--- title: Standing up description: Foundational Skill 4. Hips-first from front headlock; chest-first / leg-up from turtle. Verbatim from Volume 01. section: body tags: [bjj, skill, standing-up, front-headlock, turtle, hips-first, chest-first] genre: reference stability: stable lastUpdated: 2026-04-18 url: https://fardiniqbal.com/docs/body/mat/skills/standing-up --- **Source:** Volume 01, §9 —   ([full transcript](/docs/body/mat/sources/only-way-out/volume-01#9-foundational-skill-4--standing-up)) *** ## Verbatim from the transcript [#verbatim-from-the-transcript] We just looked at how to do a shoulder roll and put our back on the floor — a very jiu-jitsu approach to managing front headlock and turtle. But there will be times you don't feel comfortable rolling, or you're not able to. In those moments, you need to be able to **stand up**. ### 9.1 Why standing matters — even if you don't wrestle [#91-why-standing-matters--even-if-you-dont-wrestle] Standing up has a lot of great virtues. The main virtue, the way I was taught, is **not** that you can then stand up and wrestle (you may be with someone who's a better wrestler). The main virtue is: **when you stand up, there are not that many submissions.** It's not that there are *none* — certainly there are some, especially flying attacks or rolling attacks. But if you can get from a position where you're both on your knees to one where **you're standing and they're on their knees**, that's a huge advantage. And if you both stand up, the likelihood is that they're not going to be able to submit you. So being able to stand up is a critical skill. Other benefits: * You're going to want to **chain** standing-style escapes with rolling-style escapes. And you don't need to be great at standing up, or even really need to actually stand — **you just need to threaten it**. The threat of a stand-up prompts a response from your partner, and that often makes it much easier to hit the rolls you were originally intending to do. * Standing up creates **space and separation**. We talked about creating distance so you can get a wedge inside, get inside position. If your partner is super tight and you feel like you can't roll, there's no inside position — but moving up into a standing position often gives you the ability to get your thumb inside, or take your hand and find the inside of his wrist. Going back to the three core principles: **some of them will not be accessible to you just by doing one thing.** If all you ever do is shoulder roll, not only are you predictable — your partner is going to develop and bring pressures you won't be able to manage. You need an **alternative**. That's where standing up comes in. I did a lot of wrestling with Mr. Danaher, but I'm not a wrestler — so although I learned a lot about stand-up and takedowns, I don't consider myself a wrestler. If a great wrestler were here, there'd be a lot of critiques of my standing up. But: **you don't have to be great at standing up in order to create the opportunities you need** to go back on the offensive or establish a strong defense out of these positions. The goal is not to be a master stand-up artist — it's simply to use standing to create space/distance/separation, start to elbow cut, start to retract your elbows, and get to a place where you can offset your partner's ability to attack. Two basic classes of stand-up: * **Method A: Knees off the floor first (hips first)** — out of front headlock. * **Method B: Chest first (elbows/hands off the floor first)** — out of turtle. The rule of thumb: from **front headlock, stand hips-first**. From **turtle, stand chest-first**. This is because in turtle, if your partner has a lot of weight on your hands and elbows, you can't lift them off first. ### 9.2 Method A — Hips first (from front headlock) [#92-method-a--hips-first-from-front-headlock] Out of front headlock: if we feel we can't get anything else going, and especially if our partner is putting a lot of pressure on our arms, we may elect to come up into a standing position. **It's not without risk.** Once your hands are on the floor, they're committed to the mat, not to your defense up top. But there will be times you need to do this. **Mechanics:** 1. **Knees off the floor, hips first.** Place your hands on the mat. If you were on your shoelaces, you now put your **toes on the mat**. 2. Go up into the push-up-like position. 3. Push off your hands, push off your knees, and get into a **"down dog" position** — hands fairly close to your feet. 4. **Don't stay elongated.** When you stand up, you don't want to be extended — because from here you're not athletic, you're relatively elongated, and if Chris gives even a short pull, he'll drop you back down. 5. **Tuck your chin.