Mapping the System
By OSJJ
Open Source Jiu-Jitsu
THE CURRICULUM SERIES · PART FOUR
Mapping the System
A system lives partly in your head. A map is what gets it out, so you and your students can follow it through the noise.
Justin Hall / Co-Founder, Open Source Jiu-Jitsu
The last piece made a claim it did not fully close. A system, we said, is principles plus structure, and it lives partly in the head of the person who built it. That raises an obvious problem. If the system lives in your head, how does anyone else follow it? And harder still, how do you follow it yourself in the middle of a live roll, when everything is moving and there is no time to think? The answer to both is the same. You map it.
This piece is about that map: what it is, why you need one, why it reaches some students and sails past others, and how the same idea works whether a system is built on positions or on pure principle. It is not yet about how to build your own, that comes later. First we have to see one.
A map is not a curriculum, and it is not a list of techniques. A curriculum is the order you teach in. A pile of techniques is exactly the thing a map replaces. A map is the structure of your system made visible, the principles and connections that were living invisibly in your head, laid out so they can be seen, held, and followed.
Why you need one: the noise
The reason a map matters is not the classroom. It is the fight. Sparring, competing, fighting, the common feature is noise. Under live pressure the head floods, the options multiply, and most people freeze or flail, reaching for a memorized move that does not fit the moment. A map cuts through that noise. It does not give you more moves. It gives you a place to stand and a next step, always, no matter what is happening, because you are reading a structure instead of searching a pile.
Cutting through the noise is the first thing a map does, and the most visible. It is the difference between acting and reacting. The person with a map is a beat ahead, they already know where they are going, so the other one is always catching up. The person without one is a beat behind, seeing, then thinking, then choosing, then acting, four steps where the mapped player takes one. But reaction speed is only the most obvious payoff, and it is really the beginner's payoff. A map does more than make you faster, and the more developed the system behind it, the more it does.
It keeps you oriented. Set speed aside entirely and there is still a benefit: you are never lost. No matter where a scramble dumps you, the map tells you where you are, which way is up, and what matters most in this spot before you move. That is not about being quick. That is about not drowning, and it holds for a rank beginner and a seasoned competitor alike.
It builds understanding, not just answers. A map of principles, rather than positions, does something different again. It shows you the same idea surfacing everywhere, the same concept expressed in the guard, in the pass, on the back, so that over time you stop collecting techniques and start understanding the art underneath them. That is depth, and it is a different thing entirely from reaction time. Some maps are built to make you fast. Others are built to make you deep.
It makes the whole thing teachable. A system that lives only in your head helps exactly one person, you. Drawn as a map, it can be handed to a student or another coach and actually transmitted. For a competitor a map buys performance. For a teacher it buys the ability to pass on what they know without the other person having to reinvent it from scratch.
And it holds together. Instead of a hundred loose techniques you are trying to keep in memory, you have one connected structure, which is easier to retain, easier to add to, and harder to forget under pressure, because the pieces hold each other in place.
Here is the thread that ties all of that together, and it is the thread this whole piece follows. What a map does depends on the system it draws and the person holding it. Different systems were built to develop different things, so their maps deliver different things. One buys reaction time, another buys control, another buys a decision path, another buys pure understanding. That is exactly what the next four maps will show, four systems, drawn four different ways, each doing a different job. We will start with the simplest.
From the concrete to the abstract
So let us look at some. We will walk through four maps. They are not the only ones out there, they are four worth studying, and we will take them in a deliberate order, from the simplest and most concrete to the most complex and abstract. That order matters, because it shows the idea holding the whole way up. One thing to be clear about: the order is not a ranking. It is not simplest to best, or weakest to strongest. Every system here is serious work by serious people. What changes as we go is only how the map is drawn, from one anchored in concrete positions to one built almost entirely on abstract principle. A concrete system is not a lesser one, it is just easier to see, which is why we start there. And it shows something people miss: a map does not have to chart positions. In one system the pieces are positions and the lines are transitions. In another the pieces are principles and the lines are where each one applies. Positions, concepts, priorities, goals, whatever a system is actually built from, it can be mapped. These four run from a system built on concrete positions to one built on almost nothing but principle, and every one of them draws.
