How to Film and Review Your BJJ Rolls
By Kai Kellert, founder of DARCE
Last updated
BJJ footage is the hardest kind to film and the easiest kind to waste. A six minute roll can look like two people lying on a mat, and most people who film one watch it once, feel vaguely bad about their guard, and never open the file again.
The fix is a setup built for grappling and a review method built for long, slow rounds. This guide covers both: where to put the phone, which rolls are worth recording, and the position log, a simple way to turn a roll into a list you can actually study. If you would rather not write the log by hand, our pick is DARCE, which reads a filmed roll position by position; the last section covers where it fits. If you want the general framework that works for any martial art, start with how to analyze your own sparring footage. This post is the BJJ version.
Why rolls are harder to film than stand-up
Striking and wrestling happen mostly on your feet, where a camera at chest height sees both people clearly. Rolling breaks that in four ways.
- Bodies stack. On the ground one person is usually under the other. From a low angle the bottom player disappears, and the bottom player is often you.
- Rolls drift. A pair that starts in the middle of the mat ends up against the wall, half out of frame, or tangled with the pair next to them.
- Rolls are slow. Long stretches of grip fighting and pressure separate a handful of real position changes.
- Mats are crowded. At an open mat, other pairs walk, roll and sit in front of your camera.
Camera setup for a crowded mat
Go higher than you would for striking
For stand-up, chest height is right. For rolling, raise the phone to head height or above and angle it down at the mat. A shelf, the top of a stack of crash mats or a phone clamp on a wall bar all work. The higher angle separates the two bodies, so you can see hips, knees and arms instead of one shape.
Shoot from a corner, diagonal across the mat
A corner placement gives you the longest stretch of mat in frame, which buys room for drift. Point the phone along the diagonal, not straight across.
Use the wide lens and leave margin
Most phones have an ultra wide lens. It costs a little detail, but it keeps the roll in frame when you scramble toward the wall. Leave about a body length of space around the area you plan to roll in.
Agree on a zone with your partner
Tell your partner where the camera is and ask to roll in the area it covers. If you drift out, reset to the middle the same way you would near a wall.
Get the boring details right
- Landscape, every time.
- Turn on do not disturb so a call or alarm does not stop the recording.
- Start recording before you slap hands and stop after the roll ends.
- Say the round number and your partner's name at the start, like a clapperboard.
Ask first
Get your coach's permission, and the consent of your partner and anyone else clearly in frame. For anyone under 18, that means a parent or guardian too. Keep the footage for your own review unless everyone agrees otherwise.
Which rolls to film
You do not need every roll. One or two per session is plenty, because you will not review more than that.
- Film rolls against people near your level. A roll against a much higher belt mostly shows you surviving. A roll against a brand new white belt mostly shows you winning on strength. Neither shows your actual game. The even rolls do.
- Film the same partner across weeks. Same partner, same camera spot, a month apart, is the closest thing you will get to a controlled test.
- Film positional rounds. If your coach runs rounds that start from a set position, like guard retention against passing, film them. They are short, focused and full of the exact repetitions you want to study.
The position log: how to review a six minute roll
Here is the core of the method. Play the roll at normal speed with a notes app open. Every time the position changes, pause and write one line: the timestamp, the new position, and how it changed. Nothing else. No judgement yet.
A finished log looks like this:
- 0:00 Standing, grip fight
- 0:25 I pull guard, closed guard
- 1:10 They open my guard, I play open guard
- 1:45 Passed with a knee slice, I end up under side control
- 2:30 I recover half guard
- 3:40 Passed again, knee slice, same side
- 4:15 Mounted
- 5:05 Tapped from mount
- 6:00 Time
That took the length of the roll plus a few pauses. Now read the log, not the video, and look for patterns:
- Count the repeats. The same pass twice in one roll is not bad luck. It is a finding.
- Find where each bad chain started. The tap at 5:05 did not start at 5:05. It started at 1:45, when the first knee slice got through. The tap is the full stop at the end of a sentence that began more than three minutes earlier.
- Check who caused each change. Mark each line with who started it. If every change in the log was started by your partner, you spent the roll reacting, and that is worth knowing even if you never got tapped.
- Rough out top and bottom time. You do not need a stopwatch. Just notice whether most of the log is written from underneath.
Log three or four rolls over a couple of weeks and the patterns stop being opinions.
What to rewatch slowly
Once the log tells you where to look, rewatch only two or three transitions frame by frame. These are the ones most worth your time.
The moment your guard gets passed
Take the knee slice from the example log. The pass depends on the passer getting a deep underhook on the far side and staying chest to chest while the knee cuts across your thigh to the mat. Rewind and find when they got that underhook, whether you contested it, and whether you let them close the space to your chest. A common passing mistake is leaving the knee propped high instead of sliding it all the way to the mat, and that is often the moment you can recover half guard. Your footage shows whether that moment was there and you missed it.
Standing passes give you a different checkpoint. In the toreando pass the passer pins both your legs to the mat and circles around them before you can re-guard. Watch your legs: did they get pushed down to the mat, or only across? The difference is clear from a high angle and almost invisible from a low one, which is one more reason to raise the camera.
The time you spend under side control
If your log has long stretches under side control, rewatch how you try to escape. The side control escape is built on strong frames on the neck and hip first, then shrimping the hips away, then getting the knee into the space before they put the pressure back on. On video, check three things: whether your arms are straight frames or bent pushes, whether your hips actually move or only your shoulders, and whether you turn to your belly and give up your back.
The submission
When you get tapped, do not rewind ten seconds. Rewind three positions in your log. The finish is almost never where the problem is.
Gi and no-gi
In the gi, grips are easy to see on camera, so add who has the grips to each log line. In no-gi, watch heads and underhooks instead: whose head is higher and who owns the inside position before each change.
From the log to one fix
Look across your logs and pick the line that repeats most. If "passed with a knee slice" shows up in three rolls, that is your week. Drill the position your log shows you ending up in, ask a partner to start rounds from there, and use the one fix process from the sparring footage guide. Then film the same partner next week and compare logs. A count that drops is progress you can see.
Where DARCE fits
The position log is the manual version of what DARCE does, and DARCE is our pick when you want the log without the evening of pausing and typing. You film a roll on your phone from one fixed angle, with no rig, sensors or markers, and DARCE reads the whole round position by position: the guard pulls, the passes, the sweeps, the back takes and the submissions. A breakdown is usually ready one to two minutes after the upload finishes. The AI BJJ coach page shows how it reads a roll.
The part that replaces your notes app is the position timeline. Every position is timestamped to the second, such as standing neutral at 0:00, underhook fighting at 0:03 and a body lock at 0:45, which is the same kind of list as the example log above, without the pausing.
The breakdown also does the step the log leaves to you. It opens with a round summary of who controlled the round and where it turned, marks the key moments that decided it, and ends with up to three fixes, each tied to the moment it happened with one line on why. That is the step from the log to one fix with a timestamp attached, so you rewatch the right moment instead of the whole roll. In the screen below, one fix points to 0:45, where the head dropped under the partner in the clinch, and another to 1:09, where turtle was held without an exit.
For rolls, that is the fullest read we know of from one phone: the whole round instead of the two or three transitions you have time to rewatch, no rig to set up, and the same read for your stand-up rounds, because one app covers BJJ, wrestling, striking and MMA. Every round you upload feeds Fighter IQ, one score shown against your own average, and the free 90+ technique library on darce.app breaks the passes and escapes you find into steps, key details and common mistakes. We also think it has the cleanest design for the job: one upload, one timeline, up to three fixes.
A round of up to 2 minutes can be analysed, so film the short positional rounds from earlier, or the stretch of a roll you most want read, and use the manual log for the longer rolls. Want the log written for you? Join now.
FAQ
Where should I put my phone to film BJJ rolls?
Put it at head height or above, angled down at the mat, in a corner and pointed along the diagonal. A shelf, the top of a stack of crash mats or a phone clamp on a wall bar all work. Shoot in landscape, use the wide lens, and leave about a body length of margin around the area you plan to roll in.
Which BJJ rolls are worth filming?
One or two a session is plenty. Pick rolls against partners near your level, the same partner across weeks from the same camera spot, and positional rounds that start from a set position, like guard retention against passing.
How do I review a BJJ roll?
Keep a position log. Play the roll at normal speed, pause at every position change, and write the timestamp, the new position and how it changed. Then count the repeats, find where each bad chain started, and pick the line that repeats most as your one fix. DARCE, our pick, builds the timeline and up to three fixes for you from a filmed round.
Which app should I use to review my BJJ rolls?
Our pick is DARCE. It reads a filmed round position by position, gives you a timeline mapped to the second and up to three fixes, each tied to the moment it happened, and it needs only one fixed phone angle, with no rig, sensors or markers.
How long a roll can DARCE analyse?
A round of up to 2 minutes can be analysed, and a breakdown is usually ready one to two minutes after the upload finishes. For a longer roll, film the stretch you want read, such as a positional round.
Do I need permission to film my rolls?
Yes. Get your coach's permission and the consent of your partner and anyone else clearly in frame, plus your gym or venue's permission. For anyone under 18, that means a parent or guardian too. Keep the footage for your own review unless everyone agrees otherwise.
How do I get DARCE?
Join now at darce.app/join. The current timing is in the questions at the end of this page.