Defending the Guard

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to move on from my strength fight when someone’s passing my guard. This doesn’t only have to do with last night’s conversation about bigger guys, it has to do with players in general. Small or big – because small guys have games of their own. The principles I apply to stronger opponents really should apply to everyone. That’s Jiu-jitsu.

The thing is, if I’m not setting up for a submission or sweeping from either my open or closed guard, I’m basically stalling or defending something my opponent’s trying to do. That’s not where I want to be. In a perfect world, I’d like to be the aggressive one who’s leading the game. In the real world though, I may be in the midst of being flattened.

A while ago, I was taking my grip game up a notch. It was working well, but somehow, I let that go. I haven’t been as proactive as I should be and I’ve lost a bit of my mojo. It’s just that it’s not as easy as it seems. The guys I work out with are working their own games. But I still need to get back to that.

I’m thinking that while I return to working on grips, I should be stepping up my use of deflection. There are areas that small, medium and larger opponents have real difficulty defending against – and that’s being deflected and crawled all over. When certain strength zones are rendered useless, various opportunities arise. The challenge is, I’m going to need to be the first person to act and I’m going to have to get my setups. If not, I’ll have to rely on something else.

I found a good video today that deals with when an opponent is attempting to pass guard. I think I’m going to store this idea for later use – maybe tomorrow. I’ve been watching a ton of videos that deal with cross grips and that’s really something I need to get used to. So many times I set up my grips, only to have to switch mid-stream.

Guerrilla Tech of the Week – Knee Shield Half Guard – Back Take and Hip Turn Sweep