Basic long distance half guard posture. Knee in the hip to maintain space and turn my on my side. Ankles crossed, left over right. Left hand on the shoulder, forearm framing the neck. Right hand controlling the far arm at the wrist or biceps.

He cannot underhook me when my arm is framing his neck. He also can’t overhook for the brabo. I can use the knee to make space and choose when I want to dive for the underhook. The right hand keeps the crossface away.

If he tries to drive in while sprawling his leg, I push off on his neck and pull my feet towards my butt to keep his leg trapped.

If he is particularly intent on crossfacing, I can go to the double paw and protect my face.

When I feel I have good control of the far arm, I slide my right hand to the wrist and reach over the arm with my left for the kimura.

If I wanted to finish the kimura, I’d hug his arm to my chest and shrimp my hips under him and work from there.

But he’s smart and postures up and straightens his arm and rips it out, but because he’s posturing and freeing his arm, the threat of the crossface is gone and he’s giving me access to his far knee.

I immediately dive under the leg with my right hand, bring my head to the thigh and gable grip my hands together.

My knee is still on his hip to carry his weight. I’m trying to bring my elbow and knee together to create a frame against him.

Elbow and knee touching. Also notice how I have my feet crossed. The simple detail of my left being over my right makes a huge difference in terms of how strongly I can hold him in my half guard.

My left arm becomes a shield to cover my head and hide my face so he can’t crossface. He’ll just slide off the top of my head.

I scoot my hips underneath him and try to throw his weight to his front. Notice how this puts his weight on his hands, making it hard for him to reach back and crossface. My elbow and knee are still touching, and my elbow is now jamming into his ribs/stomach to keep his weight off.

I may need to open my ankles now as I rock him over me so my knee can carry his weight.

Notice how I’m spreading his legs to disrupt his base as I pull his leg on my shoulder and scoot underneath him.

My hips keep going under him by shrimping and bumping my shoulder under his leg and throwing my right elbow to my left.

My right knee slides in under his thigh and keeps his hips up.

I stretch him away with my right knee under his thigh. My left leg comes up and steps on the inside of his knee/thigh and pushes too. This puts his weight off of me and on to his far knee. It also creates space for me to get on my left elbow.

The grip on the kneecap is important. It’s a strong grip that prevents him from kicking his leg out and run out of the sweep.

You can clearly see how my right knee/shin is creating space and where my left foot is going against his knee.

Stretch my left leg to kick his leg away and scoot my hips out. Now I’m carrying almost none of his weight and have plenty of room to get all the way up on my hand. My right leg is stepping on the mat now in preparation for a technical stand-up. The sweep from here is easy. Just stand up or come to your knees and move towards him.

Concepts: hips under hips and leg on the shoulder.

Rocking sweep from deep half guard and brabo counter sweep.

From each of these guards, you have a wide variety of sweeps. The important concept here is linking the guards together.

Try drilling the leg and hip movements solo and with a partner to get a feel for them. You’ll find that when they resist one direction, they usually leave themselves open to the other.

Pass prevention: scissors, hugging, stacking and reverse scarf (Marcelo) pass counters. Backroll sweep.

In the past I’ve been criticized for not showing anything original and just copying techniques from famous people. I thought about it and maybe they’re right; I learn from all over and often end up teaching it later. I’ve always given credit to whoever I learned from and I try to offer something more, if just a clearer explanation. I didn’t think much of this until people started nagging me about it.

When I was talking with Leo Kirby about learning from people by copying then teaching others, he just said “Yeah, but isn’t that what everyone does?”

