Your strength is in your stance: It's good to be strong. Strength helps almost every aspect of combat sports. Understand however, that your greatest source of strength in a match is not from your muscles but from your stance. Show me the strongest man in the room and make him perform in a poor stance and I'll show you a man who gets manhandled by smaller, weaker opponents who hold a strong stance. In addition that strong man will quickly get exhausted as he compensates for failures in stance with muscular strength. If you want to increase your mat strength, your first step is to improve your stance. Understand that for all the major positions of Jiu jitsu there is an appropriate stance. If you're just beginning Jiu jitsu and you have no clue what constitutes a good stance in a given position I suggest you watch footage of great champions in competition or even in training and watch not for the flashy elements, or who wins and who loses, as most people do, but rather, focus on observing their STANCE and try to replicate what you see. A well set stance maintained over the course of a match and adapting appropriately to every rapid change of position will give you greater improvements in mat strength and endurance than any attempt to add strength to your muscles alone
