Before I shot video, I took these photos of the basic long distance and deep half guard sweep that I use. This is the same one that I show in the first video.
Basic long distance half guard posture. Knee in the hip to maintain space and turn my on my side. Ankles crossed, left over right. Left hand on the shoulder, forearm framing the neck. Right hand controlling the far arm at the wrist or biceps.
He cannot underhook me when my arm is framing his neck. He also can’t overhook for the brabo. I can use the knee to make space and choose when I want to dive for the underhook. The right hand keeps the crossface away.
If he tries to drive in while sprawling his leg, I push off on his neck and pull my feet towards my butt to keep his leg trapped.
If he is particularly intent on crossfacing, I can go to the double paw and protect my face.
When I feel I have good control of the far arm, I slide my right hand to the wrist and reach over the arm with my left for the kimura.
If I wanted to finish the kimura, I’d hug his arm to my chest and shrimp my hips under him and work from there.
But he’s smart and postures up and straightens his arm and rips it out, but because he’s posturing and freeing his arm, the threat of the crossface is gone and he’s giving me access to his far knee….
Hip movements for going underneath: backroll, swinging and pendulum.
Try drilling the leg and hip movements solo and with a partner to get a feel for them. You’ll find that when they resist one direction, they usually leave themselves open to the other.
A friend of mine asked me to film something on the half guard I’ve been working on. This turned into 30 minutes of footage that I’ve broken it down into 6 videos. I’ll be putting these up throughout the week. To start, here is the first one on the basics of the position and my main sweep.
In the past I’ve been criticized for not showing anything original and just copying techniques from famous people. I thought about it and maybe they’re right; I learn from all over and often end up teaching it later. I’ve always given credit to whoever I learned from and I try to offer something more, if just a clearer explanation. I didn’t think much of this until people started nagging me about it.
When I was talking with Leo Kirby about learning from people by copying then teaching others, he just said “Yeah, but isn’t that what everyone does?”
So I’ll be the first to say that I owe a great many people for what I show in these videos. This includes:
Eduardo de Lima, my instructor, who teaches a great half guard that he attributes to his friends Gordo (yes, that Gordo) and Jean-Jacques Machado.
Trog, my training partner (and contributor to one of the videos) for trouble shooting with me.
Crazy James, a black belt who’s been teaching me his half guard since I was a white belt.
Passing along seminar footage my e-friend Boyd shot. Here it is:
Attention white belts of the world: put down your copy of Mastering the Rubber Guard for about an hour and watch this video. I realize it may be hard to pull yourself away from all the bright colors and exotic nomenclature, but trust my judgment on this. What follows is a seminar I shot for my first BJJ instructor, Bryan Harper, recently promoted to black belt. He is very very good. In particular, he is very very good at passing the guard and choking people, which is great because I’ve included ten choking and passing techniques that I think will be extremely beneficial to your collective games. Best of all, they’re all tailor-made to be applicable to that most elusive of creatures: MMA-specific grappling techniques.
So check it out. This was my first time shooting a seminar, and yes, I’m well aware that the camera gets a little…dynamic at times. I was constantly fighting for a good angle without getting in front of the seminar attendees or losing audio, so sometimes I had to adjust at inopportune moments.
Attention colored belts and no-gi wrestlers: Same thing, but with a tone less smarmy and condescending, and more enthusiastic.
Also, question for anyone knowledgable in the field of video encoding: this was only my second time uploading to Youtube. I shot all of this on very, very expensive miniDV and exported it from Final Cut as MPEG4 files. On my computer it looks pristine. On Youtube it looks and sounds like everyone’s being attacked by a swarm of killer bees disguised as MPEG artifacts. Is there any way around this, or is this just Youtube’s stupid fault?
This video builds on the last by using the same overhook grip from butterfly guard, but now it’s submissions (instead of sweeps).
Take the first technique from the last video (switching from half to butterfly guard) and add these submissions to the end and in effect you’ve almost got triangles, armlocks and omoplatas from half guard.
If you’re enjoying these videos, please consider hitting the donation button and helping me upgrade my video editing equipment. Right now I’m running on an outdated computer and using built-in editing software. A couple donations would help a lot.
While down at Leo’s gym, I taught him and his student Ralph a lesson that revolved around half guard and butterfly guard when they’ve got the underhook on you. Rather than struggling to get it back, we worked on what you can do while keeping the overhook.
– Being flattened out by the underhook and crossface in half guard and switching to half butterfly (one hook) then full butterfly guard.
– Half butterfly guard sweep by underhooking the leg when they bring it too high (+ bonus switch to x-guard.)
– 90 degree hook sweep from butterfly guard with overhook.
– Switching from the hook sweep to the underhooking leg sweep (same as before) when they post their leg to defend.
