The 4 Biggest Differences Between Gi and No-Gi Jiu-Jitsu
A practical guide to the four biggest differences between Gi and No-Gi in the modern jiu-jitsu era.
When I first started BJJ 12 years ago, there wasn’t a huge difference between Gi and No Gi. If someone did Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, you could bet that their skills were evenly spread between Gi, No-Gi and self-defence.
Fast forward to today, and while both stem from the same jiu-jitsu language, Gi and No-Gi have developed their own dialects. Years of independent evolution under different rule sets have led us to the point where Gi and No-Gi have become distinct disciplines, requiring separate skills, strategies, and tactics.
Over time, this has made switching between the two much harder. In fact, that’s why a lot of specialised jiu-jitsu players see it less as a ‘switch’ and more as a ‘transition’ that needs to be carefully planned as they move from what feel like two completely different realms of jiu-jitsu.
I’ve had a lot of conversations recently about the differences between Gi and No Gi in modern jiu-jitsu, so here’s a short essay covering 4 major differences between the two.
Difference 1: Control-based and Movement-based
Gordon Ryan says that most jiu-jitsu games fit into one of two categories:
Control-based: These are jiu-jitsu games that focus on inhibiting and restricting movement.
Movement-based: These are jiu-jitsu games that focus on creating and using movement to gain an advantage.
Obviously, this is not binary but rather a jiu-jitsu continuum. Everyone’s game will have control-based aspects and movement-based aspects even if some people are extreme examples of one or the other. For example, Murilo Santana is the epitome of control-based jiu-jitsu, while the Ruotolo brothers are a prime example of movement-based jiu-jitsu.
I also think this categorisation says a lot about the core difference between Gi and No Gi. A few months ago, I was talking to a black belt who has spent the majority of his decades on the mat training in the Gi. I asked him what he thought the single biggest challenge was when transitioning to No-Gi.
He said in Gi, there is no movement you cannot mitigate with some sort of grip, but in No Gi, it is impossible to completely eliminate movement. That’s why Gi is more control-based. If a decent Gi player gets to their desired grips, you’ll have little to no opportunity to escape.
Conversely, No-Gi is more movement-based. You have to deal with the opposite problem. With very little to grip - and the grips you do have losing friction as your training partner gets sweaty - you aren’t able to inhibit movement anywhere near as much.
Even if you look to Mixed-Martial Artists with wrestling-heavy styles of Dagestani or Chechen origin (think the Nurmagomedovs, Machachevs and Chimeavs of this world) - their styles are built around the fact that even they can’t pin someone down to one spot.
The genius of MMA-wrestling innovators like Aldumanap Nurmagemedov is that they developed grappling systems that worked by giving the attacker different staging positions to follow, thereby exhausting their opponents during the scramble. They weren’t trying to stop movement, but instead were creating systems where they could use their opponent’s movement against them.
So, the transition from Gi to No-Gi is really going from the most control-based form of jiu-jitsu to a more movement-based one. While Gi players can control every inch of a scramble if they have a good understanding of how to use the Gi, No-Gi players have to become comfortable inside the scramble and learn to control through transition.
That’s why all-time great No-Gi players like Marcelo Garcia were said to maximise their time spent in the scramble:
“Marcelo’s training philosophy was to spend his whole jiu-jitsu life in the scramble. It was to the point that he would let opponents move so he could spend more of his training time in transition. It was all about maximising time spent in the in-between.”
According to one of Garcia’s first black belts (and chess prodigy), Josh Waitzkin
In Gi, all the extra grips delineate between different positions and also slow down jiu-jitsu. With fewer gripping options, No Gi has a much larger grey area. That’s why I love Waitzkin’s line about ‘maximising time spent in the in-between’. I think it encapsulates something all No-Gi players need to get really good at compared to Gi players.
Difference 2: Leverage from bottom position
Recently I had a seminar from a Euros silver and gold medalist (brown belt Gi and black belt No Gi, respectively). He made a really important point about the difference in leverage between Gi and No Gi.
