Side Control in Jiu Jitsu: The Position Everyone Ignores

By Professor Itay Leibovich | 3rd-degree black belt, Gracie Jiu Jitsu | October 2026 | ~13 min read

Zero points.

That's what side control scores in a jiu jitsu competition under IBJJF rules (the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation, which runs the major tournaments). Not two, not one. Zero. The referee gives you 3 points for the guard pass that got you there, but for the position itself, for lying on top of your opponent and not letting him move, nobody adds anything.

Now walk into a judo hall. Almost the same position, the same chest on the same chest. Except there, five seconds of holding already scores, and if you pin your opponent like that for 20 seconds, the referee stops the match and declares you the winner. Ippon. You go home.

One position. Two worlds. And in the world of Brazilian jiu jitsu, somehow, it ended up as the middle child whose birthday nobody remembers.

I see this in almost every beginners' sparring round at the academy in Tel Aviv. A new student fights for two minutes of sparring (a training match) to get past his partner's legs, which block his way to the partner's body (that's the guard), finally reaches the side, and in the very first second, before he has even settled, he's already climbing to mount (sitting on the opponent's stomach) or diving for an arm lock. (A composite scene for illustration, but if you train with us, you know it.) Two minutes of work, half a second of patience. And the partner, who was just waiting for that, slides a knee between their bodies and is back in guard.

This post is about the position he skipped. The one with no points and no fans. And in it, if you ask me, a great many fights are decided. It's also my favorite position.

What Is Side Control

Side control is a position where your opponent is flat on his back, you've already passed his legs, and your chest lies across his chest, perpendicular, from the side. Your body and his form roughly a plus sign. His legs are no longer between you, so they can't block you or push you away. All he has left is his arms, his hips, and a lot less air than he had a moment ago.

In Brazil this position has a name that says it all: "cem quilos", a hundred kilos. Because that's how it feels from underneath when the person on top knows what he's doing. Even if he weighs sixty.

In the positional hierarchy of jiu jitsu, side control sits below mount, back control and knee on belly, and above the guard. I wrote about that hierarchy at length in the post on Position Before Submission. In the previous posts in this series we went up floor by floor: first the guard, and why you're dangerous on your back, then the mount, how to get there and how to keep it. Side control is the middle floor. Something like the lobby: not the fanciest floor in the building, but every elevator leaves from it.

Zero Points, a Win in Judo: Why Side Control Gets No Respect

There's a simple explanation. In competitive Brazilian jiu jitsu, side control is a transit station. You pass the guard, hold for three seconds so the points count, and move on: to mount (4 points), to knee on belly (2), to the back (4). Whoever stays in side control earns nothing on the scoreboard. So people don't stay.

In judo it's the other way around. There, side control and its relatives belong to a whole category called osaekomi waza, pinning techniques. Yoko shiho gatame (a side pin with control of the shoulders and hips) and kesa gatame (the hold where you sit tight against your opponent's side and wrap his head and arm) are among the first techniques every judoka learns. A 20-second hold is a full win, and under the updated rules of the International Judo Federation, even five seconds already scores.

It's no accident that we know these positions. The roots of our Gracie jiu jitsu are right there. Mitsuyo Maeda, the Japanese fighter who taught Carlos Gracie in Brazil, came out of the Kodokan, the school of judo's founder, Jigoro Kano. (I told the full story in the post on Helio Gracie, the man who turned weakness into a system.) The Gracie family took judo's pins and changed their job. In competitive judo, the pin is usually the end. In Gracie Jiu Jitsu it's the beginning: the place you control from, advance from and finish from.

One more small detail for the historians: the lock that every academy in the world now calls the "kimura", named after the judo champion who beat Helio in 1951, is one of the most classic attacks from side control. The position with no points gave us one of the most famous submissions in the sport.

Why Side Control Is the Position That Matters

After 16 years of teaching, I've reached a conclusion that slightly annoys new students: if I had to pick one top position to teach a jiu jitsu student in his first year, I'd pick side control, not mount. (That's a personal opinion. The Gracie Combatives program, for example, actually starts with the mount.) There are three reasons.

The first reason is frequency. In BJJ, most basic guard passes end in side control, not in mount and not on the back. And the fight over the guard is the situation you'll be in, on top or underneath, more than any other in your first year of training. If you can't hold side control, you lose all the work of the pass the second you get there.

The second reason is stability. In mount you sit high, and the person underneath can bridge his hips and try to throw you over his head or to the side. In side control you're low and wide, and your weight is spread across his chest. It's hard to roll someone whose base is spread out on the mat. (So why is mount ranked higher? Because it offers more attacks, and from under side control it's easier to recover guard than from under the mount.)

