Dealing With Being Smashed at BJJ Training

With 2x European Champion, Emilia Tuukkanen || Instagram @emiliatuukkanen

Being smashed in BJJ is something I can bet almost every girl and smaller guy has experienced. It can be annoying, humiliating and anti-motivating, as well as dangerous. Being beaten up by someone using only force and muscle, without any technique, is deeply discouraging, and it is not at all what BJJ is about.

Being Smashed Is Not the Same as Jiu Jitsu Pressure

I don't want you to confuse being beaten by technique, the right kind of pressure and speed, with being beaten by over-powering strength. Nothing makes your jiu jitsu better than getting your ass kicked by someone with better technique than you, no matter what size they are. My favorite sparring partners are often a lot bigger than me, and they kick my butt with beautiful, perfectly-timed technique, pressure and movement. Without them and those rounds I wouldn't be half as good at BJJ as I am now.

The difference is that when someone smashes you, they often just grab your wrists, hands, legs and ankles and try to keep you still. They pass your guard by grabbing you, shoving your legs to the ground and falling on you with their full weight. They don't move. If they feel you might escape side control or mount, they simply hold on, they want to win the round, and they don't care if that means eight minutes of lying motionless on top of you so you can't breathe. They don't care about dropping their full weight and strength into knee-on-belly if it keeps you pinned; sometimes they even try to tap you there. The only submissions they usually get are the kimura and the americana, often yanked on with full force so you don't even have time to tap. And when you try to defend yourself or just move under all that pressure, there's a good chance of catching an accidental elbow or knee to the face.

Advice From Caio Terra

I wanted to get some input from more experienced people, who have been dealing with being smashed for far longer than me. I could not think of a better person than Caio Terra, the living image of technique conquering all, and if you want proof his approach still wins in 2026, just watch what Mikey Musumeci and the current generation of roosterweights do to bigger training partners with pure technique:

"Being small, two things will never change: 1. I know I will never be bigger than the people I train with and 2. I'll never be stronger. This forces us to focus on technique, especially our guard, because when they pass it is very unpleasant. Instead of settling from side control where they can put lots of pressure on your body, as they pass always try and turtle, where you will have stronger frames to deal with their weight.

"Another important thing is to choose who you train with. When I train with bigger people, it's usually upper belts or black belts, because they have more control of their bodies and don't go crazy where they could hurt you."

Big Egos, Small Opponents

Many people (often bigger guys who have no idea what I'm talking about, since they have never been smashed) say that jiu jitsu is about smaller people being able to beat bigger opponents. And it is! That's the reason BJJ became a popular martial art in the first place, and it's one of the reasons I love jiu jitsu. But part of that early magic was that the big guys didn't know what the Gracies were doing, unlike in BJJ classes today, where everyone in the room has watched the same YouTube breakdowns and instructionals. Most of the time there's no problem with bigger opponents, but then there are those meatheads whose egos can't handle the thought of losing to a girl or a smaller guy. They will do everything they can to make sure it doesn't happen, regardless of what happens to their partner. They feel like winners after beating up a higher belt, no matter what size. We once had a huge white belt who actually went around bragging about tapping out a judo brown belt in BJJ class, he just never mentioned that it was with a heel hook (prohibited) on a 55 kg girl. That perfectly sums up what I mean by the ego stuff.

I wanted a female perspective as well, so I asked Outi Järvilehto, purple belt roosterweight World champion in 2014 and brown belt World roosterweight silver medalist in 2015, about the same thing. She is as small as it gets, and has almost never had the chance to train with someone her own size:

"I have learned to tell people if they smash me. I am sort of okay with people using a lot of force with me, but if the strength is used very explosively or it feels like I could get injured, I might even tell them in the middle of sparring. Almost always the ones using a lot of power are beginners and either don't realize the difference in our physical powers, or they simply don't have the technique to match mine and replace that with force.

"If someone doesn't get the point after I have told them, I will avoid sparring with them in the future, or if I absolutely have to train with them, I will be very passive and just focus on keeping myself safe and not getting injured. The whole point of BJJ classes is to train together so that we both get better at jiu jitsu, so it is important to tell your partner if they are smashing you."

Smashing Wastes Everyone's Jiu Jitsu

One reason I hate getting smashed so much is that it is such a waste of my precious training time. The only things it develops are my ability to breathe with a horrible amount of weight and pressure on me, and my ability to hold back tears after feeling humiliated. Neither one of us is getting better at jiu jitsu from that kind of sparring, and smashing is a huge risk to my health, since the smaller person gets injured easily, broken ribs, toes, fingers, or any of the injuries that come from over-powered submissions.

A Rule of Thumb for Bigger Grapplers

I understand that it's hard for big guys who have just started jiu jitsu to know whether they are "smashers". One good rule of thumb: if after sparring you are totally out of breath and exhausted while your smaller partner seems fresh, even though you dominated the whole round, you most likely used a lot of force, and your partner just focused on surviving uninjured. It should be exactly the other way around: the small one using everything they have while the bigger one concentrates on using pure technique. The big one should not be the one dying after rolling with the small guy.

See you on the mats, and please, get off my ribs first.

Originally published in Jiu Jitsu Style with Emilia Tuukkanen. Refreshed for 2026.