What Should You Actually Learn as a BJJ White Belt?A Practical Roadmap for Your First Months of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
What Should You Actually Learn as a BJJ White Belt?
A Practical Roadmap for Your First Months of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Starting Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is exciting, confusing, humbling and, occasionally, downright terrifying.
You walk into your first few classes and it can seem as though everyone around you knows exactly what they are doing. People are talking about frames, underhooks, half guard, hip escapes, triangles, inversions and a dozen other things you've never heard of. Then somebody demonstrates a technique involving approximately seventeen different movements, and five minutes later you're expected to reproduce it on another human being.
Don't worry. This is completely normal.
The good news is that you don't actually need to know very much when you start BJJ. In fact, trying to learn everything is probably one of the quickest ways to make the whole thing seem impossibly complicated.
The real challenge for a white belt isn't learning hundreds of techniques. It is learning the
right things in the right order.
So what should a white belt actually learn?
The answer is much simpler than you might think.
First, Forget About Building a Huge Arsenal of Techniques
One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is becoming obsessed with collecting techniques.
You see somebody demonstrate a really cool sweep in class, so you try to remember it. Then you watch a YouTube video and learn another one. Then somebody shows you a different way to escape side control. A few weeks later you have accumulated dozens of techniques but can't reliably execute any of them when somebody is actually trying to stop you.
This is completely understandable. BJJ has an almost infinite supply of interesting techniques, and the internet has made it possible to watch practically all of them.
But your first job as a white belt isn't to become a walking BJJ encyclopaedia. It is to develop a small set of reliable skills that work under pressure.
Think of it as building a house. You don't start by choosing the curtains. You start with the foundations.
And those foundations are movement, positional awareness, escapes, control and a small number of high-percentage attacks.
1. Learn How to Move Your Body
This sounds almost ridiculously basic, but good movement is one of the biggest differences between a new white belt and someone who has been training for a while.
You need to become comfortable moving your hips, turning your body, creating space, changing your base and getting yourself from one position to another without panicking.
This is why movements such as shrimping, bridging, technical stand-ups, breakfalls and shoulder rolls are so important. They aren't glamorous, but they are the building blocks upon which much of your BJJ will eventually sit.
The Gentle Art Guide's beginner drilling guide covers several of these movements, including shrimping, bridging, technical stand-ups, breakfalls and guard-retention movements.
Don't underestimate them simply because they are basic.
You will still be using these movements years from now.
2. Understand the Major Positions
Before worrying too much about individual techniques, learn to recognise where you actually are.
BJJ becomes considerably less confusing when you understand the basic positional hierarchy.
You should become comfortable recognising:
Standing
Closed guard
Open guard
Half guard
Side control
Mount
Back control
Turtle
You don't need to master every variation of these positions. At first, you simply need to understand what each position is trying to achieve.
Who is in control?
Who is in danger?
Where should your hips be?
What should you be protecting?
What is your opponent trying to do?
And, most importantly, what would be a better position to get to?
Once you start seeing BJJ as a continuous battle for positional advantage rather than a collection of unrelated techniques, the whole art starts to make considerably more sense.
3. Learn to Survive Before You Learn to Win
This is probably the most important lesson I would give to a new white belt.
Your first objective during live rolling shouldn't be to submit everybody.
It shouldn't even necessarily be to "win".
Your first objective is to stop losing.
That sounds obvious, but it changes the way you approach training.
When somebody gets mount, don't immediately panic and throw every movement you know at them. When somebody gets side control, don't waste all your energy desperately trying to bench-press them off you. When somebody takes your back, don't just explode randomly.
Instead, start asking yourself what position you're in, what your opponent is trying to achieve and what you need to prevent.
This is the beginning of positional awareness.
And once you develop it, something remarkable happens: BJJ becomes slower.
It isn't actually getting slower, of course. You're simply becoming better at understanding what is happening.
4. Learn Your Essential Escapes
If there is one area where I would encourage a white belt to spend more time than they probably want to, it is escaping bad positions.
You are going to spend a lot of time underneath people during your first year.
That's just how it works.
You're going to get mounted. You're going to get stuck under side control. Someone is going to take your back. You'll probably spend quite a lot of time wondering how a person who weighs considerably less than you has somehow made you completely incapable of moving.
This is where your escapes become enormously important.
