How To Build The Perfect Half Guard Game by John Danaher

okay guys I'm here today for the great job Danner again use your honor for me guys today Joe is gonna teach us how to build the perfect half your game and guys joins that type of instructor that we teach stuff that you do and you don't even know that you do so in this case for example for me because happen is one of my favorite games and I'm sure that I'm gonna see a ton of stuff that John's gonna show that I use in my halfway game and I don't even know that I'll use so

we just finished a shooting one in time structure all about half girl and you got lunch very so on because you can add XCOM maybe by the time you are watching we have a even already luncheon so make sure it's check this out and the that's the job super excited you know you said something very important they've been having this many many athletes you were one of them truly specialize in a half guard game and they're making the basis of their entire bottom game and interestingly there's an equal number of athletes who specialize in top

half guard you think of people like Rodolfo Viera Roger Gracie their whole game on top was force half guard and to all their passing from there so there's kind of a paradox involved here many players believe that half guard is the single best sweeping position from bottom and they will force their way to a half guard and bottom position and work deliberately from there and there's an equal number of athletes who believe that half guard top is one of the premier passing positions and they will force their way to half guard and start passing from

there as a coach I'm known as someone who encourages his athletes when they're passing to force half guard and use that as one of their favorite possible positions and as a coach I'm also known as someone who strongly favor sake of getting to half guard from bottom position and sweeping people so this kind of a paradox coming on the orden how does this work how is it that half guard top is one of the favored positions and half die bottom is also one of the favourite positions it seems like a contravariant if or paradox ultimately

the way you'll resolve this paradox is to understand there's a key element that will make half guard either the pass heaven or the path to hell depending upon one thing and there's control of the bottom athletes head and shoulders okay if I'm working from bottom half God and Bernardo Faria gets control of my head and shoulders and a way with you constrains hip movement and pins both my shoulders to the mat and Hrothgar bottom is not a desirable place to be under those conditions it's a desirable place for inmates the passing athlete to be so

for example if we were working here and Bernardo goes underneath my arm on the far side here and underneath my hip here he's locked his hands he's created a situations where he's got closed wages around my head and shoulders and as a result I can't move from one shoulder to the other and both shoulders have pinned down to the mat this is a very very detrimental effect on my my hip position and my ability to move my hips and as a result this I think everyone would agree is a very very fine passing position so

yeah I pulled half guard but there's no advantage conferred to me as if automatically here this is a position of disadvantage and it's very easy from here for Bernard to start passing so just getting half guard per se is not a good thing it has to be half guard with a set of conditions and those conditions are my hidden shoulders must be free to move I must be able to move from one shoulder to the other if I can't do that Bonjour was a pin this is a disastrous position and not one to be be

highly valued at all so what we need to do is somehow protect our hidden shoulders from our opponents ability to control us so that's the the paradox in half guard that it can at the same time be one of the best passing positions for the top athlete and one of the best sweeping positions for the bottom athlete in addition to the paradox in half guard to understand this position with that I was saying something else better the idea of the appeal of half guard you were an athlete who had a strong appeal to half guide

bottom there are many others too and we're gonna start asking ourselves okay as an athlete why would I willingly actively seek to get into the half guard position and I think you'll agree with me I'm expounded the real appeal of half Guide Boram is the idea that it strongly limits the amount of motion and the need for speed in their position why is this okay it comes out of something that often talked about the iron law of speed and connection as a general rule in the sport of units with more connection to athletes have to

each other the lower the speed of the engagement okay so for example if an otter gets mounted position on a shoe here there's obviously a tremendous sense of connection okay his feet and legs control my hips as he puts a crosshairs on here now my head and shoulders constraint there's so much connection between the two athletes that the speed of the match greatly diminishes and it's gonna be a very slow grinding match from this position okay let's contrast this with the situation with Bernardo stands over me and from here the only connection between us is

