Understanding The Open Guard In BJJ by John Danaher

okay guys they're here today great jump down there again if you chew honor for me guys I just came here to you're exceeding and I couldn't not give you Josh so I came here to the hands of Gracie Bronx brewery for Jean you to share every minute cool and the guys the backside structurally to that we are doing it for joy is all about the open guard the open guard go further faster that's the the fundamental structural issues that Joe is doing so today George got explained here to us all about the open guard and

they're super excited to hear and learn from you with regards to go further faster series this is designed to ultimately to as the name implies to get you moving in the right directions and this for you to sue and make as much progress as you can in a short time all of the topics selected are considered to be the 15 most important positional skills and the score jujitsu I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that probably for your long-term development in the sport of Judah to the number one will be open guard

okay I think it's fair to say that the most distinctive feature of jujitsu as a grappling sport where there's many different kinds of graphics for wrestling judo so many alternatives out there the single most distinctive feature of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu which sits in aside from the others is the incredibly here the emphasis on guard position and as much as we love closed guard it's absolutely fair to say that the majority of our time and guard position is spent in open guards as such your development with the skills of open guard will largely determine your overall

development in the sport that's why he puts such a heavy emphasis upon it now unlike other forms of god half that and close guard that have been covered already it's not a in an area of knowledge which can be put into a compartment it in it entails the study of many different forms of God okay open God is refers to any situation with my feet are apart from each other when we look at close God is just one position and as a result you can compartmentalize all the skills into a pretty coherent little system with

open God you've got literally dozens of variations of open God and within each one of those variations this sub variations and a massive number of moves that can apply to to each one of those so the topic is potentially massive to a degree which half gotta close got simply on and so the first question that you're going to run into in the first problem that you're going to run to is a complexity problem okay how am I going to manage so many alternatives when I'm under stress this other the supposed of - trying to put

down the stress and pass my god and Here I am juggling 10,000 alternatives what the hell am I going to do here how am I going to say okay I'll go with option A when there's two thousand options out there any one of which I could have chosen and so the big issue you're going to face when you first start the study of close God is okay if there's 10,000 options which ones do I choose which one should be the ones which I focus upon now in time you'll start to make your own choices but

what I will say is this even though there was a vast amount or a vast number of different alternatives choices of God groups that you can use from God sub variations of Sarah Sarah the underlying principles which you're going to be using enclosed in open guard scenarios a few and number and pretty simple to understand it will take you a lifetime to actually enact them to the standards that you want to but getting your start in jiu-jitsu from open god there's a small number of basic principles that we work with which I'll outline in this

video and no matter how complex the overall position of Auckland God may seem always come back to those simple conceptual principles and you'll have a lot easier time navigating that complexity which goes through many beginning students when they go to work over you God in the video I talked around I talked about eight foundational principles from from open guard scenarios let's look at one of them this is the idea of double directionality whenever we go to apply a force to an object the most efficient way we can apply it is what we review two is

a coupled force where you have two forces acting at two ends of a lever in opposite directions at the same time okay so for example almost all of the main submission holds rely on a couple forces you want to create a tremendous tearing force on an object the best thing you can do is to have two forces operating opposite directions at the same time and you'll tear things so when you're going to tear a piece of paper the easiest way for you to do it is to hold the paper tear east and west and it's

easy so as much as possible we want to exert forces upon resisting opponent we want to use coupled forces double directionality refers to exactly that when I go to sweep an opponent I never just want to push in one given direction rather I want to create a force going to the east in one part of this body and then in a different part of this body a force going to the west so you get tremendous rotational torque a foreigner opponent and as a result your sweeps have a much greater effect there are many sweeps in

the school year to which we rely upon double directionality let's have a look at seminary if we have better tow upon two knees in front of me looking an open godson re this is the ideal time for us to start using this principle of double duration elephant on a classic example occurs when we go to employ two hooks or suma Gatien if I start off the training here in front of me were fighting the usual kind of fashion when you go through and take a cross grip on our training partner I want to expose benardos

