Adults: Closed Guard Standing Break
Warm-up
Handfighting
Player A
Player B
Win Condition(s)
Both people are hand-fighting. Emphasize the grip aspect. Grips are gateways to action. Think about that both for yourself, getting good grips, and for your opponent, denying their grips. For our opponent, we can deny grips in two different ways.
- Deny grips by stripping grips. That’s straightforward.
- Denying grips by getting our own, better grips that nullify our opponents’ grips.
Closed Guard Posture x2
Player A
On top, in closed guard. Not trying to break the guard, pass, stand, or anything. Trying to maintain posture for as long as possible and regain posture, if your posture is broken.
Player B
On the bottom, in closed guard. Not trying to sweep or submit. Trying to break posture and keep the posture broken.
Win Condition(s)
There is no win condition.
Closed Guard Defense
Player A
Starts on top, in closed guard. May not break the guard, may not stand, may not pass. All you are doing is being defensive. Strip their grips, stop submissions, and maintain your base.
Player B
Attempting to sweep or submit.
Win Condition(s)
If the guard player sweeps or submits, flip top and bottom.
Main Class
Breaking Open Closed Guard
We need to ensure we deny grips. Just like we were doing in our warm-up, we need to both maintain our posture and deny their grips. Remember, grips are the gateway to action.
Looking to get both hands in the armpits, once we deny grips. Trying to cross their hands and pin their wrists to their stomach to open it up, the armpits.
Place hands in armpits, thumbs facing up. If we sit back, we have no weight in our hands, and our opponent can escape. Instead, we lean into our hands, bringing our head over their head.
This puts weight not only into their shoulders, to pin them, but also lightens our legs, so we can pop up to our feet. If you can’t pop up, you can step one leg at a time to stand. But we’re trying to stand.
Once we stand, we get posture while hipping in. There are two common responses from here that we’ll go over. The first is if someone attempts to grab both ankles to tip us backward. To tip us backwards, they must open their legs. With their feet crossed, their knees and pointing in different directions and they can’t get much power.
From here, we go hand over hand on one knee and lean away to straighten our arms. We straighten our arms so we can use our bodyweight to push the leg down.
From here, we’re also setting ourselves up to free our foot. If our opponent unlocks their feet, we bring our foot in and circle it around, and step back.
From here, our worry is their close knee. If they can drop it inside, they can go to K-guard, X-guard, etc., So, I’m going to control the inside of the knee and push the knee down, to keep it from under my knee.
From here, we can go into tripod passing, kneecuts, etc.
Single Leg Underhook
What if our opponent keeps their legs locked, but hooks under one leg? Oftentimes, people are looking to either a) enter into an omoplata or b) push into our hooked knee with their hips to offbalance me and knock me over.
To deal with both of these issues, I’m going to turn my knee inward, into the hip. This gives me an angle where I can use an omoplata attempt to just finish passing, or I can maintain my base.
From here, everything else is much the same. We posture up, pressure on the knee, circle our foot, and step back.
From here, we can tripod pass, kneecut, and more.
Knee Pinch
In closing, if we make a mistake on the bump over and can’t circle our foot out, we can still deny the sweep.
We can pinch the knees and control under the feet. From here, we can stand and continue our passing OR we can start feeding into legs.