Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
Someone once told me, “There are no bad positions, just unfamiliar ones.”
At the time, I didn’t buy it. If you’ve ever been flattened under mount or crushed in side control with your face halfway across the mat, it’s hard to see that as anything but bad.
But over time, I started to understand what they meant.
What we label as a bad position is often just a place we haven’t spent enough time in. It feels bad because we’re not comfortable. We’re not confident. And the moment we feel trapped, panic starts to creep in—not always loud, but enough to tighten your breathing, rush your movement, or make you give up a little too early.
Most people avoid that feeling. They try to scramble out. Tap early. Or never train there at all.
But the uncomfortable truth is this: if you never train from bad positions, you’ll always be afraid of them. And if you’re afraid of them, they’ll always own you.
Why We Avoid Bad Positions
It’s natural to want to feel competent. To stay in positions where we know what we’re doing. But Jiu Jitsu doesn’t care how comfortable you are.
Mount. Back control. Side control with strong pressure. These are the places where you don’t get to express your game. You don’t get to attack or flow. You’re surviving, often under someone more dominant. And it feels like you’re failing.
But that mindset is the problem. Because feeling like you’re losing isn’t the same as actually losing.
Learning to Stay Still
There’s value in sitting in discomfort without panicking. In staying in a position long enough to notice the small adjustments you can make, rather than focusing on all the options you can’t.
You start to feel where you can breathe. How to frame better. When your opponent shifts their weight. Where their balance is weakest. You start learning the difference between surviving and stalling.
That kind of awareness doesn’t come from scrambling out as quickly as possible. It comes from staying. From sitting in the fire, calmly, and looking for the smallest opening.
Escape Is a Skill. Maybe the Most Important One
In the early stages of Jiu Jitsu, people chase submissions. That’s understandable. They’re exciting. They feel like progress.
But in the long run, the skill that opens up everything else is the ability to escape.
If you can recover from anywhere, your confidence grows. You become harder to hold down. You don’t panic when someone passes your guard. You stop wasting energy trying to force things, because you trust that even if things go badly, you can survive.
In that way, escaping isn’t just about position. It’s about freedom. It gives you the confidence to take more risks. Play a looser game. Try things that might fail—because failure doesn’t scare you anymore.
Reframing “Bad”
Not all positions are equal. Mount is objectively worse than closed guard. But calling it “bad” creates the wrong mindset.
It implies something went wrong. That you’re in danger. That you need to get out right now or everything’s falling apart.
That’s not helpful. A better word might be “difficult.” Or “less advantageous.”
Because when you shift from thinking of a position as bad to simply thinking of it as a place you need to understand better, the panic starts to fade. Your breath slows. You see more. You give yourself time.
And in Jiu Jitsu, time is everything.
How to Actually Train This
It’s not complicated, but it does take discipline. Start some rounds in bad positions. Let your partner take mount. Give up your back. Start in side control with both arms isolated.
Then work. Not to explode out, but to breathe. To settle. To frame and move. Set a timer just for survival. Can you stay calm for 60 seconds under pressure without making a desperate mistake?
That’s a win.
Do this regularly, and bad positions will lose their edge. They’ll still be uncomfortable. But they won’t feel like failure anymore. They’ll just be part of the roll.
Closing Thought
Jiu Jitsu culture tends to celebrate dominance. We chase passes, pressure, submissions. But the ability to survive—to truly stay calm under pressure—is just as valuable. Maybe more so.
You don’t have to love bad positions. But if you keep avoiding them, they’ll always control you.
Better to face them. Learn from them. And get to the point where even when you’re losing, you’re still in control.
About the author
This article was written by Tom Renshaw. Tom is a purple belt and sometime competitor with a background in education, who writes about Jiu Jitsu, mindset, and learning – always with a coffee in hand and curiosity to spare.
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