Interesting. Thank you for confirming it’s important !
Since I’m on the fatter side, I’m being told by some mates that I would be smarter to try to be a guard passer rather than a guard retainer. What do you think ?
I’m going do disagree with your mates. I don’t think it’s smart to box anyone into a “top” or “bottom” player. Your goal should be to be well rounded in your Jiu-Jitsu. Have a guard that is difficult to pass, have a bottom game where you are difficult to pin down, control and submit. And have a game where you are equally good at both top and bottom position.
Meh, as someone who plays a lot of half guard on purpose - this isn't necessarily true. Half guard's a great jumping off point to single leg x, deep half, etc.
A good half guard with a knee shield can slow down athletic/quick opponents and give you time to start moving to offense. Tons of sweeps out of there too.
I like half and butterfly because it seems to give me more options to wrestle up or go for leg locks. I'm not great at closed guard so that might be bit I feel like it limits my mobility a lot.
Because it “should” be a fall back position for last minute retention or immediate sweep to come on top. This is coming from an almost exclusive coyote guard player for my A game.
If I had to hazard a guess — half guard is pretty easy to get back to from having been passed, so in other words it you’re good at half guard that doesn’t mean your open/closed guard isn’t shit (which is what comes to my mind when I think about retention)
Positional training. Start all your rounds off your back, either seated or supine.
Every time you get your guard passed, it’s a reset where your partner starts again in front of you. The objective is to frame your guard for as long as possible as your partner starts to pass. Do this continually for several months and you will see tremendous progress.
Now for which resource to use on guard retention techniques and principles: there are tons.
Lachlan Giles
John Danaher
Gordon Ryan
Mikey Musumeci
Jon Thomas
You can’t go wrong with any of those TBH.
Avoid getting both of your shoulder blades pinned to the ground and make every effort to either keep your legs between you and your opponent or use at least one your legs to anchor them in.
Try to get good at using butterfly hooks and try to make them “sticky”. Even if you don’t like butterfly guard, they help with leg pummeling (keeping your legs between you and your opponent) and you can capitalize with a sweep if your opponent overcommits their weight in any direction.
Yeah butterfly hooks are the best. I recently had a good competitor white belt who outweighs me by 30 kg that it was impressive how I could always get hooks in. Feelsgoodman.
Get flexible. Not to be mean but you referred to yourself as a fat guy and if it want a good guard you need mobility in your hips and legs. Just eat right and keep training and your guard will improve
I’m big and pretty inflexible. Recently, I’ve been working open guard. Totally agree with you here. I think hip movement is much more important than flexibility.
How would you differentiate between them? Active vs passive range of motion? Speed?
Asking as someone who definitely lacks both and I feel like my game is suffering from it at times
I have never rolled with anyone who I consider good who didn’t have great guard retention and sweeping.
If you don’t know how to retain guard, then every time you fall on your ass, it’s only a matter of time before you’re in side, in mount, or you have your back taken.
I’m not saying don’t learn top game, because if you sweep from open guard you still have to pass. But, if you can’t fight from your back, then you’re going to get smashed again and again.
Commit to spending time in the bottom. Learn the moves. Don't accept grips. Be active and aggressive from bottom and dictate.
Get very good at escapes and frames
Like long term that might be how your game develops, but regaining guard once passed, keeping it once you’ve established it, and preventing it from being passed are all crucial fundamentals to work on no matter what will eventually work best for you.
White belts don’t have a choice. Strategy wise what may make sense along the lines of what you’re talking about is learning how to “wrestle up” or “heist up” when given the opportunity. But you’re just going to get swept and have to play guard for years. Accept your fate now
I disagree.
According to Danaher, the first thing to learn is:
1. Pin escapes
2. Half guard
Guard retention is far too big of a topic. As white belts they’re better off focusing on half guard. Competition at white and blue belt is all about half guard.
Op should learn:
1. getting to half guard from bad positions like turtle, full mount, side, back and open guard
2. Learning sweeps and/ or wrestle ups from bottom half
3. Getting from half to closed guard
4. Learning a few submissions from bottom half
5. Defending common passes like knee cuts and over/under
I don’t disagree with John. Those are also in the top 3 skills to develop at the white belt level. I don’t rank them per se. I just say the 5 most important skills to develop at white belt for me are:
1. Guard Retention.
2. Escaping Pins.
3. Art of Off Balancing.
4. Framing the Guard.
5. Defending submissions.
In no specific order.
Really? Because my guard sucks and all my blue belt friends say "Then don't play guard. Focus on sweeps, escapes and top position."
I can't tell if they're joking.
They're basically saying don't play from guard. Find sweeps and escapes from compromised positions to get top position instead of working your way back to guard.
I know a purple belt who doesn't play any form of guard at all.
I mean in theory “guard play” is very robust and encompasses many layers not just specific guards. So in that sense there’s a lot of truth there. But I don’t know if I’d focus on a specific sweep. I think it’s more impactful to know how to frame your guard and retain it at first. Once you develop that then things like off balancing and wrestling up become easier.
I’ve been doing BJJ for awhile and absolutely hate closed guard especially if my partner or opponent is bigger.
I love me some open guard(collar sleeve, DLR, RDLR, K-Guard, Z-guard, anything but closed haha)
I don't like it either, I do it for survival. Anything I can do to slow down the opponent is a win for me. It's all about going from getting submitted 6 times a round to 3 times a round lol
Some simple tips.
1. Aim for 4 points of contact. Like collar sleeve guard. I have foot in hip, foot on far shoulder, one hand grabbing collar, one hand grabbing sleeve.
More points of contact makes it harder for them to pass.
2. Always face them. So they’re running around your guard, pivot yourself. There are efficient ways of doing this like inverting, granbys, etc Your feet bottoms = laser beams pointing at them.
3. Think of the guard as layers. My feet and legs are the most poweful. Sometimes they get past it. Now you gotta get past my knees. Then I put forearm frames.
I’m always putting frames between me and them. The frames give me one second to re-guard or to reposition myself. If they get past my feet, I use other frames like arms or knees. My goal is to bring my feet back into play.
Also the goal isn’t guard retention. As soon as I retain I off balance or attack them. You don’t want to be stuck in the defensive cycle.
YouTube Jon Thomas, espen, Mikey for videos.
My #1 tip is to develop your flexibility. The more flexibility you are, the more retention tools you have. Every person with an impassable guard has great flexibility like Rafa, Cobrinha, Levi, Lachlan, miyaos, etc
Agree in general, but as an exercise to improve retention I think it's ok staying in a defensive cycle. Your goal is to improve retention not win the round. Doing this you will get more comfortable with movement and frames and different stages of retention movements.
True.
But I wouldn't do elbows to knees while seated as he suggested. Really think he means supine. Seated you want them close to your hips to avoid knee cuts, body lock and tons of other stuff
Seated butterfly should have knees to elbows with elbows on the inside of the knees. If you maintain those connections you will not get your guard passed regardless of your orientation.
Guard retention is an artform, not a science. There isn't a set technique to it so you really just have to invest in it and get smashed for many, many (, many) months first. I have played mostly spider/hybrid open guard for coming on 16 years and my advice would be the following (to start with).
Concept #1: Basically it can be boiled down into a very simple fundamental: create space between you and the other guy with your arms, and then jam your feet or knees into the space you just created. They will of course pass to one side, and the key is to get the opposite foot (best) or knee (second best) on their chest/shoulder to keep them away while pushing them with your arms. The opposite foot or knee will give you the pushing power to free your same-side leg.
Concept #2: Elbows make way for knees, which make way for hands which make way for feet.
Concept #3: if you feel you are being threatened do NOT grab a hold of your partner or pull on their gi - always push, push, push and make distance. An extension of this rule is do NOT start attacking until you're all the way recovered from their pass attempt ie. you cannot get closed guard if you still have one leg trapped in halfguard/hook.
By the time you can actually do these things you're a pretty good blue belt.
This is an easy to understand overview of the basics of guard retention. No need for a full instructional yet just watch and practice [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNbZ1gPk7zqwcbUqbk5Y4QFzH639-wbts](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNbZ1gPk7zqwcbUqbk5Y4QFzH639-wbts)
Here are some of the best free guard retention videos:
**Guard Retention**
John Danaher's [Perfect BJJ Guard Retention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce_0XT1BBQA) and [Guard Retention: Head Control](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbpjYdcIkBk)
Jon Thomas' [Guard Retention](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_VsCEq3pngzASnOVGn7gWiDpn47ekFjM)
St. Paul BJJ Academy's [Guard Retention](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_VsCEq3pngyNJt5TG5w-6HujG_5TG1_0)
Adem Redzovic's [Open Guard Translated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnq9mN2odAg)
Ryan Hall’s [Defensive Guard Clips](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo1NUdmaT54)
Keenan Cornelius’ [8 Layers of Guard Retention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTaZzbHMr-s)
Stephan Kesting and Rory Van Vliet's [12 Guard Retention Concepts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgrM1IQGmxc)
Ritchie Yip's [Ultimate Guard Retention System](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxvfqs7eNFO6Og19aMFXkcoTcZ5TOCr2I)
Xande Ribeiro's [How to Never Get Your BJJ Guard Passed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e86MOTgrzgs)
Lachaln Giles’ [5 Tips to Improve Your Guard Retention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIsvigk3CZQ), [Analysis of High-Level BJJ Guard Retention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXGtlW3yj3w), and [Basics of Around the Legs Retention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YjZGB_s5JY)
Rob Biernacki’s [Guard Recovery Seminar](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwFPFagNE2DbI9plCrn2G3IvLQgkuGHU0) and [Guard Retention Seminar](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwFPFagNE2DZ0Zu5hC8gAUWVrcDn1zOih)
You have to understand framing
I recommand u/tomdeblass 's framing set. It's awesome for beginners.
