches" is an important innovative concept. Take note.

Before I proceed, let me introduce some definitions:

• Fighter A has dominance of grips over fighter B if fighter A has the grips s/he wants and fighter B physically does not have the desired grips on fighter A.
• If both fighters have the desired grips on each other, they have neutrality of grips.

In particular, when both athletes are locked up in a standing clinch, they may well struggle further to establish a "better clinch" yet. Thus, we can define pummeling:

• Pummeling is a kind of grip fight for superior grip dominance within a clinch situation.

We shall expand the meaning of pummeling beyond swimming for underhooks in an overhook/underhook situation. In particular, recall that clinches can happen "on the ground" as well. Even when one or both of you have your knees, your bum, or your back on the ground, you may well be engaged in a kind of "pummeling" where you may try to fight for or against the "clinch", even though they are not typically thought of that way:

• Fighting for the underhook in top/bottom half guard, side control, knee cut pass, BJ Penn/side smash pass, etc
• Swimming your arm in trying to negate shoulder or biceps control
• Using the legs to remove the double biceps control in bottom closed guard
• Trading overhooks and underhooks versus a butterfly guarder
• When you are playing sit-up guard and you grab a baseball bat tie or a Russian tie against the passer as you sit up
• When you are dealing with a sit-up guarder and you establish wrist and collar tie against your opponent before flattening their ass out
• When you are playing top closed guard and you completely smother one of the guarder's arm as in a double motorcycle grip 
• When both of you establish reciprocating collar and sleeve grips where one of you is in Headquarters and the other is in some kind of DLR/RDLR with the hook halfway off
• Ditto for kumi kata in Judo
• Ditto for kimura control, gift-wrap hold, etc.

This is not to say that all grip fights are necessary pummeling; simply swatting and blocking the opponent's hand to deny the execution of certain techniques, for example, are not "pummeling" per se, but they are nonetheless grip fighting.

Gripping is what defines grappling, so it stands to reason that takedowns, sweeps, and guard passes have a grip dominance element to them, not to mention various submission and control holds. So many common mistakes and "I am not strong/quick enough" moments can be explained in part by lack of grip dominance (the other parts being timing, distance, etc; very rarely is athleticism the reason). As for how grip dominance comes into play for such cases, stay tuned for the subsequent parts.