Start at the simplest end, with a map we built for beginner kids. There is nothing abstract about it. It is the most concrete a map can be, and for a lot of experienced practitioners it is close to how they already picture the game in their heads without ever having drawn it.
The beginner map, page one: the Climb. Every position ranked best to worst, with the order of operations inside each. The whole spine on one page, and notice how little is on it. That is the point.
That single page is the backbone. Every position a beginner can be in, stacked from best to worst, with one rule running through all of them: hold your control first, then hunt the finish, and if the finish is not there, climb to a better spot. You are not recalling a list of moves, you are reading a position, where you are, where you can go, and what matters most before you move. Wherever you land, the map tells you which way is up and what to do first.
It is worth slowing down here, because this is the first map we are looking at and the whole point is to see how one actually works. This map has three layers, and they answer three different questions.
The first layer is the Climb you just saw, and it answers where do I want to go. Every position ranked, best at the top, worst at the bottom, with one instruction: climb toward the top, and if you fall, climb back. Standing is the even line in the middle, the entry point. Above it you are winning, below it you are losing but not lost. That is the whole overview on one page.
The second layer is the principles, the part people assume a beginner map is too simple to have. It is right there at the top of the detail page under Things to Remember: control before you attack, whoever has the hands on top is winning, relentless pressure, keep climbing the ladder, protect your neck on the bottom. For a beginner these are not abstract, they are short rules a student can actually hold in their head, and they apply in every position at once. This is the layer I lean on the hardest. Constant pressure. Always go forward. Those are the kind of plain rules I repeat until they stick, because when a beginner holds to them, they succeed. It is a small principle layer, just a handful of simple rules, but it is a real one, and it is the same ingredient that, in a master’s map, becomes almost the entire thing.
The third layer is the position detail, and it answers what do I do right here. Every position runs the same rhythm. Lock your control first. Then try the attacks in a set order, one, two, three, so there is never a blank moment of deciding from scratch. Then, where the position calls for it, read what the opponent gives you and pick the matching answer. Look at Standing on the detail page: lock your grips, then take them down by what you see, they stand tall means double leg, they hand-fight means single, they stay low means arm drag to the back. Look at Guard on top: posture and control first, then try the bullfighter pass, and if that fails, the pin-the-leg pass. Control, then a ranked list, then a read. The same shape in every box on the map.
A detail page from the same map. The band at the top, Things to Remember, is the principle layer, the simple rules that apply everywhere. Below it, two positions worked out in full, each with the same rhythm: lock your control, try the attacks in order, read what they give you.
Put the three together and you can watch it run. She gets taken down and lands in guard on the bottom, just below the even line. The map does not leave her searching. Guard bottom runs the same rhythm as everywhere else. Lock first: ankles behind the back, break the posture, control a sleeve and the collar. Then the finish: go for the collar choke. If the choke is not there, the map moves her to a sweep chosen by what she feels, if he is standing with his feet apart, the hook sweep, if he is leaning back, the hip-bump. She sweeps, comes up on top, and now she has crossed the even line. From there the top-half boxes take over: control first, then the attacks in order. One trip up the ladder, and at no point did she have to invent anything. She was reading a map, and the principles, pressure and forward, were pushing the whole way.
This particular map was built for one kid. My daughter is eight years old. At the time this article was written she had been training for only a few months, a brand-new white belt with maybe ten or twelve classes total. She knows almost nothing, an armbar, a rear naked choke, three takedowns, and that is close to the whole list. She has that small map, the one above, and she is beating kids who have trained for years and know far more than she does.
