What if the submission and position are really the same thing?

I was taught years ago that you should always get position first and then work on the submission. And while I think I understood and somewhat understand the philosophy behind that, I always had difficulty making it work. It seemed like it became a battle to hold mount or sidemount while not daring to go for a submission for fear of losing position and having to “start over again”.

Well a while back I began to think that maybe the opposite was true. Maybe if you went for the submission then that could lead to the position. Maybe going for the Americana in half guard would make the pass that much easier.

But lately I’m wondering if they’re both right and really maybe the same thing. I was thinking about this today when I was working a triangle against a really talented student. My goal was to hold the figure four with my legs while slowly increasing the pressure and limiting his options for moving.

Any time he tried to stack I walked back on my shoulders. When he tried to pass I kept his outside elbow up. So I’m thinking that this philosophy doesn’t just apply to submissions, at least not how I’ve been looking at things lately.

I’ve been working on my sitting guard quite a bit these days. Through leg position, head placement and just the overall concept of structure I’m trying to put my body in a strong and versatile position. What I’m noticing is that by doing this I’m limiting the directions they can comfortably move.

Knowing this I can start to feel where they’re vulnerable as they’re moving in those now limited directions. The movement sets up new opportunities for attack. And in my mind, that’s really what a submission is. It controls the opponent and limits his mobility and more importantly, his options. And as these options become more and more dangerous (i.e. a chain of submissions) eventually the tap is the inevitable outcome.

I think that if I can find ways to apply this to almost every position where I limit the opponents’ movement options and then begin my attacks, somewhat knowing which ways he can and will go, then it simply becomes a matter of figuring out how to set up this structure concept to begin with.

So this then becomes both the goal of the position and the submission and in many ways the two are interchangeable.

Now it could be that I’m just truly beginning to understand what is meant by position first, but to me if the idea is to continually limit the opponent’s options, this is a more amorphous idea that can and should be constantly adjusted. The idea of “holding position” to me feels like a fear inducing idea where if you “lose position” then you’ve backtracked.

For me that just feels too linear and ultimately limited. I need to focus on steps to take rather than things to avoid.

So I’m excited to see whether this thought process can be fully applied. As I wrote earlier, I think my side mount could be a great position to try this out with as my attacks are pretty non-existent there so I can build from the ground up.

Offhand I’m thinking that chin control and baiting them into pushing their arm across their centerline might be a good start. I look forward to experimenting with this and having my training partners’ and instructor’s input as well.