at the level of the hands I have hands on him he has hands on me and because there's very little connection between the two athletes you're gonna see a lot of speed and dynamicism in a position like this it's gonna be left and right movement and and from here the swift it's gonna have to move at a pretty high rate of speed in order to be successful okay so you can see something very simple here the idea that as the amount of bodily connection between the two athletes increases the speed of the match goes down

now the beauty of the half guard position is there's a lot of body connection and there's ways to connect to someone else's body in half guard way you can dramatically slow down the speed of a match and so we often find that athletes whose body type age or disposition make some pets a little slower than other athletes these people tend to favor half guard very very strongly your game Bernardo was never a speed based game okay no what's always a variable again are you very unnatural 400 AD so you often see this kind of thing

okay speed based assays generally like minimal body connection and use dynamicism and movement side to side trickery these that's their natural game if you're a slower Excellus physically gifted and said older athlete then half guard is custom-made for you and precisely because of this boy connection so if we're working so far in half you'll see that in most of the main half guide bottom scenarios there's a tremendous degree of body connection where we have a tight waist grip to controls our trading partners hips we have two of our legs connected to one of our opponents

we have an arm connection on your opponent so it's gonna be very very difficult under these circumstances for an opponent to move around freely but neither was locked on one side of my body once we get here there's so much body connection between the two athletes is gonna be very very hard for the top athlete to exercise any kind of speed and dynamicism to to go into a passing sequence so with with uncovered two things already first what is the appeal of half guard well it's an incredibly effective way to slow the match down and

take a dynamic quick movement out of the equation okay so if that suits your game you already tight your disposition that's a wonderful thing for you we've also uncovered the idea there's a paradox in half guard it can either be the best passing position in the sport or one of the best sweeping positions in the sport depends on one thing who controls the bottom athletes here in the shoulders that's gonna be the whole game okay top athlete can control the hidden shoulders absolutely it's one of the base policy positions if the automatically can deny hidden

shoulder control to the top athlete it becomes one of the best sweeping positions so the big question we need to answer here right now is okay how do I did I control of my hidden shoulders if I'm working half guard bottom okay let's break this down to three main methods by which we can do this okay there's the big problem associated with half guard is that normally most forms of god permit us to both push and pull with our legs okay so if when either comes forward I have a pushing foot on a set makes

it difficult for it to come forward this governs distance through pushing Oh God so it's been out of precious for word on me here it's difficult we go through that pushing foot when I go into a half guard situation my legs can only pull I lose the ability to push with my legs so panada gets chest chest or me in a situation like this my legs have no capacity to push from this position and as a result you lose total distance okay contrast this to the situations where we have butterfly God and I put a

posted foot on my trainee POTUS head back and gather distance here he comes forward my right foot governs distance between us okay I can push on my opponent and use this as a means of monitoring distance half got bored and chased the chest you don't have that the only thing my legs can do here is pull people in I have no capacity to push on my opponents legs and as a result I lose the sense of distance control that's a serious problem because now the guy can cover distance close distance and get control of my

head and shoulders and now you are all those problems with half guard bottom there's a reason why many coaches don't particularly like half guy bottom as a as a method for their students to work because they correct and so far as you often do lose control of distance here so our first means of controlling distance from half guy bottom is always going to be a knee shield if we bring the camera around in this direction you'll see that a knee shield whether I place it low in the hip or high inside the shoulder it gives

a mechanism to push an opponent okay so I have a pulling leg my inside leg is a pulling leg it pulls in on Bernardo and I have a pushing leg here at the knee on the hip or the knee on the shoulder so he tries to come forward and control my head it's gonna be difficult for him okay you hit the means of distance control through the knee shield so that's one excellent way for taking out hidden shoulders from the top athlete Oh God a second method is for us to take a hand and put

