The Process of Rebuilding my Guard

Sometimes to move forward you have to tear down what you already have and rebuild.  Fix the foundation so to speak.  In my case I can compare my old guard game like a skyscraper made out of match sticks where it was so fragile that it would come crashing down at the slightest hint of a breeze.  Sure, it had a lot of facets to it, but it wasn’t sturdy or reliable. I’ve gone back and looked at a lot of my techniques in Guard, thrown out most and slowly tried to develop a plan for guard that involves good basic technique without the bells and whistles.  It’s now a modest house, but at least I can live in it.

My requirements were:

• Closed Guard only, no open guard, half guard, De La Riva, X-Guard, Butterfly Guard etc
• Gi and No Gi Grips (while using a Gi)
• Exploiting Resistance with Timing, no strength battles.
• Fundamental Sweeps (Scissor, Hook, Sitting Roll Over and Scoop Sweeps)
• Good Defence against passes (under, around, through and over) from both closed guard and a compromised unlocked guard.

I have to say, Point 3 is the hardest but what I consider the most important for everything Jui-Jitsu.  I rediscovered a lot of the essential concepts again going through this process.  My journey roughly involved the follow training area’s over many training sessions.

1. Getting Grips
2. Breaking Posture
3. Effective use of timing  to exploit the grip fight, posture battle, strength, stacks etc
4. Timing Submission attacks
5. Through passes, and counters to these
6. Compromised broken guard and counters to passes around or over
7. Timing sweep attacks
8. Putting it all together

I’m really glossing over details here, but honestly I found having a methodical process really helped.  The most important question I now ask myself is, what is the path of least resistance to get what I ultimately want.  Some things I rediscovered to a deeper personal understanding through this, and I guess to some degree I’ve taken ownership of these concepts.  They include:

1. Frames, creating and maintaining space
2. Timing, real jiu-jitsu is in the transitions using your opponent’s movement against them.
3. Resistance Drilling to improve timing,  seriously I should have done this years ago.
4. Grips, you don’t have control without them.
5. Don’t Fight muscle with muscle – it’s so easy to do subconsciously.
6. Always Attack when you have guard.
7. Move those hips, get to the side.

Anyway, from where my Closed Guard was technique wise, I now feel it’s far improved. I don’t rely on one trick ponies anymore. It’s consistent and I feel that sticking to basic techniques has actually made me a lot more creative and dangerous.  So overall for the time being I’ve accomplished my mission with Closed Guard.

I will start focusing on Side Control to Mount for the next month or so.  Really my plan is sweep, pass, mount, choke.  I’m going to explore every avenue in achieving the goal of pass. For revision in warm ups I will incorporate some of the cooperative resistance drills for Closed Guard to keep my timing sharp.

Dan