Skills

A skill sits between a principle and a move. Principles are ideas; moves are specific named techniques; skills are the physical capabilities that technique depends on. Grip fighting is a skill. The elbow cut is a skill. Most moves in the rest of this course are the skills below, applied in combination under specific conditions.

Every move page on this site cites the skills it depends on via the skills frontmatter array. That's how the graph knows which capabilities you need to have before a specific technique is available.

From Volume 01 of Only Way Out (Brian Glick)

• Grip fighting. The lowest-level skill in this entire system. Primary and secondary defensive hand, end of the lever, hands on top, partner's hands glued to your body, head on the floor. Every move in Volumes 02–06 opens with some variant of this.
• The elbow cut. In front headlock: keep your elbow out of the centerline. In turtle: get your elbow to the floor. Same skill, two contexts, and it solves the core problem of back exposure.
• The shoulder roll. The primary jiu-jitsu method for putting your back on the floor. Specific sequence — clear the hand, swisher the feet, step the outside leg up, shoulder to mat, hips into partner's armpit. Not a speed move.
• Standing up. Hips-first from front headlock, chest-first from turtle. Not to wrestle — to create space, threaten the escape, and unlock rolling options.

From Volume 01 of Foundation of Offense (Gordon Ryan)

• Defensive hand position. The same family as grip fighting, but with two additions Glick didn't isolate: look toward the strangle arm (chin-to-shoulder, so the space between jaw and collarbone never opens) and a deliberate four-step replacement when the primary hand gets stripped. The depth I was missing.