Standing position and takedowns

Standing position and takedowns: When jiu jitsu athletes begin studying standing skills they typically say “I need to improve my takedowns.” This is certainly true, but as it stands, rather naive. You will need to learn a lot more than takedowns. In fact, takedowns will be one of the last things you'll be learning. In order to be effective at all with your takedowns, you need a set of supporting skills that make those takedowns possible. If you lack those skills, you can train takedowns all you want and it's very unlikely they'll succeed against a skilled opponent. Everything begins with stance and motion. Then it progresses to contact and grip, and culminates in the ability to off balance an opponent, move him where you want him to move and break his stance. Only when you can reliably perform this on an opponent will you be able to enter into takedowns with a good chance of success. The stance of jiu jitsu is rather different from wrestling and judo. The matches are much longer, so the extreme crouch of wrestling is usually replaced by a more upright stance as deep crouches are fatiguing over a possible 20-40 match. The extreme upright stance of judo is a little too upright in a sport where leg tackles are the main form of takedown, so jiu jitsu typically finds a stance between those two extremes. This early battle for stance is one of the true keys to the standing game. Your goal is always to maintain your stance whilst breaking his. If you can do this first, the takedowns will be a much easier second.