The third reason is that side control is a junction. From it you go up to mount, from it you switch to knee on belly, from it you reach north-south, and from it you take the back when your opponent turns to escape. Whoever controls side control controls every road leading out of it.

There's a line attributed to Carlson Gracie, son of Carlos and nephew of Helio, a legendary coach famous for having no filter:

"You know a thousand moves and you suck at every one of them."

I think of that line every time a student excitedly shows me a new submission he saw online. I'm happy for him. Really. And then I ask him if he can hold me in side control for one minute. The answer usually explains why he needs the new submission less than he thinks.

How to Hold Side Control

There's a huge difference between lying on someone and holding him. Beginners lie. Experienced students hold. And the difference is mostly where three things are: his head, his hips, and your weight.

Control the Head, Control the Person

The first rule I teach is that the body goes where the head goes. If your opponent's head is free to turn toward you, his whole body turns after it, he slides a knee in, and he starts to escape. So your near arm goes under his head, tight against the neck, and your shoulder presses on his jaw so he's looking to the side, away from you. It's not pleasant for him (that's deliberate), but the point is that he can't turn toward you.

In the post on jiu jitsu beginner mistakes I wrote that if you don't understand why your hand needs to be under the chin in side control, you should ask. So here's the answer, no question needed: whoever controls the head controls the direction.

Block the Hips

The head is half the story. The other half is the hips. An opponent escapes side control mostly with his hips: he pushes you away, shifts his hips out and slides a knee in. So your other hand clamps against his hip and blocks it, and your near knee stays tight against his hip, with no gap. Head pinned, hips blocked, and now all he can do is breathe. Barely.

Weight on His Chest, Not on the Mat

This is the mistake I see most: a student up on his knees and toes, high, all his weight on the mat, touching his opponent about as much as a tablecloth touches a table. The person underneath feels nothing, and he has all the space in the world to work.

Cem quilos starts when you move your weight onto your opponent. Your legs are wide and loose, almost lazy, and your chest sinks into his chest. That's how a 55-kilo woman feels like a hundred. Every gram of her is working.

And one more principle, just like in the mount: don't fight his movement. When he pushes, you move. When he bridges, you change your angle. Side control isn't a wall. It's a heavy blanket that always lands right on the spot where your opponent is trying to breathe.

Three Variations Worth Knowing

• Standard side control: chest to chest, perpendicular, one arm under the head and one hand by the hip. The basis of everything.

• Kesa gatame (scarf hold): you sit tight against his side, wrap his head and lock his near arm. The judo version, very strong and comfortable for the person holding, but easier to roll you over him toward his head. By the way, in jiu jitsu this position isn't recommended, because it's really a headlock. And anyone who has trained jiu jitsu for more than two days knows that a headlock is a weak hold, because the whole body stays free. Grab my head from side control and you'll find me on your back pretty quickly.

• North-south: you turn so your head is over his stomach and your chest is on his chest, reversed. Great for switching sides and for certain chokes and locks.

You don't need to know all three in your first week. You need to know one well. (Carlson would approve.)

What to Do From Side Control

Once side control is stable, and only then, you start hunting. Broadly there are two kinds of moves: transitions to submissions, and transitions to even better positions.

Classic submissions from side control that every Brazilian jiu jitsu student learns in the first year:

• Americana: his arm is on the mat, bent at a right angle with the palm up near his head, and you turn it like a key. The same shoulder lock I explained in the post on the mount, just from the side.

• Kimura: the reverse shoulder lock. His palm points down toward his hips, and you turn the arm behind his back. Yes, that's the lock from the 1951 story. (Both locks work on the near arm and the far arm. What separates them is the direction of the rotation.)

• Armbar: when he pushes you with a straight arm to make space, you spin around his head and take the arm he just handed you.

And transitions to positions:

• To mount: slide a knee across his stomach and sit up. In the post on the mount I explained why that moment is dangerous, and why you neutralize his knees first.

• To knee on belly: come up, put your knee on his stomach, and leave the other leg out. A mobile position, painful for him, and very useful when you need to get up fast.

• To the back: when he turns onto his stomach to escape, he gives you his back. And whoever holds good side control is ready for it in advance.

The rule that ties all of this together is Position Before Submission: you don't leave a position that works for a submission that might. If you let your side control work, the submissions will come to you. If you chase them, they'll run, and the position will go with them.