Here is where the map came from, because the origin is the whole lesson. By her second class I could see the problem, and it was not that she needed more technique. She would get to a spot and pause, and it was not a blank pause, she knew she was supposed to go somewhere. I could see it in her eyes, darting back and forth, searching. She just did not know where. Then she would try something. What I was watching was a kid actively looking for a pathway she did not have yet. Most coaches answer that the natural way, by teaching another technique, one more tool for the pile. I did the opposite. Since she was already looking for a path, I decided to give her one. I sat down and drew her the smallest possible map of the entire game, because I think in patterns myself and I could see she does too, and I was certain a map would reach her in a way that one more armbar never would. I was building her a place to stand, and a way to see where she could go, before I ever taught her a single thing to do from it.
The clearest example was a roll against the most experienced, highest-ranked kid in class. She never stopped and never gave him a break. She took him down, passed his guard, hunted the finish, and when he defended she took the back and started to work the choke, until he was overwhelmed and started to cry, not from anything rough, she never hurt him, but from being underwater the entire time. He was a beat behind on every exchange. He knew more moves than she did. It did not matter, because she always knew where she was and what came next, and he was left reacting to someone who never had to stop and think.
Be honest about why she wins, because she wins for a lot of reasons and the map is only one of them. She is a lifelong gymnast, so the athleticism and body control are real and they are hers, not the map's. She has a mind that locks on and focuses, which helps. And here is the part people will not believe, so it is worth stating plainly: I have never taught her Jiu-Jitsu technique. No private lessons, no drilling moves, no technique sessions, not once. Before she ever started, we played on the mats maybe ten times, just games, never instruction. I held off on purpose. I wanted her to come to Jiu-Jitsu on her own terms, if she ever did, rather than have it handed to her because of who her father is. So I waited. She tried soccer and decided it was not for her, tried aerial dance and decided it was not for her, tried ballet and decided it was not for her, and then, on her own, she decided she was ready. I am glad she did, but it was her call, not mine. To this day the most I give her is a tiny tuning note, put your head this way, keep your elbow in, never an actual technique. Now let me be fair about the other side of that, because it cuts the other way and I am not going to pretend otherwise. She does get coached, and by someone with a lot of experience. I work with her briefly around each class, and there is someone with nearly thirty years of Jiu-Jitsu experience on the other end of that. So this is not a story about a kid with no help. It is a story about what kind of help. What she does not get is technical coaching, nobody is drilling moves into her or teaching her positions. What she does get is map coaching. I coach her on how to run the map, which piece to focus on and how to read it. That is the distinction that matters, and it is the whole point. She is coached on the map, not on technique, and the map is doing the work. The map did not create her athleticism or her focus. What it did was turn those raw advantages into something organized. Plenty of athletic, focused kids flail, because talent with no plan is still just talent. Hers has a plan, and she was handed it, not taught it. The map is what removed the hesitation, and with the hesitation gone, every other advantage got to actually count.
The way I load it into her is simple, and it is the whole method in miniature. Five minutes before class I pick one or two things off the map, no more. A branch, if he does this, you do that, and a principle, keep constant pressure, go from here to here to here. Then she trains, and I leave her alone to try it and miss it and figure it out. After class we do a quick review, one thing she did well, named exactly, and one thing to fix, tied to something already on the map. One node at a time, until each one fires without thought and the next can go in. She is not collecting moves. She is building a map she is always running, and that is why she is ahead.
That is the simple end, a map built to teach an eight-year-old the whole game on one page. It works, and it is the right place to start, but it is a teaching tool, not a monument. So let us step up to the real ones, the developed, well-known systems built by some of the best minds in the sport, the maps people actually study. Same idea underneath, only bigger, deeper, and drawn in very different ways.
Next on our list is the leg-lock system associated with John Danaher and his students, and it is our first look at a fully developed, high-level system. It sits early in the walk not because it is simple, it is anything but, but because it is built on concrete positions, which makes it the most tangible of the maps to read. Like the beginner map it takes the shape of a ladder, so it is easy to follow coming off it, but that is where the resemblance ends. Underneath the positions runs a deep layer of named principles. His whole approach rests on one idea repeated everywhere, the goal is control, not position, because the most dominant submissions all share control as their common feature. From there it is pure structure. Positions are ranked into a hierarchy you climb, back control at the top, then mount, then knee-on-belly, then side control, and you always advance up the ladder before you finish. He does the same with leg entanglements that everyone else did with mount and back, turning them into ranked positions from least control to most.
