I started using the octopus moves shown in this video when people turned to face my legs in my halfguard. I didn’t really want to be there, but I needed some answer when the usual lockdown and underhook sequences were denied to me.
Craig Jones has some cheeky explanations of the reach around guard. He also takes a moment to remind you of the importance of rabbit season vs duck season:
Here’s a more complete take. He’s using some of the same moves as Jones, but explained in more detail. Burrito grip!
We played with the first techniques during class on Wednesday (2/28/24) but the baby bridge near the end might be the most interesting addition:
The audio isn’t ideal, but getting a free private lesson from Andrew Wiltse through Youtube is pretty rad. Some of the details differ from how I do it, but the concepts are the same.
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 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.
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.
So far, we’ve been emphasizing the mechanics of sweeping from the butterfly guard, but in order to use those skills, we’ll need to establish the right positioning. A hinderance to my adoption of butterfly guard has generally been the lack of control I feel when I approach someone with the mindset to enter butterfly rather than establishing a different guard. My legs get grabbed, hopped over, or danced around before I get anything going. Pulling half guard generally reduces the movements and encourages my opponent to perform a more high-contact guard pass, which I prefer. I’d rather be smashed than have to chase someone.
My preference for slow control makes Marcelo Garcia’s approach problematic for me. He replaces physical control with an onslaught of attacks. He doesn’t need so much control if his opponent is always on the defensive. It obviously works for him, but his instructional is about nogi where grips are not so powerful. Wardziński seems to drag people into butterfly with collar and sleeve grips. That’s a bit closer to my comfort zone, but the sleeve grips are not a natural move for me yet. What else is there?
Saulo doesn’t seem to like a direct entry into butterfly either. He shows how to move from a full guard position into butterfly. One point of emphasis that I took away from this video is the priority of pushing into the opponent first. It’s more important to post with a hand behind you and get your hook deep underneath them than to start worrying about their posting arm for the sweep defense.
I already live that half guard life, so maybe butterfly is a place to go but not to start. We worked on a version of this back in the half guard unit:
Maybe you don’t like being smashed so much and like knee shields more than I do. There’s a good reminder here that although there’s some visual similarity between half butterfly and a knee shield, they work differently. Your butterfly hook needs to go outside, it cannot go inside the way the knee shield does:
This next one doesn’t necessarily belong in this post, but it’s something that I watched while I was pondering the other resources. Gordon explains the necessity of combining multiple guard systems:
Here’s the John Wayne Sweep from our guru of the month, Adam Wardziński:
Here’s some more from a familiar face (Lachlan Giles):
I have no idea why it’s called the “John Wayne Sweep.” Danaher described the same movement in his half guard series as a “knee lever.” Just for funsies, here’s the “knee lever” being applied in MMA:
We spent a couple months working on half guard. This is a summary of what we covered. There are posts for most of the individual pieces if you want more details. Posts are tagged by position and sweep/pass/submission. https://halfguardlife.com/tag/half-guard/ will get you to all of the half guard posts.
Some time ago I found that my half guard game was ruined when people passed by facing my legs. On top, I started using that approach myself. I have a lot of success passing half guard that way. These techniques described by Firas Zahabi are a good way to fight back.
Sometimes it’s just not working and you need to try something else. The most straightforward options are to elbow escape into full guard, or put hooks in to switch to a butterfly guard. Changing guard changes the value of upper body positions. The under hook and cross face utilized by a top half guard player become weaknesses when the top player ends up in butterfly or full guard.
I linked the same video below on the Escapes! page. The second elbow escape is performed from a half guard position and can be used whenever you want to add another .5 guards to your bottom position.
If you’re living that lockdown life in bottom half, the next video emphasizes the leg movements to abandon the lockdown half guard game to switch to butterfly.
The lifting movement shown in the next video appears to be pretty common in half guard instructional videos although it’s not a move I often use. The rest of the principles regarding framing are familiar and good though. I do really like that landing position. Before I fell in love with half guard, I was all about that over hook full guard. Parental discretion is advised for Kurt Osiander language.
I like the double elbow escape that Danaher demonstrations in his Half Guard Fundamentals instructional. I can’t find another example of that. After elbow escaping from half guard towards full guard, he elbow escapes a second time on the same side, this time to bring his knee above the top person’s shoulder. This results in a position with the top person pinched between the bottom player’s knees in a way that sets up easy triangles, omoplatas, kimuras, and arm bars.
I’ve had a lot more success with the half butterfly sweep than with any of the variations that Lachlan Giles describes below. I’m also pretty complacent about my opponent grabbing the kimura grip as I pass their half guard on top. Lachlan Giles is a high level competitor though, so my differences in this position suggest I need to study it deeper. I regularly hit the arm bar that he says he used to fear but should never happen.
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.
