Lazy Jiu-jitsu and the Art of the Unfair Fight

A quiet night teaching the art of sitting on people.

Jiu-jitsu is commonly translated as "the gentle art". Jiu is most literally translated as supple, but often as gentle, or yielding (as in: the supple art, or the gentle art, or the art of yielding). There is another interpretation of the word Jiu that I heard early in my training and that has had a profound influence on my understanding of martial arts: lazy.

I was taking a community college Judo course and the instructor proclaimed: "They call Judo the gentle way. It's not gentle. It's hard on the person you're throwing, but if you do it just right, it's very energy efficient. Judo isn't gentle, it's lazy." At least I think that's what he said. It's been over a decade since that day, but the comment made an impression.

I would argue that the concept of an art being a lazy art is more expansive than the idea of an art that is merely supple.

Suppleness in martial arts is traditionally explained in this way: two people grasp each other, each attempting to off-balance the other by pushing or pulling. If both people push against each other, the bigger, stronger person will win. Alternatively, the weaker person could pull their opponent in the direction of the push, redirecting rather than resisting their opponent's force. In this way the weaker person can off-balance the stronger person, and victory will tend to go, not to the biggest and strongest competitor, but to the one who can best feel the flow of momentum and adjust their pressure to manipulate it...at least in theory. Being big and strong still helps.

In contrast, I would describe the principle of laziness this way. When people compete to off-balance each other by pushing or pulling, clever lazy people position themselves at such an angle relative to their opponents that they can comfortably move and apply force, while it is awkward for their opponents to do the same against them. Lazy people adopt a posture that is balanced and mechanically well suited to the generation and manipulation of force. They grasp their opponents in such a way as to undermine the opponents' posture and by extension their balance and strength. From this inequitable position, the game of pushes and pulls is played, with the posturally dominant individuals better equipped to make use of supple strategies if necessary. In other words, the idea of laziness incorporates suppleness, but adds the notions of position and posture.

In saying this, I'm not attempting to create a straw-man of martial artists who speak only of suppleness while wholly neglecting the importance of position and posture. I just want to emphasize the importance of those principles in my understanding of the martial arts. It's the lens through which I see things when I train or coach. I tend to think of position/posture first and build momentum on that foundation. I'm constantly looking for positions that give me an unfair mechanical advantage.

Such a mindset makes a lot of sense for Jiu-jitsu. Fighting on the ground, more so than wrestling on the feet and much more so than standing striking arts, involves asymmetrical positions in which one person has a clear mechanical advantage for an extended period of time. In Jiu-jitsu there's the saying "position before submission."  In other words: build your postural advantage before worrying about your attack. I had a coach who would talk about "posture and then pressure."  Lazy is my way of remembering and expressing those strategic principles.

I tell my students: "Jiu-jitsu is the art of controlling posture and momentum...and if you get really good at it, you can win a fight by being lazy." Fighting by resisting strength with strength from a neutral posture is exhausting. It is more complicated, but far less tiring to build superior posture, surf the momentum of the fight, find a dominant position, and use that advantage to win.

Going along with that idea, another thing I tell my students is that it's their job in any altercation, be it Jiu-jitsu, MMA, or self-defense, to: "get to the unfair fight."

I have a friend who says his family motto is: "Fair Fights are for Suckers." As a favor, my wife translated that into Latin for him: "Pugnae Justae Stultis Sunt." It's a sentiment I tend to agree with.

Combat sports, for example, go to great lengths to be fair. Competitors are matched up by skill, weight, age, and sex. They start from a neutral position. It's a smart fighter's job to move from that to the unfair fight.

Standing toe to toe with someone and trading punches is a fair fight. Sitting on someone's chest with their elbows pinned up around their ears is an unfair fight. The fair fight is dangerous to both parties. The unfair fight is far safer for the person who's winning. Those are dramatic examples. Often making a fight unfair is a subtle thing: maintaining a certain angle relative to an opponent, controlling a certain line of attack, or exerting a little control over the movement of an opponent's head and neck. It's another way of saying: build your posture up and break your opponent's down. It's safer and easier to fight when your opposition is working from a position of (another phrase I really like) "posture debt."

So, my advice to anyone fighting, regardless of context, is this: Get to the unfair fight. Make their posture weak. Make your posture strong. Be energy efficient. Be Lazy.