You should gradually develop reliable escapes from:
Mount: Learn the bridge-and-roll escape and elbow-knee escape.
Side control: Learn how to frame, create space, recover your guard and move your hips.
Back control: Learn how to protect your neck, fight the hands and escape to a safer position.
Bottom half guard: Learn how to establish frames, protect your head and work towards recovering guard or getting to a better position.
You don't need twenty different escapes from each position.
Start with one or two that you understand really well.
Then practise them until they become reactions rather than intellectual exercises.
5. Learn How to Frame
If I could make one concept compulsory for every BJJ white belt, it might be this one.
Frames.
A frame is essentially using part of your body to create or maintain space between you and your opponent.
Your forearm against their hip.
Your knee against their body.
Your elbow protecting your ribs.
Your shin creating distance.
Frames allow you to use your skeletal structure rather than simply relying on muscular strength.
This is particularly important when your opponent is bigger or stronger than you.
A beginner often responds to pressure by pushing harder. Unfortunately, that tends to result in the beginner getting tired while the other person continues applying pressure.
Good framing changes the equation.
You aren't trying to bench-press your opponent. You're trying to create enough space to move your hips, recover your guard or establish a better position.
This concept will follow you throughout your entire BJJ journey.
6. Learn Guard Retention
Eventually, you're going to have to stop somebody from passing your guard.
Guard retention is the collection of skills that allows you to maintain a useful defensive position while your opponent is trying to get around your legs.
For a beginner, don't worry about becoming a guard-retention wizard.
Start with the basics.
Keep your knees and elbows connected where appropriate. Use your feet and shins to create distance. Move your hips. Don't allow your opponent to simply walk around you. Learn to recover your legs when they start getting past them.
The important thing is to understand that guard isn't simply a position you sit in while waiting to attack.
It is an active defensive system.
Good guard retention means your opponent has to work to get past your legs.
And that gives you time to attack, sweep, stand up or recover a better position.
7. Develop One or Two Guards
Once you've got a basic understanding of guard retention, you can start developing an actual offensive guard.
But please don't try to learn every guard you've ever heard of.
You don't need closed guard, butterfly guard, De La Riva, spider guard, lasso guard, X guard, single-leg X, seated guard and every modern variation before you've earned your first stripe.
Pick one or two positions that make sense for your body and your style.
For many beginners, closed guard is an excellent place to start because you can control your opponent and slow the game down.
Half guard can also be extremely useful because it gives you a relatively simple way of controlling one of your opponent's legs while working towards sweeps and positional improvements.
The important thing is to start developing a small game rather than constantly starting from scratch.
You want to reach the point where, when somebody puts you in a particular position, you have a reasonable idea of what you're trying to do.
8. Learn a Few Reliable Sweeps
Eventually, surviving isn't enough.
You need to learn how to turn a bad or neutral position into an advantageous one.
That's where sweeps come in.
A sweep allows the bottom player to reverse the position and end up on top.
Again, you don't need twenty of them.
Learn two or three basic sweeps and learn them properly.
The hip-bump sweep from closed guard is a classic example. The scissor sweep is another. Depending on your gym and the type of guard you're developing, you may also learn sweeps from half guard, butterfly guard or other positions.
The specific techniques matter less than understanding the principles behind them.
You are generally trying to disrupt your opponent's base, control their movement and use your body position and leverage to reverse the situation.
Once you start successfully sweeping people during live rolls, BJJ becomes a lot more fun.
9. Learn One or Two Reliable Submissions
Yes, you should learn submissions.
But don't make the mistake of thinking that your progress as a white belt should be measured by how many submissions you can perform.
Learn a small number and understand where they come from.
A rear naked choke from back control is an obvious example. The armbar is another fundamental submission that teaches valuable concepts about control and positioning.
You will probably also learn things like the Americana, triangle and kimura depending on your gym's curriculum.
That's fine.
But focus on understanding how you get into the position rather than simply memorising the final movement.
The submission is usually the end of the story.
The really valuable part is learning how to control somebody well enough that the submission becomes available.
10. Learn How to Pass Guard
If you spend all your time learning what to do from the bottom, you're only learning half the game.
At some point, you need to learn how to get past somebody else's guard.
As a beginner, keep this simple.
Learn how to maintain good posture, control your opponent's legs, establish a stable base and move around their guard without immediately losing your balance.
You will probably encounter techniques such as the knee cut, toreando, body-lock pass and various forms of standing passing.