** Look at your belly. 6. **Ears inside your shoulders.** Even if his hands are locked around you, we move up into this position with ears inside shoulders. If we want to take our hands off the floor, we **walk backwards** with our hands, so we can take weight off them and then use them to unlock our partner's grip, grip fight, counter, etc. > \[!DRILL] **Building the hips-first stand-up** > If you're not comfortable going from knees to standing, build this skill with a loose, light grip from your partner. Practice: > > * Putting hands on the floor and toes on the floor. > * Doing the push-up so that your shoulders are forward. > * Turning your chin slightly (so you're looking at your right arm). > * Walking backwards to whatever degree you can — until you feel comfortable taking your hands off the floor and opening up your partner's grips. ### 9.3 Method B — Chest first, leg up (from turtle) [#93-method-b--chest-first-leg-up-from-turtle] The second way of standing up: instead of starting by taking our knees off the floor, we start by taking our **hands or elbows off the floor**. If your partner has a lot of weight on your hands/elbows, you can't do this — so we stand up chest-first from turtle, and hips-first from front headlock. **Scenario:** partner in turtle with hands in a body lock (two hands locked around my waist). **Mechanics:** 1. **Create separation** — take your feet to the outside slightly. 2. **Step the left leg up.** Take this hand, bring my head up slightly, and then the left leg comes up. 3. **Elbow-knee connection.** Keep elbow and knee close together. 4. **Monitor the other side.** We don't want our partner throwing the right leg in, so this hand is here monitoring. 5. **Sprinter-in-the-blocks posture.** Once you get your body to this position, it almost looks like you're a sprinter in the blocks — like you're about to take off running. That's a really great option: take your foot, place the sole on the floor, and from here push off to a standing position. 6. **Once standing**, it's on you to cover your partner's hands, separate them, come back, take underhook, space your partner, and shoot. **Summary of the chest-first stand-up:** * Step the outside leg up. * Cover partner's hands, or place your hands on the floor. * Bring your head up. * Keep elbow and knee relatively close. * Second hand monitoring. Obviously, we're not going to stay there — if we feel there's a risk he'll throw the hook inside, we'll often keep our body down in a more crouched position. Then, when we're ready to stand up, we push off and literally **move away** from our partner. Once you're standing: separate your partner's hands, either **cut back** to face him or simply create separation/distance so you can face him. If you want to wrestle, you can — but from here you can also **sit back down and begin to play your guard** the way you want, go into leg attacks, off-balances, etc. **Recap — two methods:** * **Hips first** — and walking back to a standing position. * **Chest first** — elbows off the floor, then our leg comes up. These play a very important role in **linking us from our favorite escapes (putting our back on the floor) to other escapes.** We're looking to create distance and separation. At this level of jiu-jitsu — the modern evolution — **you can't have only one method**. Again, you don't have to be an expert at standing up, you don't have to be willing to wrestle your partner, but you do have to have a sense of what you're supposed to be doing: safely coming up with hands on the floor, safely coming up with knees off the floor. If you can do that, you'll have additional confidence for your major escapes, and everything becomes a lot easier when it comes to getting out of these positions. *** ## Connections [#connections] * **Paired with:** [The shoulder roll](/docs/body/mat/skills/shoulder-roll). Glick's whole argument: you need both. Shoulder roll is the preference; standing up is the answer when rolling isn't available, and the threat of standing up unlocks rolling. * **Principles served:** creates the separation that enables [Inside position](/docs/body/mat/principles/inside-position) and eventually loops back to enabling [Back to the floor](/docs/body/mat/principles/back-to-floor). * **Method choice is deterministic:** from **front headlock → Method A (hips first)**. From **turtle → Method B (chest first / leg up)**. The rule comes from where the weight is — you can't lift what partner's loaded. * **Don't need to be great at it:** Glick is explicit — standing up doesn't need to win you the match, it just needs to threaten enough to create space or unlock the roll.