This Week on the Mats

The Closed Guard, From the Ground Up

The closed guard might be one of the best positions you can be in — or one of the worst. It depends entirely on your skill set and what you’re trying to do with it. That’s exactly why we’re spending real time on it.

Starting this week, and probably running for the next week and a half to two weeks depending on how fast we move, we’re breaking down the closed guard from the ground up.

What We’re Covering

One of the biggest takeaways from my time with the Ribeiro Jiu Jitsu Association and access to Renato Charuto’s  game, was how much the closed guard can do for you both offensively and defensively. There’s a lot going on once you start looking closely: breaking your opponent’s posture, maintaining your own, attacking at different stages, and controlling them at different points of their pass or attack depending on what they’re doing.

We’re going to spend extra time on two things in particular: posture and position — for both the top and bottom player — and hand positioning. Where the hands are tells you what’s coming, and it tells you what you should be doing in response. We’ll cover that for the person on top and the person on the bottom.

There are a lot of small details here, and that’s the point. We’re going to work through them in order rather than dumping everything on you at once.

If you walk away from the weeks training with a solid understanding of even how to cleanyl start two solid sequences you’re going to be far better off than someone waiting for a mistake.

The Progression

We’ll start on the ground. They’re in front of you, inside your closed guard. First question: what do you do?

Here’s a useful thing to know: about 80% of the time, the person in your guard wants to stand up. But they don’t get to their feet in one motion. They have to change their posture and shift their hands to do it — and the moment their hands and body move a certain way, you’ve got an opening to capitalize on.

That’s exactly what we’re breaking down: those specific scenarios, step by step. The goal is that you can either react cleanly to what they give you, or better yet, lead them to where you want them to go.

So they try to stand. What do you do on the way up? They get to their feet. Now what? Is it game over? Far from it. From there we’ll be looking at high percentage controls, sweeps and some  submissions, just a couple of solid options you can apply at each phase.of the game

Why This Beats Just Being Bigger and Stronger

When you can read those steps and stay ahead of them, the whole thing comes more under your control — the flow of the fight starts going your way instead of trying to suprise the opponent.

Without that, it’s just two people fighting and hoping one of them is bigger, stronger, or faster, or hoping you happen to know some random technique the other person doesn’t. That’s not a plan. That’s a coin flip.

Done well, the closed guard is a genuinely powerful position, and that’s exactly why it’s so avoided at the higher levels. Watch experienced grapplers and you’ll notice nobody wants to be stuck inside a good closed guard. It’s a tough place to be, and you don’t want to be the one caught there.

Quick note on the math: in the closed guard, you’ve got your arms and your legs working. The person on top only has their arms. Play the position well and it’s not a fun spot for them.

This Week and Next

We’re going to build this in order. This week in bjj 201 classes we’ll focus on positioning yourself well on the bottom—controlling their posture, with your body and grips/arms right so you’re set up to attack. Next week, we’ll flip it and work the top position: what to do when you’re the one inside someone’s guard.

In terms of reps, we are are going to keep working on the omoplata situations looked at last Saturday, making it the go-to attack when/if you leave the closed guard scenarios.