From my recollection of morning crew folks at the recent tournament, I saw escapes, guard passes, and successful guard pulls, but not successful guard offense. Also, everyone ended up in half guard at some point. Half guard life is real.
We’re revisiting that in class. Most of the things we’re doing have already been covered by previous posts. See: https://halfguardlife.com/tag/half-guard/ for the whole collection. More specifically, we’ve started by working from bad half guard positions into better half guard positions using the Whip Down with the Lockdown and the John Wayne Sweep.
I’ve referenced similar BMac videos before, but I don’t think I’ve shared this one:
If our opponent is very resistant to movements across our body (as in the Whip Down or John Wayne), then we could turn into them in the move Kesting calls the Kamikaze. He also continues with a move to bail on half guard using a butterfly hook and his own John Wayne explanation. We’ll work on those as well:
I’ve addressed this scenario in class multiple times over the years. Rivas lives in this position. I never really believed in Lachlan’s sweep once the top person cleared the legs:
Y’all know I’ve got a lot of love for Lachlan, but frankly I think the top player in this example is moving terribly. If you walk in slow circle around the head and then put yourself into a straight line with the bottom guy who has control of the arm, of course you could get knocked over. Why would you move like that? If I’m trying to unwind the kimura grip and transition into the arm bar position, I am going to step my leg directly over my opponent to the other side, behind his back. There, I maintain a solid base and can twist my hips over him. Unless there’s a major strength advantage, I don’t feel like I’m going to get pushed over there. I’m not in a hurry to flop back into an armbar either. That’s almost always an error for an armbar from the top. I don’t want my weight to come off of my opponent, I want to keep it on him as much as possible. Still, we worked on the position from top and bottom and then did full speed situational drills with everyone. The results consistently favored the Hughes vs GSP 1 outcome:
Rivas loves it so much, we gave it another shot at open mat today. Kimura grip from the bottom with no guard. The first results were the same.
Then, Rivas started extending his grip more. I found that when I spun to the other side, I was losing his arm, and therefore control of him. The problem seemed to be where our elbows were. If our arm entanglement compressed, I could force my captured arm under his elbow and effectively reverse the grip on him. When his grip extended out, I couldn’t get the hook on his arm and any armbar attempts were destined for failure as he could pull right out and come up.
For a few rounds after that, I found myself abandoning the armbar and driving my knee across his torso to land in mount. This was eventually denied by turning his hips to face me and hip escaping. Then, he was able to get his legs back into position while maintaining a grip that was quite uncomfortable to my shoulder. It didn’t seem to be an immediate finishing position, but it felt like a setup to the Swim Move as 10P would call it:
This is an ongoing investigation, but I’m not feeling so dismissive of that kimura grip anymore.
I’ve also found myself watching competition footage of Bernardo Faria pulling half guard but I haven’t had the time to cut it up like GambleDub Breakdowns did.
I watched a few videos recently that were less about specific techniques and more about philosophies related to training. First, I came across this discussion of guard pulling. It pretty well captures my feelings about training standup. There are folks who complain about the lack of standup in Jiu Jitsu and it’s fair to note the deficiency at the highest levels, but there are practical reasons to de-emphasize it at the hobbyist level.
The rest of the interview is interesting because Travis Stevens is such a beast from his judo background, but here are some thoughts on BJJ takedowns from a Judo silver medalist:
On another subject, Andrew Wiltse went on a rant about skill development. I’m less interested in his detour about optimal strength and conditioning training beyond my agreement that rolling is not the optimal way to achieve it. That isn’t a huge concern from me. As Kesting’s video noted, there’s a difference between dedicated competition training and learning.
I know rolling is fun and I try to accommodate that in class but I do agree that free rolling and not using enough intermediate levels of intensity prevent skill development. I’m super guilty of this in my guitar playing as I have a tendency to play songs within my current skill level rather than doing more deliberate practice to advance the level. There’s a balance between having fun and progressing, but everyone needs to ask themselves whether they really want to get better over time and are they really doing the things that would contribute to that.
Since we’ve been practicing the shameful act of guard pulling, we can use that to attempt takedowns. I like this video. I’ve seen Gerson hit the ankle pick:
I wish the camera person would’ve turned away from Danaher to show the tani otoshi while he described it. Check out this page for a description of the move, which also acknowledges the risk to the knee: https://shintarohigashi.com/blog/safe-ways-to-do-tani-otoshi#:~:text=It’s%20a%20very%20big%20throw,to%20do%20tani%2Dotoshi%20safely. Judoka on the internet object to the inclusion of tani otoshi on the banned list, saying that it’s poor execution or a misunderstanding of the technique. I think it still fits within the same logic as the ban on jumping guard. For a clean guard jump, as demonstrated in Danaher’s video, it’s not dangerous, but in the dynamic flow of an actual roll, the execution is less reliable and it becomes risky.
Now, let’s get the pejorative memes out of the way:
Feel free to comment with your own mockery of guard pulling and butt scooting. However…
To get the actual content started, here’s a video of the Wiltse brothers giving you a description of guard pulling philosophy. It’s still better to be a better wrestler, but sometimes you know your standup game is inferior to your opponent’s. Andrew moves fast and covers a lot of movements, but he expresses an important mindset of intention and commitment in guard pulling. It is not about passively sitting down, it is the initiation of offense:
As Keenan admits at the end, this video is really more of a sacrifice throw than a guard pull. Still, it’s a helpful movement for pulling someone in and initiating offense. He breaks it down a bit slower than anything in the Wiltse video, so it might be more practical to integrate it directly.
I like the attacks from turtle. I encourage everyone to try it on Travis:
In Galvao’s video above, he mentions using the Ezekiel against Eduardo Telles, who is known for his turtle guard. Here is video of that match:
Since I love bow and arrow chokes so much, I naturally enjoy moving into the “cross back” position that Danaher applies in his video. Putting your legs in position to trap an arm and also add leverage to the choke is powerful:
Travis Stevens goes cross-back earlier in order to establish the grip:
Just for fun, sauce distribution:
Ok, it’s not about the back, but I fell into a Youtube hole looking at Ezekiels and this is rad:
When we returned to side control as a position, we started with transitions to mount:
I love me some Twister side, so this is the mount movement that I use the most:
We also talked about the more traditional knee-across transition:
I’m not a big user of Kimuras or Americanas, so we acknowledged but haven’t spent a lot of time on these yet. We can come back to them.
Boom brought out the Brabo choke a couple months back. I love it. We will also work on the cross and baseball bat chokes that exist in the same neighborhood.
Everyone at Roots knows that I want to play half guard on my right side and lock down my opponent’s right leg. To avoid that, training partners will put their right foot on the mat and keep their right knee up. This is how I like to respond.
When we were practicing side control defense, we covered stiff arms to prevent guard passers from securing side control. Now Jared just shoves everyone off of him and it’s hard to complete passes on him. How can we deal with that from the top position?
Day 1, we played with an overhook guard to get to an omoplata. I don’t have an exact replica of my approach, but it’s something like a combination of these next two videos. Lachlan has better details than I shared on getting to a triangle position from an overhook closed guard:
I don’t finish a ton of triangles. They always feel like more of a fight for me compared to omoplatas. People seem much more willing to let me have the shoulder. Even if I only get a sweep out of it, the exchange feels worth it. Stephan Kesting understands my struggle. It’s around 3:08 where he does the move that matches my departure from Lachlan’s triangle sequence above:
On NoGi Wednesday, we got to the omoplata from rubber guard. The first video below ends with a gogoplata rather than an omoplata, which is nice if you can get it. I find it hard to stop opponents from turning away very hard and again offering the shoulder rather than the choke.
Denny shows essentially the same rubber guard progression, but skips the gogoplata and goes right to the omoplata:
Day 3 added a couple of different ways to initiate omoplata attacks. First, my butterfly guard guru attached the omoplata to the hip bump sweep:
We also talked about going to an omoplata when someone attempts to stand up to pass your closed guard:
If you’ve ever managed to get Travis in side control but then wondered where the heck he went. He probably did this to you. Coach Brian of TeachMeGrappling is very fond of this move as well and likes to end with a D’Arce choke:
More details for skeptics and struggles from the previous video:
