What do I do if I end up on the ground?

You get up. That is the answer. Everything else on this page is how.

In a gym the ground is a good place to be. I have spent twenty-five years down there and I like it. On concrete, at night, with somebody’s friends standing around, it is the worst place in the situation and it gets worse the longer you stay. So the goal is never to win down there. The goal is to stop taking damage, make space, and stand.

Here is the order I drill it.

• Protect your head first. Before position, before anything clever. Elbows in, chin down, hands up. You cannot solve a problem you are getting concussed in.
• Do not lie flat and do not turn your back. Get on your side, hips free, feet pointed at them. Flat on your back with your arms out is the shape people freeze into, and it is the one shape where nothing works.
• Make space with your legs. Your legs are the strongest thing you own and their arms are not. That trade is in your favour every time, and it is the whole reason a smaller person is not finished the moment they hit the floor.
• Stand up facing them. There is a specific technical stand-up for this. Hand and foot posted, hips off the deck, back leg out, up with your eyes still on them. It takes about ten minutes to learn and a few months to own.
• Then move. Toward people, toward light, toward a door. Not backwards in a straight line into whatever is behind you.

Why train grappling for this at all, if the plan is to leave? Because the plan does not survive contact. Somebody who has never had a heavier person’s weight on their chest finds out what that feels like at the worst possible moment, and what they find out is that they cannot breathe and cannot think. Somebody who has met it a hundred times in a garage finds out nothing. It is unpleasant and familiar, and familiar is most of the fight.

Guard is the position that makes the rest possible. Legs between you and them, hips mobile, able to push away and stand instead of being pinned flat. What guard is explains it without the jargon, and it is the first thing most people learn.

It is worth being clear about how much of jiu-jitsu actually transfers, though. A fair amount. Not all of it. The parts that matter here are not the parts that win medals, and some of the sport game will get you hurt on asphalt. How much of jiu-jitsu is useful for self-defense sorts one from the other honestly.

If more than one person is involved, none of the above applies for long. You do not grapple anybody with a second person free. You get up and you go, and you accept taking a shot on the way up rather than staying.

This is the piece a web page teaches worst of all. You need weight on you. That is what a session is for.

Not legal advice about using force. Ask a lawyer about that part.