Heisting Fundamentals: Keep your opponents guessing by using Dilemmas

Master the Art of Jiujitsu: Create Winning Dilemmas with Heisting

Dilemmas are fundamental in jiujitsu. We can all agree on that. One of the most important concepts in jiujitsu is to keep our opponents in a constant state of doubt about our next move. This isn’t new; successful BJJ fighters have been doing this, consciously or unconsciously, for decades.

But for most non-professional practitioners, this concept is often understood much later than it should be, and for good reason. Most people excel at one specific aspect of BJJ and rely on it heavily, neglecting other techniques. This continues until all their training partners learn to defend against their go-to move. At this point, they must mix things up, creating dilemmas for their opponents.

The most effective dilemmas (which we’ve discussed before) usually involve combining lower-body and upper-body submissions. You attack their legs, and when they defend, they expose their neck.

One specific skill, heisting (or hip heisting), enables the use of dilemmas early in the fight. Heisting makes your opponent react to your level change; if they don’t, you can attack their neck and upper body or get under their hips to attack their legs.

Learning the Macro from the Micro

In this issue, we’ll break down a specific scenario to illustrate heisting as a tool. Understand that heisting isn’t limited to this scenario; it’s a versatile concept that applies to many situations, not just as a step in a sequence.

For all you Josh Waitzkin fans, this is my attempt to use the “learning the macro from the micro” principle. We’ll learn about heisting and its importance by studying how to use it to open up leg attacks on opponents who are hiding their legs.

How to Use Heisting to Get to the Legs of an Overly Cautious Opponent

In this situation, Bernardo is overly cautious of leglocks and prevents Garry from getting under his hips:

Bernardo is protecting his legs with his entire body. For Garry to get under him, he’d need to be much stronger than Bernardo and pull him forward, which would be very difficult and make him vulnerable to hip switches and guard passes.

Instead, Garry uses heisting to create a dilemma for Bernardo. If Bernardo doesn’t react, Garry can attack guillotines and backtakes. If Bernardo reacts, he must open up space and stop hiding his legs:

If Bernardo Doesn’t React to the Heisting:

If Bernardo Reacts to the Heisting:

To all the Danaher haters out there 😂, you might be thinking the obvious. Yes, heisting is basically just getting up or getting higher than your opponent.

I know this was a bit conceptual, so here’s one of the best fights ever, where you can see Garry using heisting multiple times to get the match moving and open up his own attacks:

For the original video of Garry explaining how to use Heisting, please go here: