These are the attacks that align most naturally with lockdown play in half guard. I will often use the lockdown in the beginning to adjust my position and then perform the Basic Half Guard Sweeps, but those require unhooking the lockdown. The Electric Chair involves keeping the lockdown all the way through. You can go right into it from a whip down, or you can threaten Old School first so that they’ll give you space to put your electric under hooks in.
Annoy all your friends! Lockdowns are not comfortable. They can also be used to stall and ruin a roll. However, I love the lockdown for the ability to whip down to recover the under-hook and also for electric chairs. Electric chairs are fun! See JRE 478 for the Bravo vs Gracie II breakdown.
How to lockdown
Why I use the lockdown
There are several things I don’t like about the video below, but I wanted something that covered the whip up idea. An under-hook isn’t worth much if you’re flat on your back and far from the top player’s hips. The whip up is a movement to turn onto your right side and put yourself under your opponents hips where you have better leverage to attack sweeps. This was captured better in Mastering the Rubber Guard but I don’t have footage from that to link to.
Half guard is a great sweeping position. It’s my preferred sweeping position. Not only will the sweeps put you on top, but they typically come with a guard pass included. It’s often easier for me to get to top side control by sweeping someone from half guard than it is to start in their guard and pass.
I’ve seen many variations of this basic sweep. Leg configurations and underhook positioning change, but the general pattern is the same: underhook -> come up -> drive into the top guy -> grab the far knee -> land in side control. I see the argument for peeling the lower leg of the top guy with your outside leg, but in rolling I rarely execute it that way. I might avoid some wrestling challenges in Dogfight by pulling their leg out more, but if this first attack fails, the plan B roll-under sweep usually works.
The next move is the logical response to counter pressure defending against the previous sweep. In the video below, Leite makes a point to keep the leg hooked during the roll but he doesn’t really justify it. I don’t normally do that. I’m sure he has a valid reason for pointing out the maintenance of that hook, but I don’t immediately understand the benefit.
I don’t have videos to share for them, but Danaher’s half guard fundamentals videos actually work in the opposite order. Danaher presents a variation of the roll-under sweep as the first option and an attack resembling the first sweep as the counter response when the roll-under is avoided by the top player. That’s interesting to me. I’m pretty attached to the order presented here.
This is where we started. At the bottom, getting smashed. Danaher’s video shows the most straightforward approach to making space to pry your way out of bottom side control. In addition to this movement, always look out for free legs. Top players can get greedy or impatient and make sloppy transitions to mount or toward other positions. Be prepared to catch their leg in your half guard and start initiating offense from the bottom.
I’ve always had a harder time escaping side control compared to mount. Mount might offer better submission options than side control, but side control is easier to hold. It’s not necessarily wise in a scored contest, but I often let people move to mount so that I can escape from there. From mount, half guard is only an elbow escape away.
If you’ve had enough philosophy and detail and just want to see the move, this is another simple depiction of it. Here, he demonstrates escaping all the way into full closed guard if you’re into that sort of thing:
The other standard mount escape is a roll. The Umpa escape can be alternated with elbow escapes if the top guy is being tough to shake. Don’t forget that the Umpa will land you in your opponent’s guard. Cross chokes and Ezekiel chokes initiated in mount can still be finished in guard, so you can’t relax your defenses yet because you hit the roll.
If you don’t already recognize Osiander, I’ll warn you here about his R rated language.