What lifts it above a simple ladder is that layer of named principles governing the whole thing: control before submission, inside position beats outside position, attack within a long chain of events rather than as an isolated move. He even frames each position as a problem to solve, in the back system he names the alignment problem and the deficit problem and builds his control principles as the answers, designing the position so every defense the opponent tries opens a specific attack. That is a mapped domain: a ranked ladder, positions treated as control problems, and principle-nodes governing the transitions. It is no accident that his students and fans publish his systems as actual flowcharts, the system was built to be drawn.
The Danaher system as a ranked ladder with a principle column. My rendering, drawn from his public teaching, not his own diagram. A fuller version of the beginner ladder, with a layer of principles added underneath.
Climb another step in abstraction and we reach The Master Plan, the system built by Javier Vazquez. Full disclosure before I go further: the system is entirely his. The thinking, the structure, the work, all of it is Javi. My involvement is on the business side, helping him bring it to more people, and I had no hand in creating it. I include it because it is a genuinely good example, and you should weigh my involvement accordingly, but the credit is his alone. It is built around an explicit map Javi calls the Central Path: a step-by-step roadmap for each position, the highest-probability sequence from the first moment of contact to the finish. In his own words it replaces chaos with a tested plan, so you do not rely on memory or reaction, you follow the path, and every position has its own Central Path that connects to the next.
This is a step more abstract than Danaher’s, because what it maps is not just positions but priority, which option gives the highest-probability result, layered on top of the positions as a way of thinking. It also goes deeper than anything before it, all the way down to individual techniques and the steps inside each. And its shape is different: instead of a straight ladder, it organizes around a hub, one central position everything else connects through.
The Master Plan hub. Side Mount sits at the center and every other position branches off it. From Javier Vazquez, The Master Plan.
And the depth underneath it: core positions expanding out to sub-configurations, individual techniques, and the steps within each. Positions, plus a priority overlay, plus depth.
Now the top of the climb, the one that looks like it cannot be mapped at all. Invisible jiu-jitsu, the concept Rickson Gracie coined and his student Henry Akins has done the most to teach publicly. Everything before this was anchored to positions. This is not. Rickson describes it as the unseen details, alignment, pressure, connection, and timing, that make a technique feel effortless and unavoidable. In his words, the invisible jiu-jitsu you do not show, you feel. He boils it down to two root ideas, base and connection, where connection means tight, firm contact with no slack, aimed at taking away the opponent’s ability to move. There is no ladder here, no numbered sequence. There is a small core of principle, and the claim that it applies everywhere.
And here is the thing that makes it the perfect final case. Rickson himself says the invisible feeling is in every position in jiu-jitsu. That sounds like the reason you would not need a map, the principle is universal, so just feel it. It is actually the reason you need one most. A universal principle with nowhere marked to find it is exactly what makes a system like this feel impossible to transmit, the famous you either feel it or you do not. A map fixes that. It does not draw a path, because there is no path. It puts the core in the center and shows the same principle surfacing across positions, here in the guard, here in the pass, here on the back, so the student knows where to go looking for the invisible thing. The map turns feel into something locatable. The most abstract system there is, and it still maps.
Invisible jiu-jitsu as a hub, not a ladder. My rendering of the principles from Rickson’s seminars. The top of the climb: no positional ladder at all, only principles, and it still draws.
That is the whole climb, from a beginner’s ranked positions to a master’s pure principles, four systems growing in complexity and abstraction at every step, and the map held the entire way up. Each one looks nothing like the others, a simple ladder, a developed ladder, a hub with depth, a core of principle, yet every one is the same act underneath: the pieces of the system, laid out so their structure can be followed. If it works at the concrete floor and still works at the abstract ceiling, it works for whatever system you are trying to build in between.