it underneath my opponent if he gets the underhook here he can pin my shoulder straight down to the mat and if you can pin the shoulder to the man he can definitely start going to many fine but God boxing sequences if I on the other hand get my arm underneath his arm now when he tries to control my head and shoulders it's almost impossible I can stay up propped on an elbow if I go down to the floor he has no capacity to put on a cross face or lock his hands around my head and

shoulders and as a result from here it won't be a difficult thing for us create chaining forces we can start sweeping people from bottom position okay so that's an obvious way in which we can deny control about head and shoulders up on it first me shield that makes a method of distance control this one here is a means of preventing him pinning my left inside shoulder down to the mat okay now a third method also very very useful is hand control okay my opponent even if he gets an underhook here if I can control his

hand I can prevent him to make sure utilizing the underhook so this would be his cross face hand if he can get a cross face and an underhook he can bend both of my shoulders to the mat and make my life miserable from bottom half guard however if I control the hand he reaches for the cross face it's very very difficult from here okay even if he's got an underhook you wouldn't be able to secure it with the closed face and I can still be very effective in this position okay so hand control taken through

this grip here on the sleeve cuff is a very very valuable commodity when you're in bottom half guard okay so we've got three means of protecting our hear me shields either low or high hug the hook slash tight waste this prevents him from pinning my outside shoulder down to the man and hand control which prevents him from working across face grip okay now all three of these mechanisms are heavily covered in the video instructional that we've filmed today but for today's youtube video we're going to focus on the idea of can control and how this

feeds into a particularly effective set of reversals out of half guard bottom the back roll sweeps okay first what a back wall sweep is this position is that you're getting a strong connection to our pony's body and performing a simple basic movement if you did so a backwards roll we take our body nice the chest and we've created a rounded spine so that our spine takes on the same shape as the bottom of a rocking chair as my lower leg extends we get a nice rocking motion that rocking motion will enable us to get underneath

our training patna center of gravity and started moving bigger stronger heavier people with mechanical efficiency then we add the idea of a kick over a splitting of on leg and we can end up on top of an opponent as a result okay so the physical movement behind it is relatively simple and one which I'm sure all of you are familiar usually it's part of a basic warm-up before class so there's their rocking chair shape which enables us to move an opponent's body weight and then a movement over the splitting of the legs and top position

okay that's gonna be the movement that underlies the back roll sweet simple back roll now we're going to connect to an opponent and actually force them into the role that we're performing so first one we're gonna look in what was a situation where from God we'll start with a low initial as bernardo comes in towards me to get grips who get out gripping just like so sick in hand it's gonna go here as a cross grip we convert to a high knee shield so we've got an excellent means of controlling distance here okay that's banana

precious four he runs into the high knee shield if he reaches me with his left hand I'm controlling the hand here we've got excellent initial control okay now we need to start a back roll motion so I'm gonna punch my leg throat I'm gonna bring my head towards his bill what's my intention here my intention is to get underneath the center of gravity okay here's a simple insight you should carry that with you for the rest of your time in jiu-jitsu if you want to start moving and lifting people you've got to get under them

in particular you've got to get underneath their center of gravity their center of gravity is usually located around the area of the knot of the belt okay so that's what exactly where my Mike body is gonna be hit it I bring my body and just like so and then we start an action of bringing our knees in towards our chest and as a result you'll see when either central gravity comes up on top of me so I'm cool the body in and we started pushing action it gets our opponent rolling over our body from here

we come up on top and we're looking good okay now there's a very very important underlying concepts it's pervasive throughout all of your sweets in the sport of juices and it's strongly showing in this particular sweet the the background sweep whenever you go to knock someone over with a sweep there's something we often refer to this is quadrant theory the idea that your opponent has four main bases of support here's a fifth one the hit that will cover that another time okay so fun life is stable I have one two three four bases of support

each one of those bases support covers a certain quadrant okay I can go from 12 o'clock down to this is three o'clock with my right arm so after a right upper quadrant and that's covered by my right arm my left hand covers the left upper quadrant from 12 o'clock to 9 o'clock again it covers that very wellness creates an effective base of support okay my right leg covers the right and lower quadrant that can go from six o'clock all the way through to three o'clock left leg covers left lower quadrant and that can go from