In a jiu-jitsu context, leverage is something that allows you to exert maximum force over your opponent with minimum effort.
The visiting black belt made the point that in Gi, you can exert as much leverage from the bottom position as you can from the top. Whereas in No-Gi, especially if you’re against a good top player, the deck is stacked against you whenever you’re on bottom. Gravity isn’t on your side, and you don’t have many great gripping options from guard (compared to Gi) to manipulate your opponent’s posture.
I think it’s a subtle but HUGE difference that massively influences strategy in Gi compared to No-Gi. For example, when a match starts, in Gi it makes a lot of sense to pull guard immediately, whereas in No-Gi it might make more sense to wrestle to stay on top from the start.
I’m currently prepping a few folks for competition, and in Gi I’m encouraging a lot of them to have really aggressive guard games. But for No-Gi we stick to Chris Haueter’s 3 rules because it's much harder to generate leverage from bottom against good opponents:
Get on top
Stay on top
Have an impassable guard
Big player vs Small Player
Leverage is also the force that allows a far smaller BJJ player to beat a far larger BJJ player. Braulio Estima put it another way when he said, ‘Every technique has a weight limit.' Out of the two, because of the leverage the bottom player can exert over the top player, Gi has a higher weight limit than No-Gi.
That doesn’t mean smaller No-Gi athletes don’t have strategies to defeat larger opponents, but their strategies differ from those in Gi. And when you compare all-time great absolute performances in the absolute division across Gi and No-Gi, you see how strategies tend to change because of this central difference in where leverage can, and cannot, be created.
In Gi
If you look at legendary small-man runs in Gi absolute divisions, they tend to involve a smaller player using an aggressive guard game because of the extra leverage the Gi affords them from bottom position. Let me give you two examples.
First, Mikey Musumeci. At the 2020 IBJJF European Championships, Musumeci competed against much larger opponents in the absolute, including a really close match against ultra-heavyweight Mahamed Aly. His strategy was to pull guard immediately. You can see this at the start of his match against Seif-Eddine Houmine:
Lucas Lepri’s 2019 Gi absolute run is another example of how the Gi gives opportunities for a smaller player to use a really aggressive guard game. Despite having good Gi takedowns, notice how in this match Lepri quickly pulls guard (against the same opponent as Mikey), gets straight to a sweep, then submits his opponent with a bow-and-arrow choke.
Or, in Lepri’s match against Kaynan Duarte on the same day, you can see how he goes from wrestling in a single-leg with the lapel looped through - but rather than finishing the takedown, he uses it as a guard pull into a really interesting deep half variation:
In No Gi
In No-Gi, the great equaliser for smaller players isn’t guard itself, but leg attacks.
If you look at Lachlan Giles’ legendary 2019 ADCC run, you’ll notice his strategy is quite different to the Gi examples we just watched. Even though Giles pulls guard, his main aim is to get deep into a leg entanglement. Without the leverage of Gi grips, No-Gi bottom players should have one goal against larger players: enter the legs.
There are two reasons leg entanglements are a great equaliser in No-Gi against larger opponents:
You have two limbs around your opponent’s one limb. This is mechanically strong but also provides much more friction than most No-Gi grips. Leg entry positions like Single Leg X are extremely hard to just power out of if the person in the position understands what they’re doing.
Perhaps more importantly - your hips are underneath their hips. In my opinion, this is the single greatest way to create leverage from the bottom position in No-Gi. Up until you get hip under hip, a larger opponent has a lot of power and movement they can use against you.
Notice in this clip of Lachlan’s finishing sequence over Kaynan Duarte that it all starts with his entry into the legs, allowing him to get his hips under Duarte’s for a nice heel hook finish.
Or, you can see the same strategy deployed in a different way in this amazing match between Garry Tonon and the larger Gilbert Burns. Look how Tonon actually goes from defending side-control to finding a really crafty entry into saddle from defending Burns’ dog-fight position.