belt okay the the belt as it runs down his back now you can see but now there's quite a bit taller than I am and that's north to go it's gonna be difficult for you go over the top and get to my opponents back it would be ludicrous on my part to trying to reach my Eevee like this is offered unto hooks turbinado it could easily come in it's not possible so what we're going to do is we're going to go with a grip strategy when we get a hold of a straight lapel grip up

on our training partner that pulls an immediate Barry between myself and my opponent I taking a little off balance and then I switch to a cross grip okay so I start with straight then from here I push open and exposed to cross with and lock it up like so now I take my foot to my training partners me and I create an off balance which exposes my training partners belt I don't grab the belt of the spine I grab Luther around to the side just like so now what 'banahna goes to recover is posture you've

got that good fell through and it's a result going to pull yourself into a good sweeping position okay now as I get a grip on my training partner sleeve and push the hand across the body I'm going to go into the basic hook sweet when we do this we can expect our opponent to tripod out at the legs if but I don't ieave but other one I even just kick this two knees on the on the floor it would be very very easy just to sweep my phone okay everybody take tall position but you're beating

with skilled opponents they're never going to accept that and you're gonna take their two knees off the mat so here we have a training pod gift we walk up and when I go to perform too sweet to eat come up off the mat and this is something we can pretty much always expect from the skilled opponent okay now as I go to complete the sweep you can see all of his weight is here on this foot his left hand is controlled by me okay his right foot is completely off the mat and his base is

held by a combination of his right hand on the floor and his left foot okay I'm gonna take my foot my bottom foot I'm just gonna reach for benardos shin using the sole of my foot i curl my foot around his shin and come to my foot to fake to make a good purchase on his leg now my left leg begins him lift out to the waist while my right foot hooks and squeeze to the east the idea is that couple force creates a very strong torque in opposing directions which turns my opponent's hips towards

the ceiling and creates a very strong sweet in effect so once again you start off counterpart by training partner with another spray trip and I speed into a course if I take my feet upon the right imbalances you push on the knee like suppose the belt alpha here we walk up we've got training partner and I go in attacking with soo big issue the hook sweet my opponent goes into an intelligent defensive reaction then you can see he's coming up off the floor with his two knees okay now from here I just take my foot

and hug onto this foot like so as my left foot lifts the right foot pulls away on my triny pop my foot and you get a nice drop straight down to the mat if I pinpoint this menu it would be quite easy from inada to ride out my sweet so if I'd walk in here and I try and take them over you can steep and out of your fixes right knee through and collapse it's like my legs okay and now I'm in a very compromised position you asked me to work out of here so what

we want to do is make sure his hips and chest to face the ceiling as soon as possible but longer Bernardo rides my top leg the greater the chance of him bringing his knees through successfully and avoiding my suite so you can see him if there's a time delay event the longer we hang in this position but other Suites his knees through and defeats went my hope and now a minute severely compromised position so we want as much as possible get out grips locked up and as we get that ran up immediately we just reach

with his foot okay it's a pretty easy reach and then from here is by the lift foot lifts the right foot takes away he's one base of support and weird up into opposition so this would be an excellent example of using two forces and opposing directions at the same time to create a much greater rotational tune upon Republic and sweep them down to the mat a second great example of this general principle and operation will be a classics to this week as we work from the seated position it's like so we're going to I take

like a cross or straight lapel breath okay we're gonna go through and get a grip here when I train your partner's top for us so we're not opposed to pull away from us it won't be easy okay now we post our foot right here on a penny partners hip and then I take my second foot across my trainee but in this body my knee coming up into the outfit just like so as my foot comes down to my training partners need you will see there is a force given in two opposite directions my left leg

is pushing out like so bringing Barnardo's here over the endangered me my second foot comes down here and as we start that scissoring effect you'll see that again there's clearly two opposing forces here one working to the east to the west and you can see as a result you get a very quick tune of it down to the mat so once again you start off you go through and take a straight grip and lock out like stuff in myself down the perfect position to stop going on the attack okay you can see already the left

leg starts taking the weight onto one knee I won't but not us kid going over his own name and from here when we draw we get a good hook here as I pull physically along the mat with my right leg my left leg goes in the opposite direction he gives us exactly the sweep we're looking for no scissor sweets yep that's the one most of you are familiar with and also we've done extraordinarily well with powder a different form of God a spidey God we even opponent down on two knees it's not a difficult thing

for us here to get a double cuff notes on a training partner when he goes to pull away it's a difficult thing why because we're taking our pants and converting them to a palm up grip this creates a line of tension through my training partners jacob extends all the way up to the back of the shoulders so here's the pull away from us it's difficult okay my head was close to my hips makes it even more so for a situation where I place my foot here on my training puppies hit my Sigma put those here

into the bicep and he starts to drop down towards the mat from here I go to an elbow rather than a shoulder now I've been others in Boots pounds now there's a good stance and what I want to do is we want to take his elbow and bring it higher than his head just like so that's what takes the man out of balance I want to create a situation where I'm no longer facing directly into my opponent I bring his elbow over is on the head and I pull back so that I face out to

the side no we get a beautiful sweep like so now right in the scissoring estate we get our initial grips double cup we straighten it by going to pop him up the place is full on the hip you get up like a guy now from here get that elbow high up over a changing partners here we bring our foot down towards the floor and there's the perfect scissoring action my live for it creates a force out to the east for my right foot clips and faces remain down but banana tries to get back up the

inside foot position still makes it very difficult for an opponent time to recover it's relatively easy for us because we're on an over for high scope inside try again cross our trading partners party and take top position so this would be another fine example of taking an opponent and applying two forces and altered directions at the same time different god same principle okay now let's look at a fourth way in which we can use this principle bit on the side with an arm track we have an opponent god previously when we were extermination we were

working here their training partners appelles and getting through to a belt just I'm a little different instead of working at the lapels sometimes the did will get a hold of your hunger pins and well we're gonna go through and we're gonna take the cross cuff to appear on our training partners ahead and go through underneath again we're trying to create a line of tension that goes from the four of all the way up to the back of the shoulders and get our elbow close to her own voice we have been how to go see yank

away from me it's a difficult thing now my second hand finds the seam that runs down the back of every sleeve and locks in just like so at the armpit now my opponent goes to yank away it's incredibly difficult this two-on-one grip is incredibly controlling so once again from a situation where I denied my training partners lapels I go through I take a crosscut grip and go through and create that line of tension that sits up the grip that we really want there's two on one grip it's been how to go to yank away it's

not easy now from here we roll the man forward we're gonna shoot our out all the way around those coupons shoulders my second hand goes through and becomes an under here on my train five so another goes to pull away from me on this side will see that the elbow my elbow locks over benardos elbow so his right elbow is trapped inside mine if you wanted to base out on the floor it would be physically impossible now what we want to do is we want to get him up in the air with his hips higher

than his head that's pretty easy to do once you get your opponent slugging here his only real recourse is to try and reach for the floor with his feet as a base of support it's hard because the hips are higher than the head but as your opponent gets better and better and skill level you'll be able to touch a toe on the floor like so I'm gonna tilt my trainee bandha right now he's symmetrical right in front of me I tilt him over the side he sounds reaching for the man as he continues to reach

out for the man I just place my foot here and you can guess where we're going as my right foot lift my left foot cuts across in the opposite direction and it was all mean up with a beautiful sweep from bottom position so once again I'll demonstrate this time facing directly towards it so you can see the foot action we start off without two on one grip like so we do all the manage towards us we go an L we're deep around our training partners arm and we take an underhook here so I'm gonna add

a ghostie yank away it's a difficult thing to do we bring the man up into the air he starts reaching to the floor and then for me here I take my foot and hook onto his and as a result were able to hit a very nice economical foot sweep with my right foot lifts to the east and my left or it cuts right to the list as a result and effective to another gun so what are we going to eat we've got four different sweeps employees from a variety of different gods that all rely on

exactly the same principle that one guiding principle double direction of applying two forces at the same time in opposite directions applies in many different kinds of God for many different kinds of sweep once you start to see open god in this light as a position filled with myriad possibilities but all united by a small set of simple easy-to-understand principles you will be able to take what seems like tremendous complexity in this position and reduce it to a few simple concepts principles which would give you direction in a chaotic live training situation and you'll quickly start

sweeping people to think of it from bottom position John that's also right right in the beginning when you start talking about the open air while you were talking like how how many thousands of options we have in the open air I was thinking like butterfly Dilla give a spider guard laughs guard or there's like reversibility but group so but it it's amazing what you did here because you took one principle and you applied this principle like spider guard bird fly butterfly like a butterfly with an entree with the arm trap so then that was really

really cool it was amazing to see like how you have some details that no worries you so when you were doing the spider and for example I see everybody making group inspire but I never saw anybody explained you way to explain like turning the earth look what happens when Bernard you'll see a line of tension starts to run through my jacket and it extends all the way to the back of my shoulder so now he doesn't this control my hands he's controlling my whole arm and even my shoulder girdle so when he puts a foot

of my bicep for example tension I feel here it's a very difficult thing for me to deal with okay so as much as possible we make grips on people we want to get the most mileage out of those grips and subtle details like this really make a difference and this will apply in every group that we make upon the jacket lapel groups have their own elements and even how we go to control the cuff of the guy is different depending whether we group with four fingers with three fingers or what have you there's many interesting

details that we'll get to see in this video but that's the main thing you want to look at tonight but out of this idea that the number one problem you guys will face of students with open guard and missionaries can be complexities so many different options and it's important we be able to knock them down to a manageable number because remember guys it's one thing to learn in jujitsu but it's not so much how much you learn and you to sue that counts it's how much you can remember under stress there's everything you do in

this sport you have to do it under scripts so if you've got 10,000 things running through your mind you're never gonna succeed you could have better bring it down to a manageable number but now that we talk about this all the time when if you look at great education juices one of the hallmarks one of the most common traits that we see amongst great athletes is their ability to reduce the number of moves that they use into a relatively small stick and maximize your vision maximize their applications you don't see very many athletes with vast

repertoire of moves what you typically see is as with two or three gods in which they are extremely good plus three or four gods which they're quite good and then many many applications with a net domain that's the patent in which you see among champions since the dawn of time it's not about the breadth of the number of those that you know but rather the depth of the moves that you know learning to think conceptually and understand the underlying principles will make that journey on your part a lot easier it's going to be a lot

of individual choice on your part to get your mountain of moves in this open guard series but by fixating on the few basic underlying principles it'll make that large amount of information manageable for you yeah but I think this video is the perfect separate because you took four different moves but it's the same principle so if you can learn that principle you can do before moving up and that's how we want you working with this open guide video we outline the principles and then we show how they might possible moves so guys this is like

the open guard from the go for it faster series that we are doing from the fundamentals series and I think like you're gonna be able to have the opportunity to learn all these details that I had never seen like that you way that Joe explaining like how to make that grip so super super interesting and I'm here in York City and your job in here put a lot of is the opportunity learn from here yeah so thanks so much I appreciate it and guys it's gonna be on VG fanatics not home so so every big

by the time you are watching terrain there so make sure to check that please help me out to grow my youtube channel just click Subscribe and to watch more videos just click under see more videos I hope you enjoy it BJJ fanatics calm use the promo code youtube for you to get 10% off any instructional video improve your jiu-jitsu faster