Thursday, May 20, 2010

The Unpassable Guard

One of my favorite training partners, feeling sympathy for my frustration over my guard-like-butter, reminded me of this great collection of tips on having an unpassable guard. It's on Stephan Kesting's great site, GrappleArts.

7 comments:

A.D. McClish said...

Thanks, Georgette! Lots of good stuff in there I'm looking forward to trying out! I really need to work on using my legs to push and pull my opponent instead of just blocking them.

my many faces said...

One important thing to remember is the unpassable guard DOES NOT exist. You will get passed, the best black belts in the world get their guards passed everyday. Just make sure transitions are just as good as your guard, transitions prevent dominance not the mastery of one position per se. In short, don't worry about one guard being passed just transition to the next BEFORE they complete their transition. (IE they open your closed guard go to half-guard). There's a reason there are more guards than you have fingers and toes.

Georgette said...

Hmm.. good point. But I think it's cool to *try* to keep from being passed.

my many faces said...

@ georgette I'm not saying don't try all I'm saying is don't stress it. Passing guard is a very tough thing to do respect that your opponent has the skills to do it. Maybe closed guard isn't your thing.(Which is quite possible since you aren't that tall) The only way to discover what guard fits you is to explore them. Some of the top black belts in the world rarely use closed guard, if ever Michael Langhi, Cobrinha, Marcelo Gracia, both Mendes brothers, and Leticia Ribero are all great examples of this. It took me until I had been a blue belt for six months to learn this and that's when I started playing turtle. Transitions make BJJ beautiful use them.

Georgette said...

Oh we're in agreement on that. I did not interpret Kesting's article as being exclusively about closed guard, which I hardly if ever play (because of these little stumpy legs :) )

my many faces said...

@ georgette try some x-guard. It's probably the best sweeping out there basically make them do a split and/or lift and you get 2 points. It goes very well with butterfly guard(it's sinful how good they are together) not to mention the fact that x-guard will blow your leglock game wide open.(Though I personally find 50/50 guard better for leglocks that position is a little complicated with 50% of your defense being your attack so I don't recommend it to white/blues no offense) Oh and it's really really really to get to.(x-guard is really easy to get to is what I mean)

Ben said...

This is a great post. Dig your blog, keep it up!