How to Escape Side Control

Now for the other side, where you'll spend far more of your first year than you'd like. Under an experienced student's side control, the minutes pass very slowly. In the post on the Dunning-Kruger effect and belt progression I told the story of a student who said to me, "I don't know what to do when someone holds me in side control." Everyone who has ever trained BJJ has been there. The only question is for how long.

The good news: you can escape side control. Even under someone heavy. The Gracie Combatives program, the Gracie Academy's foundation course, has several full lessons devoted only to escaping side control (they call it side mount), including the shrimp or hip escape, the elbow escape, and headlock escapes. The reason is simple: it's one of the situations you're most likely to find yourself in, on the mat and off it.

Frames: First, Room to Breathe

The first thing you do under side control isn't to escape. It's to build frames. Your forearm presses against the throat or the collarbone of the person on top, your other hand goes on his hip, and your elbows stay tight to your body. The frame doesn't push him. It holds the distance, so he can't sink any further onto you. That's the difference between bones and muscles: muscles get tired, bones don't.

Shrimp and Guard Recovery

With your frames in place, you move your hips out with a movement called the shrimp, like a shrimp curling backward, also known as the hip escape. A small gap opens between your hips and his body, and through it you slide a knee, then a leg, and put him back in your guard. From the most pressured spot on the mat, back to a place you can work from.

Bridge and Change Direction

When he presses too hard in one direction, you lift your hips in a sharp bridge, not to throw him off (that almost never works against someone heavy) but to make him react. He presses back, and in that second the window opens for a shrimp to the other side. Bridge, reaction, movement. That's how good jiu jitsu works from the bottom: not with strength, with timing.

Flow, Don't Fight

There's a famous line from Rickson Gracie, son of Helio and one of the family's greatest fighters, from the 1999 documentary "Choke". Four words:

"Flow with the go."

It sounds like a reversal of "go with the flow", and it's no accidental reversal. The meaning is clear: don't fight the force coming at you. Move with it, and use it. Under side control, that's the difference between a student who grinds himself down until he taps (a light tap on the opponent or the mat, the signal for giving up) and a student who waits, breathes, and moves exactly when the person on top shifts his weight. He escapes through the opening his opponent made himself.

Side Control on the Street: What's Different From the Mount

In Gracie Jiu Jitsu we always ask the same question: what happens when there's no referee, no points, and someone is trying to hurt you?

From the top, side control is an excellent self-defense position. You control one person, your weight is on him, and his punches from underneath have almost no power. And side control has one advantage over the mount that's easy to miss: it's much easier to get up from. Knee to stomach, stand, and you're already on your feet. And against multiple attackers or a weapon, getting up and getting away is the goal. Always.

From the bottom, side control is less dangerous than the mount when it comes to strikes, because the person on top is pressed against you and can't throw a full punch. But he has other tools: knees, elbows, and weight that makes it hard to breathe. And there's one more situation anyone who has seen a street fight knows: someone grabs a headlock standing up, both go down, and he lands on top of you from the side, still locking your head. That's really a variation of kesa gatame, and it's no coincidence that the Gracie Combatives program includes headlock escapes from side mount. That's why we teach side control escapes in the very first weeks, and not just as a sport technique. I expanded on that logic in the guide on why BJJ self-defense works.

Common Mistakes, From Both Sides

Side control mistakes repeat with almost every new jiu jitsu student, so it's worth knowing them in advance.

From the top:

• Rushing. Reaching side control and leaving it before settling, for mount or a submission. The opponent slides a knee in, and side control becomes guard.

• Staying high. Weight on the mat, not on the opponent, and the person underneath gets free space.

• Forgetting the head. His head is free to turn toward you, and his whole body follows.

From the bottom:

• Pushing with straight arms. It's instinct, and it hands him an armbar, and when the arm bends, a kimura or an americana too. (I've seen it thousands of times, and I still wince.)

• Lying flat on your back and waiting. Every second without frames is a second in which the person on top sinks in a little more.

• Turning onto your stomach to escape. It feels like escaping, but it gives up your back, the worst position there is.

• Holding your breath. Sounds funny, until you realize you've done it for a whole minute.

Why Side Control Isn't Just for Heavy People

"A hundred kilos" sounds like a position for big people. That's only partly true.

From the top, weight helps, obviously. But good side control is built on angle and position, not kilograms. A light woman who knows how to control the head and block the hips can hold a heavier man, and sometimes finish from side control too. Not in every sparring round, but often enough that it stops being a surprise.