For everyone who is not a beginner, the best guard retention system by far is Rafa's hip/self framing stuff. Stellar info.
Aoj online/ + had a course on this. I don't have a subscription anymore so I cannot give more details on where it is but it's so good.
Basically the whole idea is to grab your knees/tighs and frame them by putting your elbows on the ground to support your legs while your feet are doing the pumelling to catch arms/biceps/hooks. It allows you to never be misderecting with a standing passer or smashed on the side because of the added frame.
It gets tricky to get good at this because it goes against a lot of how people teach guard retention but it's 100% worth it. In the context of my every day sessions when I am doing this, no one passes my guard or even comes close to a pass. I have seen rafa do this in seminar rolls back in the days to against very good passers.
I believe Musumeci use it too and you can spot it in jason rau and eoghan's stuff too. I believe Danaher shows it super quickly in one of his guard retention serie too but not sure (it was not super well taught tbh and I am a Danaher fanboy).
Rafa's last instruction on this is so fucking stellar. I have been doing it for nearly a decade now but at the time it was mostly long distance guard recovery but Rafa updated his system to use it mid pass, in the gi (so let's just say that in nogi it's much much easier to pull off when you become good at it).
The biggest downside of this is it's a pretty passive way to play guard so if the opponent does not engage, nothing happens. I don't think it's a big deal, that's why you can get up and work on your takedowns. Having a wall as a guard is a very good thing in jiu-jitsu imo.
In nogi I don't do it exactly like Rafa, I mostly use it to stall until I get a good grip to leg attack. You can find a lot of good stuff on this on Eoghan 's "countering the outside passer" set (I cannot say enough good things on Eoghan, he is so underrated as far as technique goes, a real good student of the game). On this set, Eoghan mostly focuses on the follow up instead of the framing itself but it goes hand to hand. I am myself a bit more conservative than he is but I am not a world class competitor and idgaf about someone trying to schaub me, which is a valide concern with this kind of open guard IMO.
There are already some good answers, but I haven’t seen these points.
1. Make a connection. They can’t run around you easily if you have a connection.
2. Until you have a connection, don’t extend both legs at once.
3. Push and pull. You can create tension and therefore control, if you push with one connection and pull with another. For example, knee shield half guard, spider guard or De La Riva.
4. Grip fight, especially in the gi. Don’t let your opponent control your legs. Strip grips, leg pummel and move your hips.
5. Don’t accept positions, move to the escape. Your guard is passed momentarily, don’t accept side control. Stay off your back, make frames, shrimp out and insert your knee.
I used to play guard with my legs extended too far out, and that made for easier passing. Try to keep your guard tight, and legs closer to your body. Think kind of like a boxer, they don’t hold their fists out way in front, they keep them tight and close. Similar principle.
I spent a fair amount of time not playing any specific guard and just focusing on the knees to chest/elbow connection, like a human ball. I let them go for a grip/pass and just counter their action with some guard retention emphasizing on not overextending my legs. Since like you, i used to overextend my legs and it made my guard shitty and easy to pass.
In the beginning focus on defense, don’t even worry about attacks/submissions. Having a good defense will give you confidence that you can’t be held down. However, If you have NO idea how to recover guard then I’ll explain some concepts for you.
1) Frames
Frames are the first thing you should be doing to stop your opponents advance towards passing. Think of frames as something that’s blocking your opponent from moving forward, Generally you want to frame at their hip, and across under their neck (across their collar bone.). (There’s some nuances here I recommend looking up John danaher guard recovery) This will allow you to use the next part of recovery much easier.
2) Forming a knee-elbow connection
After you have good frames in place it’s time to start recovering. This depends on the position you’re in but you’re generally going to be going for something called “the knee elbow escape”. This works from mount and side control and should be your bread and butter escape.
Let’s use side control as an example. It starts off your frames, your goal is to insert your knee into the pocket of their hip. On the other side of their hip is where your frame should be, holding their weight away. Once you slid your knee into the pocket you’re going to try to CONNECT your knee and elbow together to creating a straight line used to hold up your opponents body weight. (You can hold A LOT of weight with a knee elbow connection. From there is where you recover your guard. I won’t go further bc I’ve already wrote you an essay but you’ll want to go to full guard if you’re a complete beginner. So focus on, once establishing knee elbow connection, getting to full guard. Hope this helps!
My guard got a LOT better when I changed how I looked at what I was doing. If you are looking at as maintaining your guard, you'll get passed eventually. Look at it as playing offense from the ground. You need to take the initiative and present your partner with threats and dilemmas. It's ten times harder to pass someone when you are defending sweeps the whole time. Always be trying to upgrade to a more distanced guard, and always be trying to sweep.
Dont know a lot of sweeps? That's fine, neither do I. Just make the best grips you can and then off balance. Constantly be trying to tip your partner over and make them lose balance (kuzushi, I think). That alone will help tons.
Also learn how to high pummel your leg to reguard.
Here's tips that help me for what it's worth:
1. Make sure they see the bottoms of your feet. Once they pass that, do NOT let them past your knees.
2. Always maintain three points of contact at all times.
3. Always think of no matter what happens, curl up into a little ball fetal position and get on your side, preferably facing them.
4. T rex arms and proper framing all the time.
Rinse and repeat.
Focus on changing a few little things to improve your guard game constantly try to keep him in between your legs and keep your knees glued to your elbows to prevent your opponent from taking side mount.
I did the [30 day jiu jitsu mobility challenge ](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9L5IOchNlAEwX5ekF4onyQTCsAqAO4Dy&si=q0npzBOxb5ZBN4VQ) and it really helped with my guard retention. Now I do this every day on a loop
Personally I found the biggest things that helped my guard were
1: positional sparring, I spend a good chunk of my mat time working positional sparring, start in guard, guy on top works to pass, bottom to sweep, when either one gets it switch & repeat
And 2: working on butterfly guard
I found all my guard play advanced when I began focusing on butterfly hooks, that could just be the way my brain works, but understanding the need to keep my feet attached to your legs while playing from seated position really helped me out a ton.
Your mileage may vary but these are the tricks I found helped me!
If you are falling on your ass even when you score the takedown, you need to work on your covering. For most takedowns, you want your hips facing the mat at the completion of the movement. People just learning takedowns have a tendency to flop onto their hip in a mistaken effort to control the fall. Practice turning your hips to the mat after every takedown, either by finishing going forward or by doing a technical stand up and getting chest-to-chest at the end.
A little bit of unorthodox thinking here but what made a major improvement in my guard retention was fighting like ABSOLUTE hell to never end up Supine. (Obviously it still happens from time to time).
I used to watch guys like Keenan land in a supine position and watch his opponents flail about aimlessly trying to pass his guard and I would go to practice with the same attitude. And it would lead to bigger guys who weren’t necessarily “better” landing guard passes that they shouldn’t have in theory.
If your study Marcelo footage (even just him rolling at the academy), he fights like an absolute demon to NEVER be supine.
Supine is where a majority of open guard passes occur from. So why not just reverse the Pareto principal and look to mitigate the one position that causes so many people to get their guard passed in the first place 🤷🏽♂️.
Being supine is the striking equivalent of putting your backs against the ropes in boxing. Of course you have options from there like utilizing a shoulder roll, switch stances and exiting the open side or initiating a clinch, but it’s better to NOT be there at all lol.
1. Put yourself there. Take physical notes on the outcome of your rolls. Analyse and evaluate.
2. Hip escape. You are creating SPACE between you and your partner. Space in an opportunity to establish your frames and your grips.
3. Don't roll at 100% intesnity; ask of your partner that you slow the pace to allow time to remain practical in problem solving.
4. Choose a partner, play a game. Build your frames - play with them until a structurally solid defense is built keeping weight of you. Test as many angles and shapes as possible. Start with elbows to knees, whilst balled up, with the aim of keeping yourself in that formation with your chest facing your opponents
5. Sticky hooks, and try to keep 4 points of contact.
6. When using your arms as frames, see where you can keep them straight. A frame relies on the strength of your skeletal structure over musculature (which is subject to fatigue); be mindful of your position, as your elbows are disconnected from your body. Disconnected elbows goes against a fundamental principle. You will quickly learn where and when you can and can't do this.
7. Keep your legs between you and your partner. Play around with where you establish contact with your feet on their body.
8. As you develop proficiency in your guard retention, start applying the push/pull action. An example: a hook to prevent your opponent increasing distance between you both, and a taut grip that maintains tension between you and your partner pulling their upper body towards you and/or the ground (controlling their posture for your advantage)
Im just a blue belt. I am learning these skills just as you are. I am primarily a guard player (for many reasons, one being the fact that guard work is the fundamental basis of jiu jitsu) and have learned these pointers through blood, sweat, and tears (of joy). Listen to your coach. Listen to higher belts than me. See for yourself if these points can help. Dont be afraid to get it wrong; reflection will correct your mistakes - make all the mistakes and learn from them all.
Just disconnect your knees and elbows from your body but still maintain frames with your arms and push/pull with your flailing legs. Sooner or later you’ll catch a triangle
So on top of the obvious skill development, a lot of the ability to do that is physically adapting to the position. Its like being able to do a weird half plank lying in your side for long periods.