You don't need all of them.
Choose one or two that your coach teaches and spend time understanding them.
Your goal isn't to perform the world's most beautiful guard pass.
Your goal is to reliably get from guard to a dominant position.
11. Learn to Control Before You Submit
This is one of the biggest mental shifts that happens during the white belt journey.
Early on, you tend to see a submission opportunity and immediately try to grab it.
Later, you begin to realise that the submission is usually much easier if you first establish control.
If you've taken somebody's back, for example, don't immediately fling yourself at a choke while they are still moving freely.
Control the position.
Get your hooks.
Control their upper body.
Control their ability to turn.
Then attack.
The same principle applies to mount, side control and many other positions.
Position before submission.
It's a simple idea, but learning to apply it will make your BJJ considerably more effective.
12. Learn Basic Takedowns and, More Importantly, How to Fall
The ground is where most BJJ training takes place, but the fight doesn't necessarily start there.
You should eventually learn a few basic takedowns and how to enter them safely.
Depending on your academy, you may learn double legs, single legs, body locks, throws or trips.
Don't worry about becoming a wrestling expert as a white belt.
Your first objective should be to become comfortable standing with another person trying to take you down.
And just as important is learning how to fall.
Breakfalls are not particularly exciting, but they are an important safety skill. You will be thrown, swept and occasionally launched in directions you weren't expecting.
Learning how to land properly can help keep you training rather than sitting at home nursing an avoidable injury.
13. Learn to Protect Your Neck
This deserves its own section because a surprising number of beginner problems come from simply not understanding how vulnerable the neck can be.
You don't need to become obsessed with defending every possible choke.
But you should develop some basic habits.
Don't casually give people your back.
Learn to fight the hands when somebody is attacking a rear naked choke.
Keep your chin appropriately protected.
Understand when your opponent has genuinely established a dangerous position.
And, perhaps most importantly, tap when you need to tap.
There is absolutely no prize for allowing a choke to become tighter simply because your ego won't let you admit that you've been caught.
Tap, reset and learn from it.
You can always train again tomorrow.
14. Learn to Relax
This might be the hardest technique on the entire list.
New white belts are usually incredibly tense.
And it's completely understandable.
Somebody is lying on top of you. They're trying to choke you. You can't breathe properly. Your heart rate is through the roof. Your body instinctively screams:
PANIC!
So you tense every muscle you have.
Unfortunately, that makes everything worse.
You become exhausted. Your movements become slower. You stop thinking clearly. Your technique deteriorates and your opponent gets even more control.
Learning to relax under pressure is one of the great benefits of BJJ.
You gradually discover that you can breathe while somebody is on top of you. You learn that you don't need to fight every movement with maximum force. You begin conserving energy and waiting for opportunities.
That isn't being passive.
It is learning to become efficient.
15. Learn How to Roll Properly
There is a huge difference between rolling and trying desperately to beat your training partner.
As a white belt, your ego is going to get tested regularly.
You'll get tapped by people who are smaller than you. You'll get swept by people who started after you. Occasionally, someone will tap you with something you didn't even realise was a submission.
That's part of the deal.
Your job during rolling is to learn.
Try things.
Make mistakes.
Pay attention to what keeps going wrong.
If you're always getting your guard passed in the same way, you've just been given something extremely valuable to work on.
If everyone keeps taking your back, that's not evidence that you're terrible at BJJ. It's evidence that you have found a hole in your game.
Your mistakes are basically free coaching.
Pay attention to them.
16. Start Building a Small BJJ Game
At some point, probably towards the latter part of your white belt journey, things should start to connect.
Instead of thinking about individual techniques, you begin to think in sequences.
Maybe your game starts to look something like this:
Closed guard → hip-bump sweep → mount → Americana
Or:
Half guard → underhook → come up → single leg → top position
Or perhaps:
Guard retention → frame → recover guard → sweep → pass → side control
It doesn't matter what your particular game looks like.
What matters is that you're starting to develop relationships between techniques.
This is where BJJ starts becoming much more interesting.
You aren't simply remembering moves anymore.
You're learning to solve problems.
So What Should a White Belt Actually Know Before Blue Belt?
There is no universal BJJ curriculum, and every academy will have its own expectations. Some gyms will teach certain techniques much earlier or later than others. Your instructor's guidance should therefore take priority over any generic roadmap.