And from the bottom? There the story matters even more. A lighter person will spend more time under side control, because that's where bigger people naturally end up. Frames, shrimping and bridging are exactly the techniques built for this: bones instead of muscles, timing instead of strength. At our academy in Tel Aviv, the women's group is the largest in Israel, and women make up about thirty percent of our students. One of the moments I love seeing most is a new student's first escape from under the side control of a man twenty kilos heavier. She didn't push him. She just wasn't there anymore when he looked for her. (I wrote about this side of it in the guide on women's self-defense in Tel Aviv.)

That's the test Helio Gracie left us, and it's the test of every jiu jitsu class we teach: if a technique doesn't work for the small person against the big one, it doesn't go into the class.

How to Start Learning Side Control in Tel Aviv

You can't learn side control by reading. You need to feel someone trying to escape from you and discover he can't, or feel the hundred kilos from underneath and find, for the first time, the angle where they disappear.

At our academy in Tel Aviv, new students meet side control in the first weeks, from both sides. You drill in pairs with a partner who knows you're new, and resistance is added gradually. At some point positional sparring comes in: you start in side control, one person's job is to hold and the other's is to escape. No submissions. Just the position. It may be our least glamorous drill, and it's also the drill that changes students the most.

You don't need to be in shape, and you don't need any experience. You can tap at any moment, and your partner lets go right away. Nobody gets crushed in their first class with us. If you want to know what's waiting for you, I wrote a whole guide on what really happens in your first jiu jitsu class.

And if you're comparing jiu jitsu academies, try asking one question: how much time do they spend on positions, and how much on submissions. The answer will tell you a lot about the place. Ours or anyone else's, it doesn't matter.

The Israeli Academy of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and MMA is at Yitzhak Sadeh 29 in Tel Aviv. All the details about classes and instructors are on the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Tel Aviv page. To book a trial class, send a WhatsApp message to +972-55-921-2431 (a message, not a call).

Side Control FAQ

What is side control in jiu jitsu?

Side control is a position where your opponent is on his back, you've already passed his legs, and your chest lies on his chest from the side, perpendicular. It's one of the dominant positions in Brazilian jiu jitsu: the person on top controls the opponent's head and hips, and the person underneath has to build frames to breathe and escape. In Portuguese it's called cem quilos, meaning a hundred kilos, and at the Gracie Academy it's called side mount.

How many points is side control worth in competition?

Under IBJJF rules, side control has no score of its own. Whoever passes the guard and holds side control for three seconds gets 3 points for the guard pass. Moving from side control to knee on belly is worth 2 points, and to mount 4. In judo, by contrast, a 20-second side pin is a full win, and even five seconds already scores.

How do you hold side control against a stronger opponent?

You hold side control with position, not strength: control your opponent's head so he looks away from you, block his hips with your hand or knee, and put your weight on his chest instead of on the mat. When he moves, change your angle instead of fighting the movement.

How do you escape side control?

First build frames: your forearm on the neck or collarbone of the person on top, a hand on his hip, and your elbows tight. Then move your hips out with a shrimp, slide a knee in and recover guard. When he presses hard in one direction, a sharp bridge will make him react and open a window to move.

What is the difference between side control and mount?

In mount you sit on your opponent, face to face, with a knee on each side of his body. In side control you lie across him from the side, perpendicular. The mount offers more attacking options and is worth 4 points in competition. In side control the person on top is harder to roll, but it's easier for the person underneath to recover guard. Side control is also a junction to mount, knee on belly and the back.

Does side control work for self-defense?

Yes. From the top it lets you control one person, and it's relatively easy to get up and get away from it. From the bottom it's less exposed to punches than the mount, but the weight and knees of the person on top are dangerous. In Gracie Jiu Jitsu you learn to escape it, including from a headlock that ends up on the ground, in the first weeks. Against multiple attackers or a weapon, the goal is to get up and get away.

Can lighter students hold side control?

Yes. Good side control is built on controlling the head and hips and on putting your weight in the right place, not just on kilograms, so lighter women and men can hold it even on heavier opponents. Escaping side control matters even more for them. At the Israeli Academy of Jiu Jitsu in Tel Aviv, students learn both sides in the first weeks.

The Bottom Line: The Middle Floor

Side control won't show up in any tournament highlight reel, and nobody films it for Instagram. And yet a great many jiu jitsu fights pass through it, and most basic guard passes end in it.

So next time you pass the guard in training and feel the urge to climb straight to mount, stop. Sink. Control the head. Block the hips. And let him feel the hundred kilos, even if you weigh sixty.

See you on the mat,

Professor Itay Leibovich

The Israeli Academy of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and MMA, Yitzhak Sadeh 29, Tel Aviv