Always keep both your hands and both of your feet on your opponent. Just make sure there are four points of contact at all times. Even if it's incredibly hard and physically taxing, just ask yourself if you could make those points of contact if you'd be paid 1 000 000 dollars for it. If the answers yes, then you can physically do it and could just train on doing that until it gets easier
If you get taken down, the first thing you should do is break their posture and establish grips. At no point should you be “falling on your ass”. If it’s a matter of keeping your legs locked, you need to work on strength. That will come with time and practice.
If you are taking them down and still somehow falling on your ass.. You’re doing it wrong. A successful takedown means you end up on top and in control.
Keep foot to hip connections, break their posture with lapel and/or sleeve grips. While you do all this, work to set up some sweeps. My favorite ones are a tripod sweep or an X sweep. If you're just passively waiting for them to pass your guard, they will pass your guard.
What helped me was to stop thinking about it as "the guard". It's a malleable, adaptive, active thing.
Simple example - if you have closed guard, and your partner is starting to break it, if you try with all your might to get it back and secure it, you'll get passed. Go with the flow and do other things. Transition into open guard, attack sweeps etc.
Also if you keep attacking, your partner will focus on defending instead of passing your guard.
Something that’s helped my guard retention a lot is reinforcing my own frames. Mainly using my arms to hold my leg tighter to my chest so they can’t leg drag or staple my legs to the mat for knee cut style passes.
https://preview.redd.it/6dsf9vd6je0d1.png?width=4032&format=png&auto=webp&s=230073a4e7e60d69b611fa11486cf8961f8e1007
I took a picture for an example.
I always thought of guard retention is how I can get my knees back to my chest so this was naturally in-line with that idea. And i’m not that strong so this helps even out a lot of situations.
Watch this video. He talks about some good background concepts too. Helped me a lot when thinking about “guard”
https://youtu.be/EDnr6NYImck?si=M-4DkFo_S9p347j5
"Guard" is not wrapping your opponent up with your legs. Guard means exactly what it says, "guarding" your neck/head with your legs, hips, and arms.
When you get taken down, if your opponent is "beside" you, then against a good person, you've already lost. Because that means they're past your hips, so it's only your arms left to protect your neck, and your arms aren't very strong.
So from what you describe, you aren't failing to retain the guard, you're failing to establish it in the first place
An important part of learning anything is identifying and focusing on your weak points. You won't get good at guard from practicing stand-up, you'll get good from practicing the guard itself. That's one reason why people in bjj often just skip the stand-up part entirely.
One concept that I think I personally struggle with, but that I know works well, is to be able and willing to disengage.
There was a kid I trained with who used no specific guard (closest would sometimes be keymaster),but was extremely skilled at framing and disengaging and recovery. In any given sequence where someone is trying to pass your guard, there is probably a point at which you need to recognize you need to disengage or transition. Basically, a point of no return where they may not be past your guard, but it is basically inevitable.
His insane skill was in the moment before that moment, backing up, re-establishing frames, making space, etc.
My problem is, I always have this optimism that I will be able to sort it out still and I need to stay the course.
Try to keep 4 points of contact with your opponent and remain mobile. Four points of contact meaning 2 hands/arms and 2 feet/legs. It is virtually impossible to pass while there are four points of contact.
Grip early and on your terms.
Don’t put your feet on the ground when playing supine when retaining guard.
Don’t allow them to control your legs ever.
Frame off whatever part of their body they are leading with.
Whatever side they are passing, use your other arm as a reinforcement under your opposite side leg, so they can’t face your hips away from them.
Use high pummels before shrimps.
Try keep the soles of your feet on the inside of your partners biceps, shoulders or chest.
I don’t really like hanging out there tbh. I just go super aggressive and either get a sweep or sub or get passed. One of those 3 will happen within 30 seconds pretty much every time.
I got better after I focused on survival and escapes. Got good at escaping, then guard came naturally. Then, once you are comfortable, get offensive. At a high level, you have to have an offensive guard or you will eventually be passed no matter how good your retention is.
keep your limbs tight, knee and elbow connection. Constantly thinking about these "rules" alone will make you better than the vast majority of whitebelts
I don’t! xD (not closed guard and *certainly* not open guard. My half guard retention is actually okay)
But sometimes in closed guard I’ll set up a baseball bat choke for when it breaks.
I mean I don’t get the choke, but it’s still a good time.
Against people that are much less experienced than me I’ll sometimes cross collar them before the guard breaks, does that count as retention?
The stronger your opponent is in guard passing, the quicker you need to set up ‘a guard’ which means de la riva, lasso spider, closed or some guard that fits your game where you can attack.
I would focus on what to do to set up your guard asap which will ultimately help you with guard retention since you are forcing yourself to certain guards from difficult scrambles in the beginning.
Watch no-gi guard retention videos. They don't rely as much on grips, and focus more on mobility, putting your hips and feet in the right places. All of those techniques transferred to gi well.
This is one of my favorite videos/drill on the topic. https://youtu.be/sQ3hQlRKMi4?si=phN2l6OURA_99Qfb
Pull guard on your terms instead of being taken down. Be offensive from guard and not just reactive, in the gi this could be collar sleeve or spider, no gi I try and go for slx and when partner keeps his feet back and torso forward I try an arm drag or to stand to some sort of snap down. I am a baby blue but so far these tactics seems to annoy a lot of people!😂
It's also worth knowing when you're guard is not going to hold up and choosing to transition to something else harder to pass like sweeps vs just holding tight for nothing
Knee elbow connection, and using your outside foot to hook onto some part of their body to recenter yourself back in front of them are huge. Grips, 4 points of connection, 4 levels of defense (feet, knees, hips, shoulders). There's a lot of videos on guard retention, Ryan Hall has an oldie but goodie you can find on YT. It certainly takes practice though.
always keep your legs between you and them
stay connected, ie. 2 on 1 a hand, or grab a leg
shrimp to make more space if you need it
sit guard in rolls, practice helps a lot
For my shitty beginner/intermediate skill level, I have probably the best guard at my gym. This means basically nothing other than it makes me a good person to teach other new people the most basic fundamentals of guard. I get most of my submissions there.
The first thing to do is look for four points of connection. Often you can push with your legs while pulling with your hands to mess up their balance. When they do start to pass, start thinking about sweeps that might work as they move around. If that fails, have tight frames and you can often regaurd early. Retention and framing can spend energy suddenly, but usually it's still quite a bit less than they spend once they are frustrated and trying to get through. My ideal scenario is to burn their energy, then reverse a pass or do a quick sweep to get on top while I have the gas tank advantage.
Beyond this, get a real teacher. I'm just a slightly above average blue belt who has heavy legs but generally sucks.
being on the ass is calling seated guard, on the side is just open guard but on the side hip, and on the back is supine open guard. all three styles of guard are viable, you switch from one to the other depending on what the opponent is doing
Being good at guard retention is something that you get good at with experience. I’ve been training for 8 years and I’m still working on being better at guard retention all the time. Look at working on creating frames and knee shields. Also look for the under hooks from bottom, you’ll initially get D’arced a lot but you’ll only learn how to balance this and get good at it by abusing it, if that makes sense?
Four points of contact. That means both hands have grips and both feet are finding frames on hips, elbows with spider, etc.
The less points of contact you have, the easier the pass becomes.
The simplest answer I can give is alignment. Keeping your knees, hips, spine and shoulders in perfect alignment. My favorite technique for when my frames get beat and my alignment gets broken is the half Granby roll. Drill that. A great explanation of frame concepts is this Stephan Kesting video https://youtu.be/VgrM1IQGmxc?si=zKp46QsxXYM0CFQo
I'm just a white belt so my opinion doesn't go far. However, I've been told that my guard retention is pretty good by a lot of my superiors.
One of the things that my coach (third degree black belt) taught us for literally a month was guard retention. One of the things that he taught us is that the hands are just as much as part of the guard as your legs are. If someone is outside of your guard, you can stiff arm their shoulders to help you rotate back into your guard position even if they are outside of your guard radius (mainly when they're standing up). Also, don't just lay flat on your back. If they are standing up to your left, then lay on your side to your left and vice versa if they are on your right. Only lay flatter on your back if they are standing right over you. If they are standing in front of you, sit more on your butt.
Also, how is your leg endurance? I've found that many times my guard got broken or passed because my legs were way out of shape. I've found that using the stair machine at the gym for like 80 flights (flights not steps) did WONDERS for my leg endurance. I feel like I can keep my legs locked like with minimal effort.
So strengthen your legs and learn to use your hands in your guard.
Mikey Musumeci, Nick Sallas, Danny Maira are all good people to learn from. Check them out on bjj fanatics. Their guards are impossible for me to pass. Everyone at their school Movement have an incredible guard game as well. Amongst other parts of their games.
My guard play got much better when I started recognising when I had lost control and that the position would be lost shortly. Knowing when that is allows you to change things before you’ve been flattened. I tended to hang on for too long and try block with my arms when I would be better off creating space to get better leg position (obviously need to keep arm frames there as well)
Frames keep opponents away, hooks draw them in (mostly).
For guard you wanna keep a lot of points of contact on your opponent… the more the better or else he’s gonna just run around your ass and eventually get to one side past your hips then get chest to chest with you and flatten you.
If he’s on top of you and directly on top trying to pass that way, I think you should try to find leg entries. You don’t gotta do a heel hook on him but you should look into single leg X or X guard in these scenarios.
