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The 5 Core Skills That Drive Every Position

Survive First. Then Win.

In jiujitsu, you’re never truly in a neutral position. You’re either solving problems or you’re creating them. The way we coach at Poolesville Self Defense is built around this reality — and it starts with teaching students the 5 Core Skills that exist in every position, on both offense and defense.

We call them:

1. Survive – When your opponent is trying to submit you, survival is your first job. It’s not passive — it’s technical. You must protect what matters most, stay calm, and weather the storm.
2. Defend – When you’re being held down or controlled but not under direct threat of submission, the job is to defend. Break grips, deny control, and set up the space you’ll need to move.
3. Escape – Once the opportunity appears, you escape. This is about reclaiming control, restoring structure, and transitioning back to offense.
4. Control – When you’re in a dominant position, your job is to hold it. Control is what sets up your submissions and shuts down your opponent’s reactions.
5. Submit – This is the end goal — to finish. But you can’t submit someone consistently unless you’ve done the other four well.

These skills don’t live in isolation. They connect. And when you learn to read a position through these five lenses, you stop reacting randomly and start acting intentionally.

This framework sits squarely inside the A-Game Maturity Model:

• At Stage 1 (Effectiveness), your goal is to get each skill to work under pressure — even if it’s messy.
• At Stage 2 (Efficiency), you start doing the same thing with less effort and more control.
• Eventually, when all five skills show up consistently across positions, you’re Proficient.
• And when you build reliable systems for using these skills at will, your game becomes Optimized — and then A-Game.

If you’re a student or a parent reading this: ask yourself — which skill is your child strongest in right now? Which needs sharpening? That awareness is where the journey begins.

What Are They Trying to Do to You?

 Start by Identifying the Threat

The biggest difference between beginners and more advanced students isn’t how many moves they know — it’s how quickly they can recognize the threat in a situation.

Every position carries with it a set of problems to solve. But not every problem is the same. The better you get, the better you are at diagnosing what’s happening in real time and choosing the right tool for the job.

Here’s how we train students to think:

• If they’re attacking your neck or limbs → Survive
• If they’re locking you down or holding top position → Defend
• If you’re stuck in a bad spot → Escape
• If you’re on top or in control → Control
• If you’ve isolated a limb or caught a mistake → Submit

But here’s where things get interesting — threats don’t exist in a vacuum. They depend on:

• Who’s applying them (attributes, skill, intensity)
• What physics are available (leverage, angles, friction)
• Your ability to respond in time

The lesson: it’s not about memorizing techniques. It’s about developing awareness and decision-making under pressure.

This ties directly into the A-Game Effectiveness Algorithm:

• Early on, most students rely on strength, size, and speed — their attributes.
• As experience builds, they start identifying what the threat is — and how to solve it using leverage and timing instead of effort.
• When a student finally sees a threat clearly and beats it using clean mechanics? That’s not just a win — that’s belief being built.

This is the difference between surviving and progressing.