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How to learn no-gi grappling, step by step

No-gi is best learned in a deliberate order — defence before offence, position before submission. Here is the full beginner curriculum, stage by stage.

Learning path Progression Parent-safe

You can learn no-gi grappling by just showing up and absorbing it — most people do — but it goes faster when the order makes sense. The whole sport is best learned by two principles: defence before offence, and position before submission. The Foundations curriculum sequences exactly that across ten stages. This page is the map of that path; each stage links to its full breakdown.

How the path is ordered

Two ideas decide the sequence. First, you learn to survive a position before you learn to attack from it — so escapes come before submissions, and the riskier the technique, the later and more gated it is. Second, the underlying invariants — the mechanical principles that make every technique work — are taught early, so each new move lands as an expression of something you already understand rather than an isolated trick. How InGrappling works explains that three-layer model in full.

The ten stages

  1. Tapping Culture and Safety — the tap, the one non-negotiable, before any technique.
  2. Universal Invariants — the mechanical principles underneath everything else.
  3. Guard Bottom Fundamentals — attacking and retaining from your back.
  4. Guard Top and Passing Fundamentals — getting past the legs into control.
  5. Back Position, Defence First — the most dominant position, learned defence-first.
  6. Top Positions — mount, side control, and the pins.
  7. Front Headlock and Turtle — controlling the head and the turtle scramble.
  8. Standing Game Basics — takedowns and the fight for top.
  9. Straight Ankle Lock — the safest entry to the leg game, defence first.
  10. Ashi Garami, Defence First — the leg-entanglement positions, recognised and escaped before they are attacked.

Using the path

You do not march through this alone at home — you train at a school, and the curriculum is the structure underneath the lessons. If you want a time-based view of the same journey, your first six months maps it against the calendar, and the Foundations programme lays out a week-by-week block. The positions every beginner should know shows the landscape these stages move through.

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