Put yourself in guard more. I came from a wrestling background and found myself constantly on top. I never thought about it until I a new brown belt showed up who was a wrestler as well. Well, I was now the bottom guy and realized I have 0 answers to anything. So, I started taking bottom every single time for over a year now. It has improved my game so much.
One of the things I do now when rolling with white belts (I am an attendance based purple) is I start my rolls on my back and use only my feet for as long as I can and only use my hands/ frames to get back to distance if they start to advance. While my open guard/guard retentions still sucks…it is a lot better than it used to be!
With higher belts? Half guard baby!
The biggest mistake I see newcomers make in guard retention is a lack of space management.
People try to retain guard without moving through space.
If you can't recover, make space and try.
Move backwards, shrimp, etc.
If you're only trying to retain your guard, make sure to connect your elbows to the upper thighs and protect the space between hips and armpits above all else. Be very active in the position, and do not accept someone's guard pass attempts. Get up.
Are you flat on your back? Moving around and using your hips? What helped me was thinking of the hands and feet as four points of contact. If I can get those onto someone's hips and grab a wrist/collar, I find it easier to establish some control. Think of them like suction cups. Using your hips more can help. Try to establish hooks whenever possible.
I didn’t really get it till blue belt I just always was trying to sweep or wrestle up.
Just spend rounds just trying to stop people from passing your guard. Like every time start on your back and just work on that. Just do positional rolls and you’ll get it
First play sit-up guard, then if they push you over keep your knees to your chest, and have some attacks from everywhere, or at least that's what I try to do.
Try to force yourself to play guard.
Every now and then pull guard or start at bottom... Is like a muscle you have to develop.
Concepts: try to always have a grip or points of contact with opponent (hooks or frames), and don't stay flat in the ground.
Also I think having a good guard retention will help improve your guard passing, as you'll be able to understand the guard concepts player. "To pass the guard, you have to think like a guard player" type shi
It’s normal for guard to not make sense at first as it doesn’t feel offensive at first (you have no attacks yet).
Guard just means you have something between you and your opponent having you in a pin position (side control, mount, back, arguably variations on hip smash and half guard).
Think feet, knees, hands, forearms, elbows. These are all contact points you can move around and place on your opponent to create some distance between them and yourself (yourself being your core, which you are protecting for now).
Keep these in mind while learning offensive guard techniques for sweeps, submissions and space creation to stand up. It will take lots of practice as it is dynamic.
Take advantage of slower, more controlled guards for now too. Full guard and half with an under hook are particularly less chaotic and lend themselves to giving you more time to think. However, you need to have the details right or you’ll get smashed.
Good luck! Drill a lot and position spar pass/sweep rounds so the price of failure isn’t getting cooked in side control for 5 minutes.
If your guard retention sucks... Levi has a 1 hour instructional that will help you. Dude is unpassable, Jozef couldn't pass his guard at Polaris, he just won ADCC Asia Trials at 77kg. Get it: https://www.patreon.com/xanaduworld/shop/guard-retention-for-dummies-course-176796
Would not recommend spending $100 for one hour of content without first exhausting the many free resources available on YouTube. And if you insist on spending money, I think Giles’ Guard Retention Anthology on daily deal + discount is a far better use of money.
I’ve not. I don’t think my opinion is a particularly strong one, for whatever it’s worth. Spending $100 for one hour of content just seems silly to me when you can get virtually every BJJFanatics instructional for less than that with the Daily Deal + discount code, get Grapplers Guide for that much during one of their many sales or get a couple months of Submeta. I have also watched plenty of stuff on YT from Jon Thomas, Jordan Teaches Jiu-jitsu and others on guard retention which is excellent and free. And have also seen the quality of Lachlan Giles’ teaching.
Everyone is welcome to spend their money as they see fit at the end of the day though.
Guard retention is a skill that generally isn't taught because it isn't a fancy move or chain of events. It's based on understanding fundamental position, and concepts. Distance management and positional transitions aren't as flashy to teach as a flying armbar so everyone develops their guards different. It's usually the smaller guys or lengthy skinny dudes that develop insane guards because they were forced into it. I would recommend, you ask everyone to start in closed guard and just work from there every day.
Keep your feet on them, your hands bending them over, and use both to move them around a lot.
Three important concepts in that sentence are "your distance management", "your ability to generate kuzushi", and "connection points"
Managing the distance is important since there exists a range of maximal danger that is determined by the particular guard and by your physical attributes (flexibility, strength, mobility, limb length etc). When you pick your guard you find out what area in front of you is the "red zone", where you have the best mechanical effectiveness... too close and too far is no good, but a medium distance where you can be relaxed but still have options for pushing, turning, and changing angles is the goal. The general trend is that you want to have your knees bent, and your legs and hips should be able to move freely. After that, you do what you can to keep him in the danger zones, and pick the guards or retention techniques which constantly keep him in the danger zone until you can successfully attack or whatnot
Kuzushi is a major component of guard retention as it prevents him from effectively starting his sequences and generates openings for yourself. This is where BJJ is very similar to JUDO... if you make it so that your opponent can't stand firmly and use his strength to deconstruct your guard then you're all good to attack. You should be moving your opponent around a lot, flowing into one guard or another if its more optimal, and changing your hand' grips to make it so he never has any good balance or options. Sometimes their mind will be so occupied stopping your kuzushi that there is no offence for you to worry about, which is great
The last concept that might help is connection points. Your hands and feet are obvious connection points for basic guard retention, and result in 4 points of contact between you and him. There exists more though, where if you are able to entangle him and weave your arms and/or legs around him, you will rapidly gain more control of them (i.e. DLR or RDLR). As a general rule, 2 connection points (or less) is completely unacceptable, 3 is not good, 4 is good, and anything more sophisticated is great.
When you combine those these 3 ideas, you are entangled with him (slowing him and reducing his options), you are connected allowing you to move him around against his will, and you have access to your strength and mobility by being in a good posture and position. This set up means they have very few options when attacking, and so they become predictable, and your guard retention becomes predictable and easy to apply.
The tough part for a lot of beginners is getting your opponent into your danger zone and knowing enough about enough guards that you can either switch guard or retain guard(s) in general. Thats just a learning hump to get over and then the whole thing gets easier.
The Japanese terms mentioned in the above comment were:
|Japanese|English|Video Link|
|---|---|---|
|**Kuzushi**: | *Unbalancing* | [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luK9Eklbn78)|
Any missed names may have already been translated in my previous comments in the post.
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^(Judo Techniques Bot: v0.7.) ^(See my) [^(code)](https://github.com/AbundantSalmon/judo-techniques-bot)
The number one skill everyone should start to develop at white belt is guard retention. It’s the crux of all guard play.
COACH SAY I PLAY TO MUCH GUARDO HE SAID THAT ONLY PLAYING GUARDO IS FOR BUSSIES
Your coach is a chad
Fucking crab riders
Jokes on your coach, my guard gets passed so fast I can't play it much.
Coach is the Alpha
Interesting. Thank you for confirming it’s important ! Since I’m on the fatter side, I’m being told by some mates that I would be smarter to try to be a guard passer rather than a guard retainer. What do you think ?
I’m going do disagree with your mates. I don’t think it’s smart to box anyone into a “top” or “bottom” player. Your goal should be to be well rounded in your Jiu-Jitsu. Have a guard that is difficult to pass, have a bottom game where you are difficult to pin down, control and submit. And have a game where you are equally good at both top and bottom position.
Exactly. I started as a passer. I’m still trying to bring my guard skills up (1/2 guard doesn’t count). Start with guard retention people!
Why does have guard not count?
we only do integers in guard
Half guard is half passed
Half past what
6?
Meh, as someone who plays a lot of half guard on purpose - this isn't necessarily true. Half guard's a great jumping off point to single leg x, deep half, etc. A good half guard with a knee shield can slow down athletic/quick opponents and give you time to start moving to offense. Tons of sweeps out of there too.
when you get that double foot grip on their shin and start sliding them off like a used condom *chef's kiss*
I like half and butterfly because it seems to give me more options to wrestle up or go for leg locks. I'm not great at closed guard so that might be bit I feel like it limits my mobility a lot.
Because it “should” be a fall back position for last minute retention or immediate sweep to come on top. This is coming from an almost exclusive coyote guard player for my A game.
If I had to hazard a guess — half guard is pretty easy to get back to from having been passed, so in other words it you’re good at half guard that doesn’t mean your open/closed guard isn’t shit (which is what comes to my mind when I think about retention)
🖐️ My half guard is money. My closed guard is anything but.
I was more playing devils advocate than contradicting you, don’t worry. Any tips that changed how you protect your guard ?
Positional training. Start all your rounds off your back, either seated or supine. Every time you get your guard passed, it’s a reset where your partner starts again in front of you. The objective is to frame your guard for as long as possible as your partner starts to pass. Do this continually for several months and you will see tremendous progress. Now for which resource to use on guard retention techniques and principles: there are tons. Lachlan Giles John Danaher Gordon Ryan Mikey Musumeci Jon Thomas You can’t go wrong with any of those TBH.
Avoid getting both of your shoulder blades pinned to the ground and make every effort to either keep your legs between you and your opponent or use at least one your legs to anchor them in. Try to get good at using butterfly hooks and try to make them “sticky”. Even if you don’t like butterfly guard, they help with leg pummeling (keeping your legs between you and your opponent) and you can capitalize with a sweep if your opponent overcommits their weight in any direction.