That said, I think a reasonably well-rounded white belt should gradually become comfortable with the following:
Movement
You should be able to shrimp, bridge, technical stand-up, breakfall and move your hips reasonably well.
Positional awareness
You should understand the major positions and know which ones are generally advantageous or dangerous.
Escapes
You should have reliable escapes from mount, side control and back control, rather than simply relying on strength and desperation.
Guard
You should understand basic guard retention and have at least one or two guards you feel reasonably comfortable playing.
Sweeps
You should have a small collection of reliable sweeps that you can actually attempt during live rolling.
Passing
You should understand the basic principles of passing guard and have a couple of passes that suit you.
Control
You should understand how to maintain mount, side control and back control long enough to actually do something from them.
Submissions
You should know several fundamental submissions and, more importantly, understand how to create the positions from which they become available.
Standing
You should have some basic takedown knowledge and be comfortable with the fundamentals of falling safely.
Defence
You should understand how to protect your neck, defend common submissions and recognise when you are genuinely in trouble.
Mental game
Perhaps most importantly, you should be becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable.
That last one is difficult to measure, but it might be the most important skill of all.
What You Probably Don't Need to Learn Yet
This might be the most liberating section for a beginner.
You don't need to know every guard.
You don't need to understand leg locks.
You don't need to know every variation of the berimbolo.
You don't need to memorise 100 submissions.
You don't need to watch eight-hour instructionals every weekend.
You don't need to understand every technical discussion happening on Reddit.
And you definitely don't need to compare your progress with the guy at another academy who apparently got his blue belt after six months.
There will be plenty of time for all of that.
Your job right now is to build a foundation.
The 80/20 Rule of White Belt BJJ
If I had to reduce everything in this article down to one simple idea, it would be this:
Spend most of your time getting really good at a small number of fundamental things.
Learn how to escape.
Learn how to retain guard.
Learn how to sweep.
Learn how to pass.
Learn how to control.
Learn a few submissions.
Learn how to move.
Learn how to relax.
Then repeat.
The temptation is always to add more.
Another technique. Another instructional. Another YouTube channel. Another fancy guard.
But your progress will probably come less from adding techniques and more from improving the ones you already have.
The difference between knowing a technique and being able to use it against somebody who doesn't want you to use it is enormous.
BJJ is the process of closing that gap.
Don't Try to Become a Blue Belt in Your First Month
Perhaps the most important thing I would say to any new white belt is this:
Enjoy being a white belt.
It is easy to become obsessed with the next stripe, the next belt or the next milestone.
But white belt is where you get to make enormous improvements almost every week. Everything is new. Every successful escape feels like a major victory. The first time you sweep somebody deliberately, it feels fantastic. The first time you submit somebody using something you actually planned rather than accidentally stumbled into, you'll probably want to tell everyone about it.
Those moments are brilliant.
Don't rush past them.
Your BJJ journey isn't a race to blue belt. And blue belt isn't the point where you've "finished" learning the fundamentals. As the Gentle Art Guide's own discussion of the white-to-blue journey emphasises, the real objective is developing a functional foundation, positional understanding and a small personal game rather than simply chasing the promotion itself.
The belt will come when it comes.
Your job is simply to keep showing up.
Your White Belt Roadmap
If you want something simple to remember, think of your first stage of BJJ like this:
1. Learn to move.
2. Learn the positions.
3. Learn to survive.
4. Learn to escape.
5. Learn to retain guard.
6. Learn to sweep.
7. Learn to pass.
8. Learn to control.
9. Learn a few submissions.
10. Start connecting everything together.
That's enough.
You don't need to master all of it immediately. In fact, you probably won't.
BJJ is a long game, and the beauty of the art is that the same fundamental movements and concepts you learn as a nervous beginner will continue appearing throughout your journey. The techniques become more sophisticated, your understanding gets deeper and your game becomes more personal, but the foundations remain.
So if you're currently a white belt and feeling completely overwhelmed by everything you think you need to learn, take a breath.
You don't need to know everything.
You just need to get a little better at the fundamentals, one class at a time.
And then, eventually, you'll look back and realise that somewhere along the way, the person who used to panic underneath side control has quietly become someone who knows exactly what to do.
That's the journey.
And it's one of the best things about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Keep training. Keep learning. Keep tapping. And enjoy the ride. OSS.