While the entry is different, Tonon’s end goal is the same as Lachlan’s; enter into the legs and get under Burns’ hips. The interesting difference in this example is that Tonon finds an opportunity to do so during a defensive scramble. Tonon, like Garcia, was another master of the in-between.
Difference 3: Diverging Specialisms and Meta
Even in comparing these examples, you’ll see that the strategy and tactics deployed across Gi and No Gi are quite different. This brings us to another core difference between Gi and No Gi. These days, they are quite simply different sports, with diverging specialisms and meta.
In the early 2000s, Gi and No Gi were much closer together. It’s why even amazing No-Gi players like Marcelo were multi-world Gi champions, and Gi legends like Roger Gracie won ADCC titles.
While there are still athletes who do both, it’s more common now to see elite specialist athletes needing to transition between sports. For example, Tainan Dalpra, Mikey Musumeci and Nicholas Meragali were all elite Gi-players before they made the crossover to No-Gi.
As a brief side note, there’s a really interesting question about whether Gi athletes are inherently better than No-Gi athletes. While there are many Gi athletes who transition to world-class No-Gi level, it’s far rarer the other way around - but that’s an article for another day.
Training Gi and No-Gi today likely means training a completely different meta if you want to go deep into the sport. In Gi, you’ll likely go deep into sport-specific positions:
Different forms of lapel guard
Berimbolo and crab guard transitions
Lasso and spider guard
Keymaster and Matrix Back takes
The list goes on. Whereas in No-Gi, there is a different set of sport-specific positions you need to develop:
Leg lock positions like saddle, outside ashi, backside 50/50 and associated entry guards, including reverse X and K-Guard
Wrestling and scrimmaging is something that continues to become more and more important in No-Gi
More niche front headlock attacks that are tricky to pull off around the Gi collar like the high-wrist guillotine
Now if that sounds like a lot of techniques that’ll make it difficult to choose what to focus on, I hear you.
Recently, I made a Longevity x Universality Matrix to help people weigh up which techniques are most worth their time, based on how long they have been used versus how many rule sets and scenarios they apply across.
All of the above fall into Quadrant 2: Specialist Systems. These are systems that have worked for a long time, but only work (at the moment) within a specific ruleset.
You can get the full framework here.
Difference 4: Injury Risk & Longevity
Another big difference is injury risk. Walking Tengu made a really good point on one of my posts the other day about how - due to the fast-moving, scrambling nature of No-Gi - there’s probably more risk for injury compared to Gi.
I think this is another reason why it's worth getting really good at training and understanding the in-between in No-Gi as we mentioned earlier. It’s usually within these scrambles or grey areas of jiu jitsu (especially wrestling-related) that people get injured.
That’s also why it’s important to have a good coach who can create a safe training environment in both Gi and No Gi. One thing we do at the gym I coach at is we flag common positions that cause injuries, so our students have really high awareness of where they are and what to watch for in each position.
We’ve even identified a couple of really ‘high-risk’ positions that we make sure all our coaches flag when teaching them. If you’re interested in what some of these positions are, I included them in this article I wrote on longevity in BJJ.
Longevity
And on the subject of longevity, we come to the final difference between Gi and No Gi for today. And that is that Gi is probably easier for those later in the sport, or in years, than No-Gi.
Again, I’m not saying No-Gi is a young-person’s game. There are plenty of training partners I’ve had in the 40-60 age range who were extremely handy in No-Gi. But I know from my own experience that - even despite being a No-Gi specialist - the older I get, the more I’m gravitating towards the Gi.
Thanks for reading!
I hope you enjoyed today’s piece, and I know a lot of what I said is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the differences between Gi and No-Gi. There were also some really interesting contributions to this thread about the differences you see between Gi and No-Gi at your schools.
Thanks again for reading, and I hope you have a great week next week!
Spitballing: Do you think the CLA is inherently more suited to No-Gi? I figure fewer variables lends to the notion that it’s easier for constraints to be impactful.
Just curious as it seems most CLA advocates are No-Gi.