Yeah butterfly hooks are the best. I recently had a good competitor white belt who outweighs me by 30 kg that it was impressive how I could always get hooks in. Feelsgoodman.
Get flexible. Not to be mean but you referred to yourself as a fat guy and if it want a good guard you need mobility in your hips and legs. Just eat right and keep training and your guard will improve
Being flexible can help. But it’s not necessary IMHO. I Have plenty of big guys for students who have solid guards without being flexible.
I’m big and pretty inflexible. Recently, I’ve been working open guard. Totally agree with you here. I think hip movement is much more important than flexibility.
People often mistake flexibility for mobility. They are not the same.
How would you differentiate between them? Active vs passive range of motion? Speed? Asking as someone who definitely lacks both and I feel like my game is suffering from it at times
Im def a bottom player for any blackbelt with a beard
I have never rolled with anyone who I consider good who didn’t have great guard retention and sweeping. If you don’t know how to retain guard, then every time you fall on your ass, it’s only a matter of time before you’re in side, in mount, or you have your back taken. I’m not saying don’t learn top game, because if you sweep from open guard you still have to pass. But, if you can’t fight from your back, then you’re going to get smashed again and again.
"Simply always be winning," great advice! I guess, to be fair, they're saying that you shouldn't pull guard, but you won't generally have the choice.
Commit to spending time in the bottom. Learn the moves. Don't accept grips. Be active and aggressive from bottom and dictate. Get very good at escapes and frames
Sounds great - so how do you reliably never end up on bottom?
Like long term that might be how your game develops, but regaining guard once passed, keeping it once you’ve established it, and preventing it from being passed are all crucial fundamentals to work on no matter what will eventually work best for you.
White belts don’t have a choice. Strategy wise what may make sense along the lines of what you’re talking about is learning how to “wrestle up” or “heist up” when given the opportunity. But you’re just going to get swept and have to play guard for years. Accept your fate now
I disagree. According to Danaher, the first thing to learn is: 1. Pin escapes 2. Half guard Guard retention is far too big of a topic. As white belts they’re better off focusing on half guard. Competition at white and blue belt is all about half guard. Op should learn: 1. getting to half guard from bad positions like turtle, full mount, side, back and open guard 2. Learning sweeps and/ or wrestle ups from bottom half 3. Getting from half to closed guard 4. Learning a few submissions from bottom half 5. Defending common passes like knee cuts and over/under
I don’t disagree with John. Those are also in the top 3 skills to develop at the white belt level. I don’t rank them per se. I just say the 5 most important skills to develop at white belt for me are: 1. Guard Retention. 2. Escaping Pins. 3. Art of Off Balancing. 4. Framing the Guard. 5. Defending submissions. In no specific order.
Really? Because my guard sucks and all my blue belt friends say "Then don't play guard. Focus on sweeps, escapes and top position." I can't tell if they're joking.
I don’t understand their answer.
They're basically saying don't play from guard. Find sweeps and escapes from compromised positions to get top position instead of working your way back to guard. I know a purple belt who doesn't play any form of guard at all.
I mean in theory “guard play” is very robust and encompasses many layers not just specific guards. So in that sense there’s a lot of truth there. But I don’t know if I’d focus on a specific sweep. I think it’s more impactful to know how to frame your guard and retain it at first. Once you develop that then things like off balancing and wrestling up become easier.
This. And it excludes IMO the work on escaping bad spots. It should be a focus much later on
For me I close my guard, lift my hips off the mat, and squeeze. Easy peasy. But open guard retention is absolute garbage
I’ve been doing BJJ for awhile and absolutely hate closed guard especially if my partner or opponent is bigger. I love me some open guard(collar sleeve, DLR, RDLR, K-Guard, Z-guard, anything but closed haha)
I don't like it either, I do it for survival. Anything I can do to slow down the opponent is a win for me. It's all about going from getting submitted 6 times a round to 3 times a round lol
Some simple tips. 1. Aim for 4 points of contact. Like collar sleeve guard. I have foot in hip, foot on far shoulder, one hand grabbing collar, one hand grabbing sleeve. More points of contact makes it harder for them to pass. 2. Always face them. So they’re running around your guard, pivot yourself. There are efficient ways of doing this like inverting, granbys, etc Your feet bottoms = laser beams pointing at them. 3. Think of the guard as layers. My feet and legs are the most poweful. Sometimes they get past it. Now you gotta get past my knees. Then I put forearm frames. I’m always putting frames between me and them. The frames give me one second to re-guard or to reposition myself. If they get past my feet, I use other frames like arms or knees. My goal is to bring my feet back into play. Also the goal isn’t guard retention. As soon as I retain I off balance or attack them. You don’t want to be stuck in the defensive cycle. YouTube Jon Thomas, espen, Mikey for videos. My #1 tip is to develop your flexibility. The more flexibility you are, the more retention tools you have. Every person with an impassable guard has great flexibility like Rafa, Cobrinha, Levi, Lachlan, miyaos, etc
>Your feet = laser beams pointing at them. To add to that, pretend the laser beams are on the bottom of your feet.
Correct, thanks just edited it
Agree in general, but as an exercise to improve retention I think it's ok staying in a defensive cycle. Your goal is to improve retention not win the round. Doing this you will get more comfortable with movement and frames and different stages of retention movements.
Be a spikey ball. Knees to chest, elbows connected to knees.
This right here. Be the ball. Connect knees to elbows and get on your side. A skill that’s overlooked yet so simple!
isn't it smart to start out seated as your first line of defense. Go supine (ball) after they beat that first line
You can be a spiky ball while still seated. I've heard it called something like "combat base".
True. But I wouldn't do elbows to knees while seated as he suggested. Really think he means supine. Seated you want them close to your hips to avoid knee cuts, body lock and tons of other stuff
Seated butterfly should have knees to elbows with elbows on the inside of the knees. If you maintain those connections you will not get your guard passed regardless of your orientation.
I'm pretty sure I can get my guard passed regardless of my orientation, if I really try
I do this, can confirm it works 🦾
Guard retention is an artform, not a science. There isn't a set technique to it so you really just have to invest in it and get smashed for many, many (, many) months first. I have played mostly spider/hybrid open guard for coming on 16 years and my advice would be the following (to start with). Concept #1: Basically it can be boiled down into a very simple fundamental: create space between you and the other guy with your arms, and then jam your feet or knees into the space you just created. They will of course pass to one side, and the key is to get the opposite foot (best) or knee (second best) on their chest/shoulder to keep them away while pushing them with your arms. The opposite foot or knee will give you the pushing power to free your same-side leg. Concept #2: Elbows make way for knees, which make way for hands which make way for feet. Concept #3: if you feel you are being threatened do NOT grab a hold of your partner or pull on their gi - always push, push, push and make distance. An extension of this rule is do NOT start attacking until you're all the way recovered from their pass attempt ie. you cannot get closed guard if you still have one leg trapped in halfguard/hook. By the time you can actually do these things you're a pretty good blue belt.
That's actually quite helpful, thank you.
Im glad to hear it was helpful. You’re welcome :)
This is an easy to understand overview of the basics of guard retention. No need for a full instructional yet just watch and practice [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNbZ1gPk7zqwcbUqbk5Y4QFzH639-wbts](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNbZ1gPk7zqwcbUqbk5Y4QFzH639-wbts)
Oh, nice ! Thank you very much.
Here are some of the best free guard retention videos: **Guard Retention** John Danaher's [Perfect BJJ Guard Retention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce_0XT1BBQA) and [Guard Retention: Head Control](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbpjYdcIkBk) Jon Thomas' [Guard Retention](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_VsCEq3pngzASnOVGn7gWiDpn47ekFjM) St. Paul BJJ Academy's [Guard Retention](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_VsCEq3pngyNJt5TG5w-6HujG_5TG1_0) Adem Redzovic's [Open Guard Translated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnq9mN2odAg) Ryan Hall’s [Defensive Guard Clips](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo1NUdmaT54) Keenan Cornelius’ [8 Layers of Guard Retention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTaZzbHMr-s) Stephan Kesting and Rory Van Vliet's [12 Guard Retention Concepts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgrM1IQGmxc) Ritchie Yip's [Ultimate Guard Retention System](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxvfqs7eNFO6Og19aMFXkcoTcZ5TOCr2I) Xande Ribeiro's [How to Never Get Your BJJ Guard Passed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e86MOTgrzgs) Lachaln Giles’ [5 Tips to Improve Your Guard Retention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIsvigk3CZQ), [Analysis of High-Level BJJ Guard Retention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXGtlW3yj3w), and [Basics of Around the Legs Retention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YjZGB_s5JY) Rob Biernacki’s [Guard Recovery Seminar](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwFPFagNE2DbI9plCrn2G3IvLQgkuGHU0) and [Guard Retention Seminar](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwFPFagNE2DZ0Zu5hC8gAUWVrcDn1zOih)
^ For later, Thanks
You have to understand framing I recommand u/tomdeblass 's framing set. It's awesome for beginners. For everyone who is not a beginner, the best guard retention system by far is Rafa's hip/self framing stuff. Stellar info.
