Jiu Jitsu Grappling Styles: Which one do you have?

In the world of Jiu Jitsu, everyone has their own grappling style. This guide will discuss the most common styles, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and which style suits you the most.

BJJ, of course, is a highly dynamic sport. These jiu jitsu grappling styles are not 100% concrete, but they will give you a good rundown of what you can implement to your grappling and what you should look out for.

1. The Guard Player

Guard players are notorious for their bottom game focus. They excel at playing on their back and choosing from a wide arsenal of guards to control and submit their opponents.

Pros:

• Strong defense: Playing guard allows you to defend while setting up sweeps or submissions.
• Submission opportunities: Many guards create openings for submissions (triangles, armbars, omoplatas).
• Control: Good guard players can control opponents even from the bottom.

Cons:

• Top player advantage: In tournaments, being on the bottom sometimes gives the opponent an advantage if they can maintain pressure.
• Energy-intensive: Keeping guard and defending passes can be tiring, especially against pressure-heavy passers.
• Limited offense without sweeps: You may get stuck if you're unable to sweep or submit.


2. Wrestler

Wrestler archetypes are highly regarded in BJJ gyms and competitions. And for good reason, a solid wrestler can neutralize a match very quickly. This makes it one of the most dangerous jiu jitsu grappling styles you can face.

The stand up game of a wrestler is extremely hard to defend, especially for those who have no previous wrestling experience.

The opponent that scores the takedown first in a match has an 80%+ chance of winning. This gives wrestlers a huge advantage. However, there are major set backs to wrestling types.

Pros:

• Strong takedowns: For obvious reasons, wrestlers almost always have very strong takedowns relative to the BJJ community.
• Great scrambling / wrestler senses: On top of strong takedowns, wrestlers also tend to be great scramblers. This is due to the high volume of intense live rounds in wrestling training.
• Above average athleticism: This is not universal, but those who have trained wrestling specifically tend to be more athletic. This does not necessarily mean athletically gifted. This is just a byproduct of wrestling training as it involves a lot of advanced hip movement, which is pivotal for athleticism

Cons:

• Negligence of bottom game: Wrestlers tend to all have a similar achilles heel that they do not focus on ground game enough. So, they are very vulnerable to submissions and sweeps when attacking bottom.
• Gasses out quick: Most times, wrestlers gas out quickly in matches. This is due to the very high pace that most wrestler types impose on opponents.
• Vulnerable to submissions: Wrestlers are good scramblers (most of the time). However, this has it’s cons as well as it leaves them open for submissions.

3. Submission artist

Submission artists are an especially dangerous jiu jitsu grappling style. Not only for their abilities to finish their opponents, but also in their ability to disguise their archetype.

With wrestlers and guard players, you know almost immediately what you’re dealing with. The stance, the wrist control, etc, you can normally tell right away.

With submission artists however, there is no dead giveaway until you are being led into high paced, high volume submissions. By using gambits and purposefully giving up positions, they set their traps just as they want and give you a false sense of security.

And before you know it, you’re being subbed!

Pros:

• Finishing ability: The biggest pro of a submission artist is as advertised, they are very good at finishing matches.
• More team points: Another pro is that in tournaments, you typically get more points for submission wins rather than decision or points wins. This is huge for academies looking to capture team championships in tournament play.

Cons:

• Risky: As a submission artist, you will likely have to use gambits and sacrifices to get to where you want to be. This can be problematic when you have a grappler with strong defense.
• Long time horizon: Another con is that it takes a while to get good at several submissions. Or if you decide to pour all your energy into 1-2 submissions, you become one dimensional.

Want to become a submission artist? Check out our article on the highest finish rate submissions in no-gi!

4. Hybrid athlete

The hybrid athlete is arguably the most dangerous Jiu Jitsu grappling style. They have enough background in wrestling to have a set of strong takedowns. Along with a solid ground game, the hybrid is an archetype typically only beaten by some sort of submission artist.

The hybrid can take you down easier than most, but also has strong enough fundamentals and defense to hold their own on the ground.

However, the hybrid typically has a wide range of knowledge, but not as much depth. So someone with a specialist style can thwart the hybrid by using their depth of knowledge in a certain area of the game.

Pros:

• Versatile Skill Set: A hybrid athlete has proficiency in both takedowns and groundwork, giving them multiple options to control the match, whether standing or on the mat.
• Adaptability: The hybrid can adjust their approach depending on their opponent’s strengths, switching from striking to ground control to maintain an advantage.

Cons:

• Master of none: The hybrid’s broad knowledge often lacks depth in any specific area, making them vulnerable to specialists who can outmaneuver them with advanced skills in certain positions or techniques.
• Increased Mental Load: Balancing multiple disciplines requires hybrid athletes to constantly make decisions about the best approach in the moment, which can lead to errors under pressure.

Conclusion

While this is not meant to put every grappler in a box, it is an interesting idea to look at the general spectrum of jiu jitsu grappling styles. The more you understand the game, the better you will be.

Explore who you want to be as a grappler, and instead of being limited by false beliefs, pursue the archetype you desire and become the best version possible.