BJJ Advices: A Beginner’s Reality Check

Why some of the tips you hear on day one won’t make sense for years

Starting Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is an overwhelming experience. You step onto the mat with no real idea what to expect, only to be bombarded with advice that, while true, often feels impossible to apply. “Just relax.” “Find your balance.” “Position before submission.” These are phrases I heard over and over as a beginner, and yet, none of them made sense at the time.

It’s not that this advice is wrong — far from it. These are the core principles of BJJ. The problem is that they’re often too abstract for someone just starting. It took me years of practice to truly understand what these ideas meant, let alone how to apply them. Looking back, I can see why these lessons were so difficult to grasp and what might have helped me make sense of them earlier.

If you’re starting your BJJ journey, here are three common pieces of advice you’ll hear — and what they really mean.

The Struggle to Relax: Why It’s Okay to Be Stiff as a Beginner

When I first started training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, one piece of advice I kept hearing repeatedly was, “You need to relax.” On the surface, it sounded like good advice, but to me, it was completely alien. Relax?

How could I possibly relax when someone was trying to pin me down, choke me, or bend my arm in ways it wasn’t meant to go?

In my mind, relaxation was the opposite of fighting. It felt like being wobbly, lazy, or defenseless — like giving up before the fight even started.

At the time, I didn’t understand the deeper concepts of leverage, balance, or energy conservation. Sure, I heard about them in theory, but putting them into practice was a completely different story. Back then, fighting meant being stiff, hard, and constantly pushing forward. I thought if I relaxed, I wouldn’t be able to protect myself, let alone win.

So, instead, I gripped tight, squeezed hard, and held on like my life depended on it. I thought that was the best strategy, but in hindsight, I see how much energy I wasted just trying to feel safe.

What I’ve learned after years of training is that relaxation isn’t something you can decide to do as a beginner. It’s not a switch you flip — it comes naturally with practice, experience, and understanding. And honestly, it’s completely fine to be stiff and anxious in the beginning. That’s part of the process. It’s like learning how to swim. When thrown into the water for the first time, you don’t glide smoothly like an Olympic swimmer. You thrash, kick, and flail, because that’s how your body learns what works and what doesn’t. It’s messy, but it’s necessary.

So, if you’re new to BJJ and you feel like every muscle in your body is tense, that’s okay. Relaxation isn’t where you start — it’s where you get to after you’ve built the knowledge and confidence to trust your body.

Keep Your Balance: Trying to See the Invisible Skill of BJJ

The next piece of advice I struggled with was, “Balance yourself.” It sounded simple — almost obvious. But just like “relax,” the idea of balance turned out to be far more complex than I initially thought. At the time, I assumed balance meant staying upright or stable, but what I didn’t realize was how deeply tied it is to feeling — something that can’t be fully explained or demonstrated. Balance in grappling isn’t about replicating what you see; it’s about sensing weight, pressure, and movement in a way that only develops with practice.

This was a hard lesson to learn, especially because so much of BJJ is subtle. You can watch someone demonstrate a technique, or even study hours of competition footage, but the truth is, you can’t fully grasp balance until you feel it for yourself. The difference between being balanced and unbalanced is so small — so invisible — that it’s impossible to understand just by watching. You have to experience it through countless micro-adjustments on the mat.

To put this in perspective, think about other martial arts. In judo, people marvel at the throws, but those throws don’t just happen. They’re built on precise footwork, framing, and positioning to create kuzushi — the unbalancing of the opponent — while maintaining your own balance. In boxing, the punches and knockouts are what grab attention, but they’re only possible because of the fighter’s ability to move their feet, control their position, and angle themselves strategically in the ring.

In BJJ, balance is even harder to detect. It happens in small, almost imperceptible shifts during scrambles or transitions. For example, it took me years to understand that balance isn’t just about keeping myself stable — it’s also about using my opponent’s instability to my advantage. It’s about framing, weight distribution, and finding the points of leverage that let you stay controlled while creating openings.

The hardest part for me, and I think for many beginners, was letting go of the idea that balance is something you can simply “get.” Like relaxation, it’s a skill that develops with time and repetition. It’s not about trying to replicate a movement you’ve seen; it’s about learning to feel your way into the right positions. That’s the invisible side of BJJ — the part that makes it both frustrating and rewarding.

Position Before Submission: Why It’s Asking Too Much

One of the major pieces of advice in BJJ is “Position before submission.” It’s one of those sayings that gets repeated so often that it almost feels like a rule of the sport. And while it’s absolutely true, looking back now, I realize it’s not a recommendation that’s easy to follow as a beginner. In fact, it might be asking too much.

Here’s why: when you’re just starting out, you’re still learning the basics of how to control yourself. You don’t know how to relax under pressure, your balance is shaky, and every roll feels like chaos. Now imagine being told that you’re supposed to not only manage all of that, but also control another person before even thinking about a submission. It’s like being asked to juggle while riding a bike you just learned to balance on.

So, what’s a better approach for beginners? If I could go back and give myself one piece of advice, it would be this: pick a couple of submissions that feel natural to you and stick with them. Don’t worry about mastering a dozen different techniques. Choose one or two that make sense for your body and focus on trying them during sparring sessions.

For me, this shift was a game-changer. Rolling mimics a real fight, where you’re forced to adapt and find opportunities in the moment. By focusing on the same submissions over and over during sparring, I started to see how they worked in different situations and against different types of opponents. Even when I didn’t finish the submission, I was learning something — adjusting my setups, timing, or grip with each attempt.

How Can You Be Dangerous Without Hurting Anyone?

The real challenge of BJJ as a beginner is learning how to be dangerous without hurting anyone — including yourself. It’s a process of discovery: how to relax without becoming passive, how to balance without freezing, and how to attack without overcommitting. These lessons take years to internalize. Find your tension, find your imbalance, find your mistakes — because in BJJ, that’s exactly where the learning begins.