BJJ Terms Explained: A Beginner's Glossary of Jiu-Jitsu Vocabulary

Your first month of BJJ involves two languages: the physical one, and the verbal one everyone speaks around you. This glossary covers the second. Skim it now, then come back when someone tells you to "frame before you shrimp out of knee shield."

The absolute essentials

Roll / Rolling — Sparring. Live grappling against a resisting partner. The reason everyone's hooked.

Tap / Tapping — Signaling submission by tapping your partner (or the mat) or saying "tap." Ends the exchange instantly. Tapping is routine, not shameful — we've written about why.

Gi — The uniform: jacket, pants, belt. Also the style of BJJ that uses it. No-gi is grappling in shorts and rashguard — here's how the two differ.

OSS — All-purpose gym exclamation: acknowledgment, respect, enthusiasm. Don't overthink it.

Open mat — Unstructured training time: no lesson, just rolling and drilling. Full explainer here.

Rashguard — The stretchy athletic shirt worn under a gi or for no-gi.

Spazzing — Rolling with wild, uncontrolled explosiveness. The signature white-belt sin — dangerous to partners and to yourself.

Positions

Guard — You're on your bottom/back with your legs between you and your opponent. Uniquely to BJJ, this is an offensive position with sweeps and submissions. Variants you'll hear: closed guard (ankles locked behind their back), open guard, half guard (you've trapped one of their legs), butterfly guard (both your feet hooked inside their thighs).

Passing the guard — Getting around those legs to a dominant position. Half of BJJ is this fight.

Side control — Chest-to-chest, past their legs, perpendicular. Heavy and unpleasant for the bottom person.

Mount — Sitting on their torso, knees on the mat. One of the strongest positions in the sport.

Back control / Back mount — Chest glued to their back, feet hooked inside their thighs ("hooks in"). The best position in BJJ.

Knee on belly — Exactly what it sounds like. A mobile, miserable form of control.

Turtle — Defensive all-fours position, elbows and knees tight.

Scramble — The chaotic transition when neither person has control and both are racing for position.

Submissions

Armbar — Hyperextending the elbow using your hips as a fulcrum.

Kimura / Americana — Shoulder locks using a figure-four grip; kimura rotates the arm down-and-back, americana up-and-back.

Rear naked choke (RNC) — The arm-around-the-neck blood choke from back control. The highest-percentage finish in grappling.

Guillotine — Front headlock choke, often caught when someone shoots in with their head down.

Triangle (choke) — Strangling with your legs by trapping their head and one arm. The reason "posture" gets yelled a lot.

Heel hook / leg locks — Attacks on knees and ankles. Typically restricted for beginners; treat them with respect.

Blood choke vs air choke — Blood chokes (most BJJ chokes) compress the carotids and work in seconds; air chokes compress the windpipe. Both mean tap now.

Movement and mechanics

Shrimping (hip escape) — The fundamental escaping movement: on your side, push off your feet, shoot hips away. You'll do ten thousand of these.

Bridging — Driving hips skyward off your feet and shoulders, the engine of many escapes.

Framing — Using rigid arm structures (not pushing strength) to hold weight off you and create space.

Base — Your stability. "Good base" means hard to sweep.

Posture — Head up, spine aligned inside someone's guard. Losing posture is how triangles happen.

Grips / Grip fighting — The hand battle that precedes everything, especially in the gi.

Sweep — Reversing from guard: bottom becomes top. Scores in competition.

Hooks — Feet used as control tools, especially from back control and butterfly guard.

Drilling — Repeating a technique on a cooperative partner. Positional sparring is live training that starts from a set position and resets.

Gym culture terms

Professor — What many gyms call a black belt instructor. Coach works fine at most American gyms.

Higher belt / lower belt — The rank hierarchy: white, blue, purple, brown, black. Stripes mark progress within each. Full belt system explained here.

Rolling light / flow rolling — Sparring at low intensity, prioritizing movement over winning. A skill worth developing early.

Mat rat — Someone who's always at the gym. A compliment.

Sandbagging — Competing below your real skill level. Not a compliment.

Lineage — The chain of who promoted whom, tracing back generations of black belts. Legitimate instructors can name theirs — one of the key checks in choosing a gym.

Go use it

Vocabulary sticks fastest with context. Take this list to a trial class and half of it will make physical sense within a week. If you don't have a gym yet, find one near you and see what your first class will look like.