Every map has a purpose
This is my read on each, not a claim about what those coaches set out to do. My beginner map is built to shorten reaction time, so it tends to produce better competitors early, because the edge it hands you is speed of decision, you move while the other kid is still choosing. Invisible jiu-jitsu, as I understand it, is built to make deeper masters of the art, a richer feel and understanding rather than just faster hands. The Master Plan is built to simplify the learning process and reveal the central path through the whole art. And the leg-lock system, from what I can see of it, is built to master a domain, the lower body, and to drill in a strict order of priority, position before attack.
Four maps, four purposes, and the purpose shapes the map. That is worth noticing on its own: you do not draw one universal map of Jiu-Jitsu, you draw the map that serves what you are trying to build in the person holding it.
Every map is built for its purpose
It is tempting to say the lesson here is make the map small for a beginner and big for an advanced student, but that is not it, and getting it wrong matters. A map is not sized to the learner. It is built to fit what its system is actually for. Different systems have different jobs, so their maps look completely different, and both can be exactly right.
Compare the two ends we just walked. My beginner map is small on purpose, and it says so, it is built for child beginners, a narrow and specific job. It is not a shrunk-down version of a bigger system, it is a purpose-built small one, holding exactly what that subset of students needs and nothing more. The Master Plan is the opposite. It is built for every Jiu-Jitsu student and the whole of the art, the broadest job there is, so it is large and complete, and it should be. Making it smaller would break it, the same way padding my beginner map with everything I know would break that one. Neither is more correct. Each fits its purpose.
There is one more difference worth naming, because it is a property of the map, not a rule about maps in general. My beginner map is designed to grow. It is built to add layers as the student internalizes each one, the way you add rings to an onion, so the same map that serves a three-month white belt can keep serving her as she climbs. That is a deliberate feature of that particular map, chosen because its whole job is to grow with a progressing beginner. Not every map works that way. Some, like a system built to map the entire art at once, are complete from the start and grow differently, if at all. How a map grows, and the trap of one that stops, is the next thing to look at.
When a map evolves, and when it becomes a trap
First, clear up a confusion, because two different things get called the same word. A map growing is not the same as a map evolving, and mixing them up muddies the whole idea.
Take my beginner map adding layers as my daughter progresses. That looks like change, but the map is not evolving at all. The growth was designed into it from the start. Adding the next ring is the map doing exactly what it was built to do, unfolding on schedule as she internalizes each level. Nothing about the map is changing, it is revealing more of a plan it already held. That is growth, and it is not the same as evolution.
A map evolves for one reason only: the system underneath it changed. Remember what a system is from the last piece, a living thing that lives in the mind of the person who built it and grows as they grow. The map is just the picture of that organism. So when Danaher’s understanding of leg locks deepens, or Javi digs further into the Master Plan, the system itself moves, and an honest map has to be redrawn to match. That is the only real evolution of a map, tracking a system that has changed. Not the map unfolding a built-in design, but the map being redrawn because the territory it depicts is no longer the same.
And that is exactly where the trap is, stated as precisely as it deserves: a map becomes a trap when the system evolves and the map does not follow. Picture a globe that still shows Pangea. The Earth kept moving, the continents drifted for millions of years, but the globe froze at the start. It is not merely old, it is wrong, and anyone navigating by it is lost while trusting a guide. A map of a system is the same. If the creator’s understanding moves and the picture stays frozen, you are steering by a world that no longer exists. The danger is not a map that looks old. It is a map that no longer matches a system that has moved on without it.
For completeness, the design detail on the growing kind. My beginner map is built to grow with the student, most maps are not, it is a deliberate choice for that particular one. You do not add the next ring on a schedule, you add it when the current one is automatic, when she is hitting everything on it without thinking. That is the signal, and each ring is earned by mastering the last, the same engine as advancement by demonstrated mastery rather than by the calendar. Held loosely, I figure her map takes about two years to fully wear into instinct, but the number is not the point, the automaticity is. That is the map growing as designed. Whether it also evolves depends on something else entirely: whether my system changes underneath it.