9:00 to 6:00 okay if you try to put a base of support into another quadrant problem stop okay so if I take my left leg and I try to cover the right lower quadrant I create a situation where even small forces will knock me down okay if I take away a given base of support then it's very very easy to apply forces into that quadrant with a base of support has been taken away which will put that person down to the map so we're always looking and every kind of suite that we employed from God

to look where is my opponent's base of support take away that base of support and then push them into the quadrant that we see you will see this very clearly in operation in the in the back Royal Suite okay then average is four bases of support once we take him up into the air okay so we start without grip this like so now I get underneath in central gravity like so if we bring the camera over here you'll see that Bernardo has his left foot as a base of support is my foot is a potential

base of support and his right hand as a potential base of support but I am controlling Barnardo's left hand so if we bring the camera back on this side you'll see island controlled benardos left hand so of course that's the quadrant that I want to take him towards I bring my hip forwards we create momentum and then from here that's exactly and then we get up in down to the man so as always we identified where we'll be controlling opponents for lens we hit one of them he's got three left so we have to take

him into that quadrant if we misdirect the energy of is sweet failure is absolutely inevitable let's have a look at an example okay now left hand means left upper quadrant is where we're going to be sweep down if I get into a situation where I try to take than either directly to my left Jesus puts his right hand up and it covers the base of what we failed every single time okay so the originality of force is extremely important here we want to make sure in these circumstances I've been it's kind of left-handers block so

it's left upper quadrant that's going to be the direction of force so that's exactly where our back role gets directed we bring our head in close towards our training partners hips and then from here we bring our center of gravity all the way through this and send the man over and as a result we end up in top position okay now great thing about macro sweeps is they're pretty versatile they can be done with many different groups but - I want you focusing on first the cross grip and sleeve cuff and a second is where

our opponent forces a chest the chest position then we use an over back grip and you can get spectacular results out of this one - so previously we had control of the hand and we had a high knee shield well what if I don't hit that high knee shield empanada gets chase the chest on me okay well the bad news is his weights on top of you but the good news is he doesn't have a cross face to solidify his weight in place so from here I'm going to take my armpit they go over his

shoulder if you can see the shoulder when you reach for the belt that's gonna be problematic so to make sure we go over and then we access the belt if you bring the camera in this direction when we go through the belt we go to the far side of the belt don't grab me aside that far side to get a stronger pull now just like before we want to bring his standard gravity up on top of us and just like before we want to push up like to shoulders so we end up in top position

ready to go on the other side of the sweep so once again a word to all you guys out there this belt around your opponent's waste is one of the single best ways to get that read control of your opponent's in ebrary you're under standard gravity is always located right next to the knot in the belt you get hands on that belt you control the center of gravity regardless of whether you grip it back of the belt or the front of the belt it's an incredible connection to your opponent we only use this all because

we can so once again half-god situation good news is you got hand control bad news is he comes in gets cheers - cheers okay now if we lost hand control at this point everything would get worse and worse now this man how that goes up to control my shoulders okay so it's important we keep a good calm head and make sure we keep that sleeve control so when he reaches for a cross face he can't do so now I cover his shoulder gonna get down and control our change by them at the belt just like

so now even with another makes a strong base we want to make sure in these circumstances we use that belt group to maximum advantage and then from here we pull his head Roberti up on top of us we hit that nice roll back as a result we're in perfect position on top of our training partner and ready to start our passing game so there we have one of the favorite sweets from half that bottom of that cross sleepers often seen in competition that's a good sign that it's gonna work well for you out there in