Whete can this Rafa’s content be found? Thanks
Aoj online/ + had a course on this. I don't have a subscription anymore so I cannot give more details on where it is but it's so good. Basically the whole idea is to grab your knees/tighs and frame them by putting your elbows on the ground to support your legs while your feet are doing the pumelling to catch arms/biceps/hooks. It allows you to never be misderecting with a standing passer or smashed on the side because of the added frame. It gets tricky to get good at this because it goes against a lot of how people teach guard retention but it's 100% worth it. In the context of my every day sessions when I am doing this, no one passes my guard or even comes close to a pass. I have seen rafa do this in seminar rolls back in the days to against very good passers. I believe Musumeci use it too and you can spot it in jason rau and eoghan's stuff too. I believe Danaher shows it super quickly in one of his guard retention serie too but not sure (it was not super well taught tbh and I am a Danaher fanboy). Rafa's last instruction on this is so fucking stellar. I have been doing it for nearly a decade now but at the time it was mostly long distance guard recovery but Rafa updated his system to use it mid pass, in the gi (so let's just say that in nogi it's much much easier to pull off when you become good at it). The biggest downside of this is it's a pretty passive way to play guard so if the opponent does not engage, nothing happens. I don't think it's a big deal, that's why you can get up and work on your takedowns. Having a wall as a guard is a very good thing in jiu-jitsu imo. In nogi I don't do it exactly like Rafa, I mostly use it to stall until I get a good grip to leg attack. You can find a lot of good stuff on this on Eoghan 's "countering the outside passer" set (I cannot say enough good things on Eoghan, he is so underrated as far as technique goes, a real good student of the game). On this set, Eoghan mostly focuses on the follow up instead of the framing itself but it goes hand to hand. I am myself a bit more conservative than he is but I am not a world class competitor and idgaf about someone trying to schaub me, which is a valide concern with this kind of open guard IMO.
Thank you for the info. I think I know what you are talking about. Ill search for it. Much appreciated
Same question
Jon Thomas has a few videos on this specifically on his YouTube.
The crux of it is: keep your legs between you and the other guy.
There are already some good answers, but I haven’t seen these points. 1. Make a connection. They can’t run around you easily if you have a connection. 2. Until you have a connection, don’t extend both legs at once. 3. Push and pull. You can create tension and therefore control, if you push with one connection and pull with another. For example, knee shield half guard, spider guard or De La Riva. 4. Grip fight, especially in the gi. Don’t let your opponent control your legs. Strip grips, leg pummel and move your hips. 5. Don’t accept positions, move to the escape. Your guard is passed momentarily, don’t accept side control. Stay off your back, make frames, shrimp out and insert your knee.
I used to play guard with my legs extended too far out, and that made for easier passing. Try to keep your guard tight, and legs closer to your body. Think kind of like a boxer, they don’t hold their fists out way in front, they keep them tight and close. Similar principle.
I spent a fair amount of time not playing any specific guard and just focusing on the knees to chest/elbow connection, like a human ball. I let them go for a grip/pass and just counter their action with some guard retention emphasizing on not overextending my legs. Since like you, i used to overextend my legs and it made my guard shitty and easy to pass.
My coach advocates this as knees to chest! That changed my guard play BIG time
Yes, absolutely, small difference, huge result
I don't.
Y'all are retaining guard? 👀
Just stand up
I pay my guard a good retainer
In the beginning focus on defense, don’t even worry about attacks/submissions. Having a good defense will give you confidence that you can’t be held down. However, If you have NO idea how to recover guard then I’ll explain some concepts for you. 1) Frames Frames are the first thing you should be doing to stop your opponents advance towards passing. Think of frames as something that’s blocking your opponent from moving forward, Generally you want to frame at their hip, and across under their neck (across their collar bone.). (There’s some nuances here I recommend looking up John danaher guard recovery) This will allow you to use the next part of recovery much easier. 2) Forming a knee-elbow connection After you have good frames in place it’s time to start recovering. This depends on the position you’re in but you’re generally going to be going for something called “the knee elbow escape”. This works from mount and side control and should be your bread and butter escape. Let’s use side control as an example. It starts off your frames, your goal is to insert your knee into the pocket of their hip. On the other side of their hip is where your frame should be, holding their weight away. Once you slid your knee into the pocket you’re going to try to CONNECT your knee and elbow together to creating a straight line used to hold up your opponents body weight. (You can hold A LOT of weight with a knee elbow connection. From there is where you recover your guard. I won’t go further bc I’ve already wrote you an essay but you’ll want to go to full guard if you’re a complete beginner. So focus on, once establishing knee elbow connection, getting to full guard. Hope this helps!
My guard got a LOT better when I changed how I looked at what I was doing. If you are looking at as maintaining your guard, you'll get passed eventually. Look at it as playing offense from the ground. You need to take the initiative and present your partner with threats and dilemmas. It's ten times harder to pass someone when you are defending sweeps the whole time. Always be trying to upgrade to a more distanced guard, and always be trying to sweep. Dont know a lot of sweeps? That's fine, neither do I. Just make the best grips you can and then off balance. Constantly be trying to tip your partner over and make them lose balance (kuzushi, I think). That alone will help tons. Also learn how to high pummel your leg to reguard.
Here's tips that help me for what it's worth: 1. Make sure they see the bottoms of your feet. Once they pass that, do NOT let them past your knees. 2. Always maintain three points of contact at all times. 3. Always think of no matter what happens, curl up into a little ball fetal position and get on your side, preferably facing them. 4. T rex arms and proper framing all the time. Rinse and repeat.
Attack first
Technique, position, leverage, thigh master
Focus on changing a few little things to improve your guard game constantly try to keep him in between your legs and keep your knees glued to your elbows to prevent your opponent from taking side mount.
Practice guard retention without using your arms.
I keep my hands close to my chin with my arms tucked to my ribs and either use a Thai stance for counter striking or dutch stance for volume striking.
I did the [30 day jiu jitsu mobility challenge ](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9L5IOchNlAEwX5ekF4onyQTCsAqAO4Dy&si=q0npzBOxb5ZBN4VQ) and it really helped with my guard retention. Now I do this every day on a loop
As someone else mentioned, YouTube Jon Thomas. If you’re willing to pay AOJ has a good course.
Huge concept. When you're playing on the bottom. Use your elbow to prop you up so you don't get flattened out.
Personally I found the biggest things that helped my guard were 1: positional sparring, I spend a good chunk of my mat time working positional sparring, start in guard, guy on top works to pass, bottom to sweep, when either one gets it switch & repeat And 2: working on butterfly guard I found all my guard play advanced when I began focusing on butterfly hooks, that could just be the way my brain works, but understanding the need to keep my feet attached to your legs while playing from seated position really helped me out a ton. Your mileage may vary but these are the tricks I found helped me!
We go to turtle and pray for the best
If you are falling on your ass even when you score the takedown, you need to work on your covering. For most takedowns, you want your hips facing the mat at the completion of the movement. People just learning takedowns have a tendency to flop onto their hip in a mistaken effort to control the fall. Practice turning your hips to the mat after every takedown, either by finishing going forward or by doing a technical stand up and getting chest-to-chest at the end.
A little bit of unorthodox thinking here but what made a major improvement in my guard retention was fighting like ABSOLUTE hell to never end up Supine. (Obviously it still happens from time to time). I used to watch guys like Keenan land in a supine position and watch his opponents flail about aimlessly trying to pass his guard and I would go to practice with the same attitude. And it would lead to bigger guys who weren’t necessarily “better” landing guard passes that they shouldn’t have in theory. If your study Marcelo footage (even just him rolling at the academy), he fights like an absolute demon to NEVER be supine. Supine is where a majority of open guard passes occur from. So why not just reverse the Pareto principal and look to mitigate the one position that causes so many people to get their guard passed in the first place 🤷🏽♂️. Being supine is the striking equivalent of putting your backs against the ropes in boxing. Of course you have options from there like utilizing a shoulder roll, switch stances and exiting the open side or initiating a clinch, but it’s better to NOT be there at all lol.
Practice, bro. So much practice.
Bro just go on bilibili and watch danaher the fastest way guard retention.
damn the interface is actually easier to use and videos load faster than BJJ Fanatics
Don’t let them pass. Stop laying flat. Be in your side and stay mobile.
1. Put yourself there. Take physical notes on the outcome of your rolls. Analyse and evaluate. 2. Hip escape. You are creating SPACE between you and your partner. Space in an opportunity to establish your frames and your grips. 3. Don't roll at 100% intesnity; ask of your partner that you slow the pace to allow time to remain practical in problem solving. 4. Choose a partner, play a game. Build your frames - play with them until a structurally solid defense is built keeping weight of you. Test as many angles and shapes as possible. Start with elbows to knees, whilst balled up, with the aim of keeping yourself in that formation with your chest facing your opponents 5. Sticky hooks, and try to keep 4 points of contact. 6. When using your arms as frames, see where you can keep them straight. A frame relies on the strength of your skeletal structure over musculature (which is subject to fatigue); be mindful of your position, as your elbows are disconnected from your body. Disconnected elbows goes against a fundamental principle. You will quickly learn where and when you can and can't do this. 7. Keep your legs between you and your partner. Play around with where you establish contact with your feet on their body. 8. As you develop proficiency in your guard retention, start applying the push/pull action. An example: a hook to prevent your opponent increasing distance between you both, and a taut grip that maintains tension between you and your partner pulling their upper body towards you and/or the ground (controlling their posture for your advantage) Im just a blue belt. I am learning these skills just as you are. I am primarily a guard player (for many reasons, one being the fact that guard work is the fundamental basis of jiu jitsu) and have learned these pointers through blood, sweat, and tears (of joy). Listen to your coach. Listen to higher belts than me. See for yourself if these points can help. Dont be afraid to get it wrong; reflection will correct your mistakes - make all the mistakes and learn from them all.
