Mechanical tightness vs muscular tightness: One of the most basic demands of good jiu jitsu technique – particularly submission holds – is the demand for TIGHTNESS. Your body must be tightly woven into your opponent's body to prevent slippage and escape. Unfortunately most beginners misunderstand this need for tightness as MUSCULAR tightness and quickly exhaust themselves locking in to their opponents and squeezing for all they are worth until inevitably they fade and fail. The key to tightness is not to squeeze your opponent, but to FIT THE SHAPE AND geometry OF YOUR BODY INTO THAT OF YOUR OPPONENT and then exert your tension into YOUR OWN BODY in order to hold that geometric shape around your opponent, rather than try to squeeze him into the shape you want with your strength. The only way to make your body conform to the shape of your opponent is to RELAX until you have the desired positioning and THEN lock YOURSELF tight – not him. Thus you must learn to put yourself through CYCLES OF relaxation AND TENSION until you get what you want. Try to break the natural, but harmful, beginners habit of maximum tension from start to finish that is both exhausting and unlikely to work. Begin your experiments with these cycles of relaxation and tension in drilling moves and then try to extend them into live sparring where their application is more difficult. Learning to manage these cycles of tension and relaxation is a huge step in the jiu jitsu journey