Why it works for one student and not another
A map is not for everyone, and pretending it is would undercut the whole point. Some students latch onto a map and never let go. Others let it sail right over their heads and learn best by feel, or by repetition, or by live problem-solving. That is not a flaw in the map or in the student, it is just the plain fact that people learn differently, and no single way in reaches all of them.
I built the map in the first place because of how my own mind works. I think in patterns, and I watched a learner who does the same, someone searching for a pathway rather than for one more move to memorize. For a mind that hunts patterns, an explicit map is a far better on-ramp than another technique, because it gives the pattern something to lock onto. That is not everyone. Some students want the feel, or the reps, or the live problem, and a map does little for them. Which is exactly the point of this whole section: the map is one on-ramp, powerful for the minds it fits, and the answer is not to force it on everyone but to know it is one of several ways in.
That is also why a map is never the whole answer. The strongest classroom does not pick one on-ramp, it blends the map together with instruction, with games, and with live rounds, so that every kind of learner finds a way in. That blend is a conversation for the lesson itself, later in the series.
The map is yours. The transfer is the skill.
There is one more thing to be clear about, and it is the piece people get most wrong. Having a map and getting it into a student are two different problems, and the map is really a tool for you, the teacher, first. The student may never lay eyes on it. Hand someone a five hundred page system as a single diagram and they will glance at it and absorb nothing, the same way you cannot hand a raw topographical map to a person who was never taught to read one and expect them to find their way. That is not what a map is for.
And often the map is built as much for the person who made it as for anyone they teach. Drawing it is how you see your own thinking. A system can live in your head for years as a feel, a set of instincts you trust but have never actually looked at. The moment you try to put it on paper, you are forced to make it concrete, and that is where you discover what you truly believe, where the gaps are, where two ideas you held separately are actually the same idea, where a branch you always assumed was solid has nothing under it. The map is a mirror before it is a tool. Plenty of people map a system they did not invent for exactly this reason, not to teach it, but to understand it, to see someone else’s thinking laid out so they can absorb it into their own.
The information on the map gets transferred, and it gets transferred many different ways, most of them not by reading. Usually it goes by voice, in pieces, while you coach. My daughter has never seen the map I drew. I hold it, and I transfer it to her one piece at a time, a node before class, a review after. Most good instructors do some version of this whether they have drawn the map or not. Danaher does not sit students in front of a chart, he talks about his principles in class, and the way he talks matches the map he carries in his head. That is the normal way it works: you put the pieces in bit by bit, in class or at the end when you pull back to the bigger picture, until the student has slowly built the thing inside their own head and can finally read the map for themselves.
So the transfer, how you actually move a map from your head into theirs without drowning them, is its own skill, and it is a real one. This piece is about seeing what a map is and what it does. How to transfer it, and how to build your own, is the work of the building half of this series. For now it is enough to see that the map is the teacher’s instrument, and it is transmitted in pieces, over time, never dumped whole.
The bottom line
A system is principles plus structure. A map is what makes that structure followable, so you can hold it through the noise of a live roll instead of drowning in it. It is built to fit what its system is for, not to show off everything you know. It evolves when the system underneath it evolves, and the day it stops matching that system it turns from a guide into a trap. Build one well and a beginner can follow a system it would otherwise take them years to even see. That is not a trick of talent. It is what happens when the structure is finally visible.
Coming next
This piece sat with the system, the connective layer we drew in the last part, and showed how you make that layer visible so it can be followed and taught. That is still the what: what a system is, and what it looks like when you draw it. The next question is the how: how you actually deliver it on the mat. That is a different axis, and the loudest argument in Jiu-Jitsu right now lives on it. So the series turns next to the constraints-led approach, and puts the most contested teaching method in the sport to the test.
Open Minds. Open Mats. Open Source.