So I’ll be the first to say that I owe a great many people for what I show in these videos. This includes:

• Eduardo de Lima, my instructor, who teaches a great half guard that he attributes to his friends Gordo (yes, that Gordo) and Jean-Jacques Machado.
• Trog, my training partner (and contributor to one of the videos) for trouble shooting with me.
• Crazy James, a black belt who’s been teaching me his half guard since I was a white belt.
• Jay Valko for his amazing open guard transitions.
• Leo Kirby for his z-guard instructional and advice.
• Jeff Rockwell for his deep half guard tutorials, which he’ll say he got from Minotauro (more of that nasty copying then teaching).
• Andreh Anderson for his half guard tutorials.
• Marcelo Garcia for his approach to half guard, x-guard and the “leglock” guard.
• Stephan Kesting for his half guard, butterfly guard and even kneebar DVDs.
• Indrek Reiland for his free half guard instructional with good ideas like the double paw grip.
• Gordo for his DVDs and for having done this since the dawn of time.
• Eddie Bravo for bits and pieces of his half guard system.
• Saulo Ribeiro for his half guard DVD and how he and his brother do reverse De la Riva and open guard.
• Jean-Jacques Machado for his half and open guard in his books and ADCC matches.
• Kenny Florian for his half guard sweeps in his no-gi seminar DVD.
• Jeff Glover for the half guard I’ve picked up from watching him compete.
• Franjinha for teaching half guard on the Paragon DVD.
• Wilson Reis for his butterfly/half guard sweep underhooking the leg like in his EGO matches.
• Gustavo Machado for his instructional DVD on half and quarter (arm wrapping) guard.
• Baret Yoshida for his half guard sweeps in his Japanese book/DVD combo.

I’ve also got a lot of very helpful advice from posters on several BJJ forums.

I’m sure I’m forgetting people, but that’s a good chunk.

So what do I have to offer if I’m just “stealing” from all of these sources? In sampling from each of these people, I put together an approach and techniques that I liked better and I think I can explain how and why well enough to add a little more.

“Yeah, but isn’t that what everyone does?”

Yup.

Attention white belts of the world: put down your copy of Mastering the Rubber Guard for about an hour and watch this video. I realize it may be hard to pull yourself away from all the bright colors and exotic nomenclature, but trust my judgment on this. What follows is a seminar I shot for my first BJJ instructor, Bryan Harper, recently promoted to black belt. He is very very good. In particular, he is very very good at passing the guard and choking people, which is great because I’ve included ten choking and passing techniques that I think will be extremely beneficial to your collective games. Best of all, they’re all tailor-made to be applicable to that most elusive of creatures: MMA-specific grappling techniques.

So check it out. This was my first time shooting a seminar, and yes, I’m well aware that the camera gets a little…dynamic at times. I was constantly fighting for a good angle without getting in front of the seminar attendees or losing audio, so sometimes I had to adjust at inopportune moments.

Attention colored belts and no-gi wrestlers: Same thing, but with a tone less smarmy and condescending, and more enthusiastic.

Also, question for anyone knowledgable in the field of video encoding: this was only my second time uploading to Youtube. I shot all of this on very, very expensive miniDV and exported it from Final Cut as MPEG4 files. On my computer it looks pristine. On Youtube it looks and sounds like everyone’s being attacked by a swarm of killer bees disguised as MPEG artifacts. Is there any way around this, or is this just Youtube’s stupid fault?

Defense against a guillotine applied from within the guard

Introduction to the basic guillotine

Standing guillotine defense

Introduction to the arm-in guillotine

Turnover off opponent’s half guard guillotine defense.

Passing the open guard in MMA

Frankenstein guard pass

Step-through guard pass

Step-over guard pass, with Don Richards

Take the first technique from the last video (switching from half to butterfly guard) and add these submissions to the end and in effect you’ve almost got triangles, armlocks and omoplatas from half guard.

If you’re enjoying these videos, please consider hitting the donation button and helping me upgrade my video editing equipment. Right now I’m running on an outdated computer and using built-in editing software. A couple donations would help a lot.

– Being flattened out by the underhook and crossface in half guard and switching to half butterfly (one hook) then full butterfly guard.
– Half butterfly guard sweep by underhooking the leg when they bring it too high (+ bonus switch to x-guard.)
– 90 degree hook sweep from butterfly guard with overhook.
– Switching from the hook sweep to the underhooking leg sweep (same as before) when they post their leg to defend.