It goes without saying that it is better to teach (or force) yourself to be more of an attacking player than a defensive on in Jiu-Jitsu.

Why? Because if you gravitate more towards defense, chances are that you are, well, going to be too defensive.
Which, if you aren’t going for effective counterattacks, can be a bad thing.

But even more than that, if you go down the route of being an attacking player, you will – surprise, surprise – open up even more attacking opportunities for yourself.
Which is the case with going for sweeps and reversals from bottom position as well. But not just because of the sweeps and reversals themselves.

John Danaher explains the reason why you should be going more for them:

The more you threaten an opponent with sweeps and reversals from bottom the more they must extend and post out their hands and feet to stop you.
The more they extend themselves to do so, the more vulnerable they become to submission attacks.

Danaher emphasizes that you should be playing this dilemma game often:

Play this dilemma constantly from bottom position.

Threaten the sweeps, attack with submissions as they post.
Threaten submissions to force them to retract their posted hands and feet and their lack of base will make them easy to sweep.

Play in this fashion and you’ll always find success.

 

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