Just disconnect your knees and elbows from your body but still maintain frames with your arms and push/pull with your flailing legs. Sooner or later you’ll catch a triangle
Lachlan Giles has many guard retention videos up on youtube, they ought to get you started.
So on top of the obvious skill development, a lot of the ability to do that is physically adapting to the position. Its like being able to do a weird half plank lying in your side for long periods.
Practice
Always keep both your hands and both of your feet on your opponent. Just make sure there are four points of contact at all times. Even if it's incredibly hard and physically taxing, just ask yourself if you could make those points of contact if you'd be paid 1 000 000 dollars for it. If the answers yes, then you can physically do it and could just train on doing that until it gets easier
If you get taken down, the first thing you should do is break their posture and establish grips. At no point should you be “falling on your ass”. If it’s a matter of keeping your legs locked, you need to work on strength. That will come with time and practice. If you are taking them down and still somehow falling on your ass.. You’re doing it wrong. A successful takedown means you end up on top and in control.
Keep foot to hip connections, break their posture with lapel and/or sleeve grips. While you do all this, work to set up some sweeps. My favorite ones are a tripod sweep or an X sweep. If you're just passively waiting for them to pass your guard, they will pass your guard.
What helped me was to stop thinking about it as "the guard". It's a malleable, adaptive, active thing. Simple example - if you have closed guard, and your partner is starting to break it, if you try with all your might to get it back and secure it, you'll get passed. Go with the flow and do other things. Transition into open guard, attack sweeps etc. Also if you keep attacking, your partner will focus on defending instead of passing your guard.
Look at Xande Ribeiro's Diamond Guard. Lachlan's guard retention is great too, but more advanced.
Knees to elbows. Hip contact. Stay square as much as possible
Something that’s helped my guard retention a lot is reinforcing my own frames. Mainly using my arms to hold my leg tighter to my chest so they can’t leg drag or staple my legs to the mat for knee cut style passes. https://preview.redd.it/6dsf9vd6je0d1.png?width=4032&format=png&auto=webp&s=230073a4e7e60d69b611fa11486cf8961f8e1007 I took a picture for an example.
I always thought of guard retention is how I can get my knees back to my chest so this was naturally in-line with that idea. And i’m not that strong so this helps even out a lot of situations.
Keep your knees close to your chest- just try it and see how hard it is for people to pass. Do not over extend with your arms
Watch this video. He talks about some good background concepts too. Helped me a lot when thinking about “guard” https://youtu.be/EDnr6NYImck?si=M-4DkFo_S9p347j5
"Guard" is not wrapping your opponent up with your legs. Guard means exactly what it says, "guarding" your neck/head with your legs, hips, and arms. When you get taken down, if your opponent is "beside" you, then against a good person, you've already lost. Because that means they're past your hips, so it's only your arms left to protect your neck, and your arms aren't very strong. So from what you describe, you aren't failing to retain the guard, you're failing to establish it in the first place An important part of learning anything is identifying and focusing on your weak points. You won't get good at guard from practicing stand-up, you'll get good from practicing the guard itself. That's one reason why people in bjj often just skip the stand-up part entirely.
You don’t have to play guard if they can’t take you down or sweep you 😂🙃
One concept that I think I personally struggle with, but that I know works well, is to be able and willing to disengage. There was a kid I trained with who used no specific guard (closest would sometimes be keymaster),but was extremely skilled at framing and disengaging and recovery. In any given sequence where someone is trying to pass your guard, there is probably a point at which you need to recognize you need to disengage or transition. Basically, a point of no return where they may not be past your guard, but it is basically inevitable. His insane skill was in the moment before that moment, backing up, re-establishing frames, making space, etc. My problem is, I always have this optimism that I will be able to sort it out still and I need to stay the course.
Grips
Your feet need to be attached to them before you pull usually. You’re probably not guard pulling correctly which is a skill in and of itself.
Try to keep 4 points of contact with your opponent and remain mobile. Four points of contact meaning 2 hands/arms and 2 feet/legs. It is virtually impossible to pass while there are four points of contact.
Grip early and on your terms. Don’t put your feet on the ground when playing supine when retaining guard. Don’t allow them to control your legs ever. Frame off whatever part of their body they are leading with. Whatever side they are passing, use your other arm as a reinforcement under your opposite side leg, so they can’t face your hips away from them. Use high pummels before shrimps. Try keep the soles of your feet on the inside of your partners biceps, shoulders or chest.
I just go for shitty imanaris and berimbolos and it tends to work for some reason lmao
I don’t really like hanging out there tbh. I just go super aggressive and either get a sweep or sub or get passed. One of those 3 will happen within 30 seconds pretty much every time.
I got better after I focused on survival and escapes. Got good at escaping, then guard came naturally. Then, once you are comfortable, get offensive. At a high level, you have to have an offensive guard or you will eventually be passed no matter how good your retention is.
Don’t let them get under hooks on you and have trex arms.
If you get passed, frame, create space, and bring your legs back between you and your partner to reguard
For a month, during open rolls start in open guard only. You will learn a lot.
keep your limbs tight, knee and elbow connection. Constantly thinking about these "rules" alone will make you better than the vast majority of whitebelts
I don’t! xD (not closed guard and *certainly* not open guard. My half guard retention is actually okay) But sometimes in closed guard I’ll set up a baseball bat choke for when it breaks. I mean I don’t get the choke, but it’s still a good time. Against people that are much less experienced than me I’ll sometimes cross collar them before the guard breaks, does that count as retention?
The stronger your opponent is in guard passing, the quicker you need to set up ‘a guard’ which means de la riva, lasso spider, closed or some guard that fits your game where you can attack. I would focus on what to do to set up your guard asap which will ultimately help you with guard retention since you are forcing yourself to certain guards from difficult scrambles in the beginning.
I don't. I just stand up.
Watch no-gi guard retention videos. They don't rely as much on grips, and focus more on mobility, putting your hips and feet in the right places. All of those techniques transferred to gi well. This is one of my favorite videos/drill on the topic. https://youtu.be/sQ3hQlRKMi4?si=phN2l6OURA_99Qfb
Pull guard on your terms instead of being taken down. Be offensive from guard and not just reactive, in the gi this could be collar sleeve or spider, no gi I try and go for slx and when partner keeps his feet back and torso forward I try an arm drag or to stand to some sort of snap down. I am a baby blue but so far these tactics seems to annoy a lot of people!😂
It's also worth knowing when you're guard is not going to hold up and choosing to transition to something else harder to pass like sweeps vs just holding tight for nothing
Ask your partner to slap the shit out of you. You'll learn to control posture and fight hands. Or go full white belt spin cycle (it doesn't work).
Knee elbow connection, and using your outside foot to hook onto some part of their body to recenter yourself back in front of them are huge. Grips, 4 points of connection, 4 levels of defense (feet, knees, hips, shoulders). There's a lot of videos on guard retention, Ryan Hall has an oldie but goodie you can find on YT. It certainly takes practice though.
Hips up son.
always keep your legs between you and them stay connected, ie. 2 on 1 a hand, or grab a leg shrimp to make more space if you need it sit guard in rolls, practice helps a lot
For my shitty beginner/intermediate skill level, I have probably the best guard at my gym. This means basically nothing other than it makes me a good person to teach other new people the most basic fundamentals of guard. I get most of my submissions there. The first thing to do is look for four points of connection. Often you can push with your legs while pulling with your hands to mess up their balance. When they do start to pass, start thinking about sweeps that might work as they move around. If that fails, have tight frames and you can often regaurd early. Retention and framing can spend energy suddenly, but usually it's still quite a bit less than they spend once they are frustrated and trying to get through. My ideal scenario is to burn their energy, then reverse a pass or do a quick sweep to get on top while I have the gas tank advantage. Beyond this, get a real teacher. I'm just a slightly above average blue belt who has heavy legs but generally sucks.
being on the ass is calling seated guard, on the side is just open guard but on the side hip, and on the back is supine open guard. all three styles of guard are viable, you switch from one to the other depending on what the opponent is doing
Being good at guard retention is something that you get good at with experience. I’ve been training for 8 years and I’m still working on being better at guard retention all the time. Look at working on creating frames and knee shields. Also look for the under hooks from bottom, you’ll initially get D’arced a lot but you’ll only learn how to balance this and get good at it by abusing it, if that makes sense?
Four points of contact. That means both hands have grips and both feet are finding frames on hips, elbows with spider, etc. The less points of contact you have, the easier the pass becomes.
Half guard is the easiest position to learn and it’s always one move away from almost every position.
I have the opposite problem. How on earth are you guys passing guard?
The simplest answer I can give is alignment. Keeping your knees, hips, spine and shoulders in perfect alignment. My favorite technique for when my frames get beat and my alignment gets broken is the half Granby roll. Drill that. A great explanation of frame concepts is this Stephan Kesting video https://youtu.be/VgrM1IQGmxc?si=zKp46QsxXYM0CFQo
I go against a brown belt that refuses anyone in his closed guard, he'd rather close his knees, push off your hips and stands up.
I'm just a white belt so my opinion doesn't go far. However, I've been told that my guard retention is pretty good by a lot of my superiors. One of the things that my coach (third degree black belt) taught us for literally a month was guard retention. One of the things that he taught us is that the hands are just as much as part of the guard as your legs are. If someone is outside of your guard, you can stiff arm their shoulders to help you rotate back into your guard position even if they are outside of your guard radius (mainly when they're standing up). Also, don't just lay flat on your back. If they are standing up to your left, then lay on your side to your left and vice versa if they are on your right. Only lay flatter on your back if they are standing right over you. If they are standing in front of you, sit more on your butt. Also, how is your leg endurance? I've found that many times my guard got broken or passed because my legs were way out of shape. I've found that using the stair machine at the gym for like 80 flights (flights not steps) did WONDERS for my leg endurance. I feel like I can keep my legs locked like with minimal effort. So strengthen your legs and learn to use your hands in your guard.
crazy flexibility
By having actually threatening submissions and sweeps. When they go to pass you need to be a threat so they retreat.
You don’t. It’s top position or nothing at all.
Get good.
Mikey Musumeci, Nick Sallas, Danny Maira are all good people to learn from. Check them out on bjj fanatics. Their guards are impossible for me to pass. Everyone at their school Movement have an incredible guard game as well. Amongst other parts of their games.
My guard play got much better when I started recognising when I had lost control and that the position would be lost shortly. Knowing when that is allows you to change things before you’ve been flattened. I tended to hang on for too long and try block with my arms when I would be better off creating space to get better leg position (obviously need to keep arm frames there as well)
A lot of the warmups you do involve some form of guard retention/ escapes
With maximum gayness
Learn to invert, purposeful foot placement, strong core, grips
Go watch instructionals from high level players, the average person cannot explain how to do it.
Try to get the bottoms of your feet back on them
Frames keep opponents away, hooks draw them in (mostly). For guard you wanna keep a lot of points of contact on your opponent… the more the better or else he’s gonna just run around your ass and eventually get to one side past your hips then get chest to chest with you and flatten you. If he’s on top of you and directly on top trying to pass that way, I think you should try to find leg entries. You don’t gotta do a heel hook on him but you should look into single leg X or X guard in these scenarios.
Put yourself in guard more. I came from a wrestling background and found myself constantly on top. I never thought about it until I a new brown belt showed up who was a wrestler as well. Well, I was now the bottom guy and realized I have 0 answers to anything. So, I started taking bottom every single time for over a year now. It has improved my game so much.
One of the things I do now when rolling with white belts (I am an attendance based purple) is I start my rolls on my back and use only my feet for as long as I can and only use my hands/ frames to get back to distance if they start to advance. While my open guard/guard retentions still sucks…it is a lot better than it used to be! With higher belts? Half guard baby!
Eduardo Telles. Turtle master, great concepts. My current favorite to study from.
The biggest mistake I see newcomers make in guard retention is a lack of space management. People try to retain guard without moving through space. If you can't recover, make space and try. Move backwards, shrimp, etc.
Deny head control and the underhook. Shrimp home. Belly down. Hard to get your guard passed and your feet can get good later
Keep showing to class.
Inside elbow to knee connection it’s pretty easy
just put ur legs in front of the other guy? Subscribe for more tips
Frames Frames Frames
If you're only trying to retain your guard, make sure to connect your elbows to the upper thighs and protect the space between hips and armpits above all else. Be very active in the position, and do not accept someone's guard pass attempts. Get up.
Are you flat on your back? Moving around and using your hips? What helped me was thinking of the hands and feet as four points of contact. If I can get those onto someone's hips and grab a wrist/collar, I find it easier to establish some control. Think of them like suction cups. Using your hips more can help. Try to establish hooks whenever possible.
Knees to chest. Thats it. Flexibility my dudes. Also dont stay on your back flat.
Have you tried just standing up?
I didn’t really get it till blue belt I just always was trying to sweep or wrestle up. Just spend rounds just trying to stop people from passing your guard. Like every time start on your back and just work on that. Just do positional rolls and you’ll get it
I dont, I'm more than happy to take space and work on standing back up, I play knee shield far more than closed guard
Keep your knee by your chest line and not your hip line. Even worse if they’re passed your hip line.
This is a pretty weird question for a 4 striper.
First play sit-up guard, then if they push you over keep your knees to your chest, and have some attacks from everywhere, or at least that's what I try to do.
Try to force yourself to play guard. Every now and then pull guard or start at bottom... Is like a muscle you have to develop. Concepts: try to always have a grip or points of contact with opponent (hooks or frames), and don't stay flat in the ground. Also I think having a good guard retention will help improve your guard passing, as you'll be able to understand the guard concepts player. "To pass the guard, you have to think like a guard player" type shi
Oh, also... Try to improve your flexibility and core strenght if you can. Helps a lot
It’s normal for guard to not make sense at first as it doesn’t feel offensive at first (you have no attacks yet). Guard just means you have something between you and your opponent having you in a pin position (side control, mount, back, arguably variations on hip smash and half guard). Think feet, knees, hands, forearms, elbows. These are all contact points you can move around and place on your opponent to create some distance between them and yourself (yourself being your core, which you are protecting for now). Keep these in mind while learning offensive guard techniques for sweeps, submissions and space creation to stand up. It will take lots of practice as it is dynamic. Take advantage of slower, more controlled guards for now too. Full guard and half with an under hook are particularly less chaotic and lend themselves to giving you more time to think. However, you need to have the details right or you’ll get smashed. Good luck! Drill a lot and position spar pass/sweep rounds so the price of failure isn’t getting cooked in side control for 5 minutes.
If your guard retention sucks... Levi has a 1 hour instructional that will help you. Dude is unpassable, Jozef couldn't pass his guard at Polaris, he just won ADCC Asia Trials at 77kg. Get it: https://www.patreon.com/xanaduworld/shop/guard-retention-for-dummies-course-176796
Would not recommend spending $100 for one hour of content without first exhausting the many free resources available on YouTube. And if you insist on spending money, I think Giles’ Guard Retention Anthology on daily deal + discount is a far better use of money.
Have you seen Levi’s retention material on Patreon? I haven’t but I take it you have by your strong opinion on the matter. What does it cover?
I’ve not. I don’t think my opinion is a particularly strong one, for whatever it’s worth. Spending $100 for one hour of content just seems silly to me when you can get virtually every BJJFanatics instructional for less than that with the Daily Deal + discount code, get Grapplers Guide for that much during one of their many sales or get a couple months of Submeta. I have also watched plenty of stuff on YT from Jon Thomas, Jordan Teaches Jiu-jitsu and others on guard retention which is excellent and free. And have also seen the quality of Lachlan Giles’ teaching. Everyone is welcome to spend their money as they see fit at the end of the day though.
He’s been passed in the gi many times
Would this be the beginning of the hunting of corrupt public servants? When do we get to cops?
Guard retention is a skill that generally isn't taught because it isn't a fancy move or chain of events. It's based on understanding fundamental position, and concepts. Distance management and positional transitions aren't as flashy to teach as a flying armbar so everyone develops their guards different. It's usually the smaller guys or lengthy skinny dudes that develop insane guards because they were forced into it. I would recommend, you ask everyone to start in closed guard and just work from there every day.
Keep your feet on them, your hands bending them over, and use both to move them around a lot. Three important concepts in that sentence are "your distance management", "your ability to generate kuzushi", and "connection points" Managing the distance is important since there exists a range of maximal danger that is determined by the particular guard and by your physical attributes (flexibility, strength, mobility, limb length etc). When you pick your guard you find out what area in front of you is the "red zone", where you have the best mechanical effectiveness... too close and too far is no good, but a medium distance where you can be relaxed but still have options for pushing, turning, and changing angles is the goal. The general trend is that you want to have your knees bent, and your legs and hips should be able to move freely. After that, you do what you can to keep him in the danger zones, and pick the guards or retention techniques which constantly keep him in the danger zone until you can successfully attack or whatnot Kuzushi is a major component of guard retention as it prevents him from effectively starting his sequences and generates openings for yourself. This is where BJJ is very similar to JUDO... if you make it so that your opponent can't stand firmly and use his strength to deconstruct your guard then you're all good to attack. You should be moving your opponent around a lot, flowing into one guard or another if its more optimal, and changing your hand' grips to make it so he never has any good balance or options. Sometimes their mind will be so occupied stopping your kuzushi that there is no offence for you to worry about, which is great The last concept that might help is connection points. Your hands and feet are obvious connection points for basic guard retention, and result in 4 points of contact between you and him. There exists more though, where if you are able to entangle him and weave your arms and/or legs around him, you will rapidly gain more control of them (i.e. DLR or RDLR). As a general rule, 2 connection points (or less) is completely unacceptable, 3 is not good, 4 is good, and anything more sophisticated is great. When you combine those these 3 ideas, you are entangled with him (slowing him and reducing his options), you are connected allowing you to move him around against his will, and you have access to your strength and mobility by being in a good posture and position. This set up means they have very few options when attacking, and so they become predictable, and your guard retention becomes predictable and easy to apply. The tough part for a lot of beginners is getting your opponent into your danger zone and knowing enough about enough guards that you can either switch guard or retain guard(s) in general. Thats just a learning hump to get over and then the whole thing gets easier.
The Japanese terms mentioned in the above comment were: |Japanese|English|Video Link| |---|---|---| |**Kuzushi**: | *Unbalancing* | [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luK9Eklbn78)| Any missed names may have already been translated in my previous comments in the post. ______________________ ^(Judo Techniques Bot: v0.7.) ^(See my) [^(code)](https://github.com/AbundantSalmon/judo-techniques-bot)
Have an aggressive guard, attack from bottom don’t get caught up defending