The words you'll hear on the mat: a beginner's glossary

For my first few classes I nodded along to sentences I did not understand. This is the small dictionary I needed. Plain words, no purism.

Positions

Guard. You are on your back or seated, using your legs between you and the other person. Sounds bad, is actually a fighting position with attacks. Comes in flavors: closed, open, half.

Mount. Sitting on someone's torso. If you are on top, good. If you are under it, you are working on the worst real estate in the sport.

Side control. Chest-to-chest at a right angle, legs free. Heavy.

Back control. Behind someone with your legs hooked in. The best position in jiu-jitsu. Their best position when it happens to you is called learning.

Things people do

Sweep. From guard, flipping the person on top so you end up on top.

Pass. Getting around someone's legs (their guard) to a dominant position.

Submission. A choke or joint lock that ends the round when the other person taps. Subs, for short.

Tap. Patting your partner or the mat (twice, clearly) to say stop, you got me. Verbal "tap" counts. It resets the round, not your dignity.

Roll. Sparring. Free practice against resistance, usually five or six minute rounds.

Drill. Repeating a technique on a cooperative partner. Most of class.

Shrimp. The hip-escape movement from the warm-up. You move along the mat like a shrimp. It is the most used movement in the art and the reason warm-ups exist.

Japanese words you'll meet

Kuzushi (崩し). Breaking balance before a technique. The reason your sweeps fail.

Oss / osu. An all-purpose grunt of acknowledgment borrowed from Japanese martial culture. Means yes, hello, understood, respect, depending on context. Use sparingly until you absorb your gym's dialect.

Gi. From 道着 (dōgi), the cotton jacket-and-pants uniform. No-gi is the same art without it.

The sentence that unlocked class for me

"Pass their guard, hold a position, then look for a submission." That is the top player's whole job description. From the bottom: "Don't let them pass, sweep or stand up, or catch a submission on the way." Every class makes more sense once those two sentences exist in your head.