Creating Space in the Face of Pressure

You’re at the bottom of mount, and the pressure’s on. Your partner sits mounted on your stomach, you can feel your ribcage compress. Your options are slim, you have to get out. You bridge into them to create a small gap between yourself and the floor, then you turn on your side to shrimp. 

More pressure meets you as your partner defends.

Nothing. Still stuck. You try again, over and over, making the most incremental progress until you gather enough momentum for a slightly larger gap. You turn and shrimp, scooting your hips as far out as you can, clear their leg and get to a knee as you wiggle your other leg free. 

One of the most important, fundamental functions of both Jiu Jitsu as self-defense lies in their ability to help you create space for yourself. 

This sport inlays force with mobility, logic and leverage to push someone off or give you a little wiggle room to get away. Logically, it’s simple: put as much space as you can between yourself and the danger.

In BJJ, we use our elbows and knees to create space by forming what we call frames, and then establishing a guard, and we use our hips and lats in methods like bridging and shrimping to scoot out from under pressure. 

Creating space doesn’t always come easy. Sometimes the pressure on us is so great that we feel immobilized beneath the weight, stuck between the floor and the full weight of our partner. 

As impossible as it feels, as long as they haven’t made that decisive final move that takes you from stuck to check-mate, you still have hope.

In these tightly compressive moments, sometimes we can only make the tiniest, most minute changes. If executed correctly, however, these tiny changes can lead to that one big shift you want. (I.e. If you have to bridge and shrimp, you bridge first and then shrimp. If you do those two moves at the same time, it doesn’t work.)

Trust the process and keep doing it. If you try to work against the logic of physics, you’ll just tire yourself out and your partner will gladly use the opportunity to submit you.

The order of operations is where class comes in – weekly repetition and drilling can get you to where these movements are second nature, and instructors can correct your form and help you improve your technique. 

When you know the rules of the game, you can begin to play it smart.

Where to find the space

Jiu-Jitsu teaches us to face our problems head on. When you’re on the receiving end, the only way to get out and free yourself is to take back that control and recover the space.

However, even when we do the right technical movements, in reality it’s not always that easy. Sometimes, trying to make space can get us nowhere and just seems to exhaust us – it becomes an exercise in surrender. Sometimes, we have to wait for movement to take advantage of it. That means surrendering control for a moment and instead using that energy to focus on tiny movements and changes in our opponent - we wait.

In a moment of compression, there could be two options: pull out and simplify, or surrender and refocus. By becoming hyper-aware of all the tiny things shifting around you, you can use them to your advantage against your opponent, shifting and flowing with them in a way that moves you along.

Big reactions and pushback waste energy, more often than not they only get me further from your goal. You may not be able to do or move a lot, but if you remain calm, settle in and look for tiny spaces and adjustments, you can gradually create enough space to shift the paradigm. 

The key is patience; if you gas yourself out in the first few moments trying to use force against physics, you won’t last. If you slowly increase your space capital bit by bit, you can conserve your energy and develop a more sustainable practice. The more you train the more you see – you’ll be taken through progressions such as first being mounted, then a pressure-heavy mount, and finally a crushing mount. Learning how to embrace discomfort and remain calm but patient is a tough skill to learn. Truth be told - there is no shortcut.

By getting acclimated to the pressure of mount, you can learn to overcome the initial discomfort and get straight to planning your escape.

If you find you’re still tapping quickly after you’ve been mounted before the submission even hits, talk to a coach. They could work with you on getting more comfortable with the various pressures in mount, helping you keep control of your breath and put together an escape. Teaching you what they're doing and why they're doing it to you and how to stop them or just get out.

Tiny adjustments for big shifts

Just as pressure can compound on the mat, so does it in life. Between our responsibilities, goals and obligations, it can feel crushing at times. The pressure can feel physically draining, debilitating and definitely impacts our ability to function at the highest level. 

Maybe you have a project you keep kicking down the road because life stays too busy, or you haven’t worked out in weeks because the job and kids demand so much of your time. How much of that comes down to physical scheduling and time constraints, and how much really stems from the mental weight?

To regain that control of your own time, schedule and space, the best mode of operation might include making the tiniest adjustments to create the space you need to fully operate, bit by bit.

What can you alter or rearrange? What patterns or habits can you shift to make room for new ones? Do you need to cut some things out – or simply tighten up your time management?

Every adjustment, even the smallest ones, count. Are you drinking water? Are you taking thirty minutes to yourself in the morning before diving into the day or into your phone? If the feeling of being internally crushed comes from a friend, partner, or a misplaced authority that believes it “knows better,” the task becomes to separate yourself from this energy.

While you may want to fight back or act out, refocus on the quieter pieces of the puzzle to see the whole picture more clearly. All of us have wanted to give up at some point, but these moments show us where we need to show up the strongest – not flop over and tap out. You’re only stuck, not submitted. You can still make decisions, and bit by bit, depending on what you choose, set yourself free. 

The more you make the small adjustments, the easier the big ones come!

You’ll be climbing out from under the crushing pressure and escaping upper belts in no time. Just as you can’t predict what pressures you’ll face in life, you can’t change how somebody else operates in the world and how they make you or others feel. You can, however, learn to work with your own reactions, both internally and externally. If you can learn how to stay cool under pressure, perhaps you can even respond in a way that sets a boundary, giving you the physical space you need. But there is no substitute for that when being on bottom of an insufferable mount like training. 

The faster you learn how to be calm and relax and get to work earning space while stuck the better you’ll be.