Hi Daniel, that is a good and an important question. To me the fundamentals of BJJ are not a specific technique but instead they are just a few points you need to focus on and they are the same points in any given position. The five most crucial points you need to focus on and it doesn't matter in which position you are in, are your elbows, knees and your head. You want to defend your elbows, knees and head while you're trying to control your opponents elbows knees and head. Here are a few examples: -If someone is trying to pass your guard you should be preventing your opponent from getting control of your knee or knees. If your opponent doesn't control your knees there is no guard pass there for him (notice that your opponent can control your knee without touching it, for instance by pinning your ankle). Therefore if you're trying to pass someones guard you need control over their knee, because then you control the guard and only after you gain that control you can pass the guard. -If someone is attacking your legs they will also need control over your knee. So you'll need to protect your knee/s and prevent your opponent from getting a grip on them. Therefore if you're attacking someones legs or feet you need to control that legs knee. -When you're on bottom in side control, mount, backmount etc. if your opponent gets control of your elbows (and the control being any part of him between your torso and your elbow) he will have a easier time of controling you and then submitting you. Therefore if you're attacking your opponents arm or hand you need to first control him and you cannot do that if you don't have control over his elbows. -For any submission on your arms or hands your opponent needs control over your elbow. Therefore if you need to escape any submission attempt on your arms you need to free your elbow. -For any submission on your legs or feet your opponent needs control over your knee (like I said before). Therefore if you need to escape any submission attempt on your arms you need to free your knee. You should be able to apply these fundamental points to any position in BJJ! And as a side-effect of keeping your elbows close to your hip/torso you're automatically not pushing your opponent away and therefore you can relax and breathe because pushing your opponent away with your arms is the most common way to drain your energy.

I want to know which technics work for you and why. Which ones you would never leave home without it? Subs, escapes, transitions.

I've been thinking about this since my first post, which I still agree with, and I've had some outside inspiration also... I remember being told about Jean Jacques Machado and his approach to BJJ as a young practitioner. He never attempted or paid much attention to submissions (in the beginning)... Instead he focused solely on escapes and reversals to become uncontrollable. After 4-5 years nobody could get anything on him so he started attempting submissions without the fear of it leading to him getting stuck somewhere and being submitted. Now he's a bit of a submission nerd and does all sorts of crazy cool stuff... Coral belts am I right. Also I recently watched something Chew Jitsu put up that I have to agree with... He says something on the lines of: 'Give or take, at most levels of jiu Jitsu, 70% of any roll, competition or otherwise, will be spent using or passing guard'. Again I have to agree. (someone had asked what to focus on after becoming overwhelmed by the immensity of bjj). He said when he runs out of things or doesn't have a focus this is his default area to drill and improve. So on another branch if I were to start again I would focus on: *Escapes and reversals, becoming uncontrollable. *Having guard of doom (the main ones: closed guard, 1/2 guard etc.) *Passing skills that make opponents whimper in the corner once the match is over. Funnily enough... This can all be boiled down to... Distance Management.

The same way I organise pretty much everything I teach: From standing moving down to ground positions. Foot work of most styles. Red light - orange light - green light. Punch scale 1-10. Creating and filling space. How can I give them as much useful, real shit around how a fight goes (with an untrained person) as possible. I like to keep stuff simple because I'm a simple man. I always say to my student's, 'unless it was your idea or through your actions its probably not good for you'. But as you said distance management is a HUGE topic that almost always takes years of dripfed, almost subconscious reinforcement unless someone has come from another background. Its taken me over 5 years to have the coin-drop moment and think, 'whoa... Jits is basically all about controlling distance in any given position, making and filling space'.(insert wide eyes). But I'm no master bro, I get got all the time and no doubt there are better ways to do everything I think I'm good at. Don't know if that really answered your question?...