BJJ Glossary: Terms & Lingo Explained

Every white belt has sat through a class nodding along to words like "berimbolo" and "smash pass" with no idea what just happened. Here's what they actually mean.

Belts & progression

Belt: BJJ's rank system: white, blue, purple, brown, black, roughly in that order for adults. Unlike most martial arts, promotions are slow and earned mostly through mat time and live rolling, not testing.
Stripe: A small mark of tape added to your belt between full promotions, usually 0–4 per belt. A stripe is your coach saying "you've leveled up" without a full new belt yet.
Roll / Rolling: Live, sparring-style grappling against a partner. About as close as it gets to actually playing the game instead of drilling it in isolation.

Positions

Guard: You're on your back with your legs between you and your opponent, controlling distance and setting up attacks. Considered a strong, not weak, position in BJJ.
Closed Guard: Guard with your ankles locked behind your opponent's back, holding them close.
Open Guard: Any guard variant where your legs aren't locked: butterfly, De La Riva, spider, X-guard, and a few others.
Mount: You're sitting on top of your opponent's torso, facing them. Widely considered one of the most dominant positions in the sport.
Side Control: You're pinning your opponent perpendicular to their body from the side, chest-to-chest.
Knee on Belly: A transitional pin where one knee rests on the opponent's stomach, freeing your other leg to move and off-balance them.
North-South: A pin with your chest over your opponent's chest, but facing their legs instead of their head, with your bodies pointing in opposite directions.
Half Guard: You control one of your opponent's legs between both of yours instead of both legs. A common transitional position, not usually somewhere you camp out.
Turtle: Curled up on hands and knees defensively, usually a position you're escaping from rather than attacking with.
Back Control / Back Take: You're behind your opponent with hooks or a body triangle in, both arms free to attack the neck. Generally the highest-value position for finishing a choke.

Submissions

Submission: A joint lock or choke applied until your opponent taps (submits) rather than risk injury.
Armbar: A joint lock that hyperextends the elbow, usually applied with your legs across your opponent's torso and arm.
Triangle Choke: A choke formed by locking your legs around your opponent's neck and one arm in a figure-four shape.
Kimura: A shoulder lock that rotates the arm behind the back, named after Masahiko Kimura, who famously used it to win a legendary judo match.
Americana: A shoulder lock similar to the Kimura but rotating the arm the opposite direction, usually from mount or side control.
Rear Naked Choke (RNC): A blood choke applied from back control, considered one of the highest-percentage finishes in the sport.
Guillotine: A front headlock choke applied while facing your opponent, often used against a takedown attempt.
Ezekiel Choke: A choke using the sleeve of the gi (or a bare forearm in no-gi) wrapped across the opponent's neck, often from mount.
Omoplata: A shoulder lock applied with the legs instead of the arms, usually from guard.
Ankle Lock / Kneebar: Leg-based joint locks targeting the ankle or knee, part of the broader "leglocks" family that's grown hugely in modern competition.
Arm Triangle: A choke that traps one of the opponent's arms against their own neck using your own arm and body weight, not your legs.

Actions & transitions

Sweep: Reversing position from the bottom (e.g., from guard) to end up on top.
Pass / Guard Pass: Getting around your opponent's legs to establish a pinning position like side control or mount.
Escape: Getting out of a bad position (like mount or side control) back to a neutral or advantageous one.
Takedown: Bringing a standing opponent to the ground under control, borrowed largely from wrestling and judo.
Shrimping / Hip Escape: A fundamental hip-movement drill used to create space and escape pins. One of the first things every white belt learns, and one of the last things they ever stop needing.
Bridging (Upa): Driving your hips upward off the mat to off-balance an opponent, commonly used to escape mount.
Framing: Using your bones (forearms, shins) as rigid barriers to create space against an opponent's pressure.
Tap / Tap Out: Physically tapping your opponent, yourself, or the mat to signal submission before a lock or choke causes injury. Tapping early and often is normal and expected, not something to be embarrassed about.

Culture & etiquette

Gi: The traditional woven jacket-and-pants uniform, offering grips that no-gi doesn't have.
No-Gi: Training in a rash guard and shorts or spats instead of a gi. Generally faster-paced, with no fabric to grip.
Drilling: Practicing a technique repeatedly with a cooperative partner to build muscle memory, as opposed to live rolling.
Open Mat: Unstructured gym time for free rolling, outside of a formal class.
Smash Pass: A heavy, pressure-based guard pass that flattens the opponent out rather than moving quickly around their legs.
Berimbolo: A modern, inversion-heavy technique for sweeping to the back from De La Riva guard. A favorite highlight-reel move, and one that intimidates plenty of white belts watching from the sideline.
Oss / Osu: A borrowed martial-arts greeting/acknowledgment some gyms use; usage varies a lot by school and is a bit of a debated topic in the BJJ community.

Learn the words, then log the wins

Once you know what your instructor is actually saying, the next step is tracking which of those moves you're landing. BJJ Submissions Counter logs every submission you finish, by belt level, right from your phone. It's free, there's no account to make, and it works offline.

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