the gym it's a beautiful sleep to look at it has that that feeling of mechanical efficiency it also has something which is very very important for sweeping and gentleman's idea of an action reaction okay I always recommend I'm certainly not alone in this whenever you want to take people forwards start by pushing them backwards okay this is a competitive combat sport anytime you try to force something on opponent they've got a push back okay so if I want to take my opponent forwards almost always we initiate with a push backwards and then we switch to

a pull that several if it helps occurs the good news is whether we use cross Britain or Bell clip both grips give an ability to push okay so what we typically do in these situations is weak I know that ultimately I want to pull my opponent again but we want to accentuate the forces we can develop here by starting with a push even though I know I'm gonna terminate will pull so I push into my opponent and when I feel the push back that's exactly when we go through okay the beauty of practicing back role

sweeps is they they make this Intuit have it on your part what are the greatest habits that youth as a developing athlete can build is this capacity to use the action reaction of push-pull dynamic and build them into your sweeps I promise you your sweeping game will greatly increase just on this simple inside alone so often you see people play a very direct game okay and they become predictable okay once I get those grips on my opponent we all know what's coming next and so they know that ultimately we're going to be pulling an opponent

forward and they just go straight to a pull build some subtlety into your game start using misdirection it's the basis of your attacks if you want to pull people start with a push okay and when you feel them pushing back in reaction that's when you come back in the direction you really want always I have a clear understanding that there's two things going on here you have to create the illusion of what you want would you try to sell to an opponent and then in the back of your mind you have what you really want

to do which you keep yourself always try to use this sub diffusion all the major moves that you employ don't go directly to them go indirectly off they're in the opposite direction and you often get far far better results so it's a beautiful sweep for developing for those reasons it teaches you a lot about body movement the back roll is a foundational movement of the sport and it's used in a very practical way it's used by top athletes in competition and is often seen working on some of the best athletes in the world that's a

great sign to you that it's a it's a high percentage move and it employs these valuable insights of action and reaction which permeate throughout the sport of jiu-jitsu and will create a habit in you that will just make you a better sweeper from bottom position overall as opposed to just this one move yeah so things that caught my attention here was the idea of the action reaction in the halfcourt that sometimes you don't think so much about Indy half where anyone because it's mostly seen as a static position well I really was a half guard

you just hold on tight you good connection but even there there's a subtlety of portion area so this thing I also do the thing you just mentioned in the beginning about like how it's the type of game that you don't use speed so you can go very slow I think that's probably why like so many old grabbers please I agree you know that's anything that watching your matches panada is how you fought some of the most dynamic athletes in judicial history like me and Earl oh yeah no one first I am I said yeah but

when they fought you the matches look like slow motion yeah exactly you would literally take the fastest people in the sport and make them look slow and a half guard is one of the few positions you can do this and you built a career on this and also yesterday we were talking about it like how good is happening for connections needs right like how you can connect things from halfway very easy like connecting halfway we were passing and that set ourselves or so and contrasting that with many other popular guard positions where once you complete

a sweep from certain kinds of garden for example spider guard then you have to switch to a completely different set of okay here's the suite now I've got a completely change there's no real connection between the sweep and then follow-up whereas from half guard you there's so much physical closeness to your opponent that you're right in on the action the minute you finish the sweep you're ready to start passing guys there we know that if most of the audience who falls is like older grabbers and I think happier is big game for dent because it's

you don't need to be fast you don't need to be explosive and like I said I a crippled leg and a hip replacement and so on the other hand we also don't want to say like you know you've got to be but it has the potential to take situations where you're faced with someone who you believe is more athletic than yourself and shut down their athleticism that's wonderful thing that's only what you do is about I agree one have said and guys that were just shutting time structure all about half court that's gonna be part

of the fundamental series for all job they go for the faster so make sure to check it out on BJ phonetic Scholl we're gonna have lunch it soon and maybe by the time you were watching we have a ready luncheon so make sure to check that out oh it's John Ross great stuff thanks so much BJJ fanatics calm use the promo code youtube for you to get 10% off any instructional video improve your jiu-jitsu faster