Meia guarda 1

Welcome to the go further faster half guard video there's a sense in which this instructional video begins with a paradox I often refer to this as the Paradox of half guard very often I coach my athletes to force half guard as one of the Premier passing positions for the top athlete I along with many other coaches in the Sport of Jitsu fully believe that half guard is one of the single best passing opportunities for the top athlete at the same time I also coached the bottom athlete to specifically go towards half guard as one of

the Premier sweeping and control positions in the sport so there's a sense in which there's a definite Paradox even a contradiction here how can it be that the same position can be both one of the very Best positions for the top athlete for passing purposes and at the same time one of the very best sweeping and control positions for the bottom athlete how does that work well ultimately one of the big themes of this video is going to be to point out that both can be true at the same time contingent upon the control of

the head and shoulders of the bottom athlete if indeed the top athlete can control The head and shoulders of the bottom athlete yes it is one of the strongest passing positions in the sport but if the bottom athlete can deny Head and Shoulder control to the top athlete it rapidly becomes one of the best sweeping and control positions in the sport and so this whole half guide video is bound up with the idea of Head and Shoulder control from the bottom athlete's perspective We're always looking to deny Head and Shoulder control to the top athlete

and if we can do this we can turn this into one of the greatest control and sweeping positions in the sport as such the primary focus on this instructional video is to get to what we call the underhook series where I take my outside arm and place it as an underhook underneath our opponent's arm if we can get to this position it's very easy for us to deny Head and Shoulder Control to the top athlete in my opinion the single most important movement series out of this underhook is the tight waist underhook series and this

is in my opinion the most important part of this instructional video the idea is that we create a trilemma for our opponent between three kinds of body movement a roll through sweep which has two manifestations which will be shown in tremendous detail throughout this video The roll through sweep and its first manifestation has three critical steps a lower leg shift then a knee lift and then a hip shift if we can reliably get to these three body movements and perform them in that sequence you're going to have a lot of success sweeping people with the

roll through sweep as it's portrayed in this video the only way our opponent can really Resist this simple three-step sequence is to deny the second step of this three-step sequence the knee lift if our opponent can keep his knee on the floor then understand something very simple the more he resists his knee being lifted off the mat the easier it becomes for us to lift ourselves off the mat and as a result we can come up into a situation where we have a tight waist on our opponent on our knees and our opponent has a

wizard Against us this wizard versus tight waist confrontation becomes one of the key elements of the video from here we can perform a second variation of the roll through sweep where we use momentum to roll opponents over in addition as our opponent goes to resist the initial roll through sweep the other two horns of the Dilemma start to kick in The more our opponent resists The Sweep by placing hands on the mat the more vulnerable he becomes the simple duck under and limpalm at crossbody ride moves that take us towards our opponent's back as our

opponent resists us getting to the bank through the use of his wizard the more vulnerable he becomes to leg takedowns ankle picks single legs and reverse double legs and so our oppona gets caught up In a three-way dilemma which makes it extremely difficult for us for him to stop a movement either as a roll through sweep or some kind of movement towards our opponent's back or some kind of takedown at the legs and between those three options it's going to be extremely difficult for your opponent to stop you in addition there is another element the

use of the jacket in particular the lapel of our opponent's key which can create extremely strong single leg Attacks from bottom half guard the combination of all these moves in our underhook series will make you a very very difficult athlete to stop from bottom position you'll be able to get up and sweep in your opponent in a fairly short period of time understand of course that your opponent will quickly figure out the value of the underhook and start to impose his own underhook upon you then we go to the Second Great subject Matter of this

video the idea of the overhook series Once the top athlete secures the Underhill keeping it can begin to control the head and shoulders typically with some kind of cross face and underhook control this can create real problems for the athlete on bottom our response to it is two variations of the elbow Escape we'll be going through single elbow Escape series And a double elbow Escape series these will create a sense of distance control which enable us to fight an opponent off deny control of our head to our opponent and bring us back into submission offense

from bottom position we also look at the idea of distance control through the use of knee Shields knee Shields represent one of the few ways in which we can use a pushing motion to hold an opponent off deny Control of our head to our opponent and as a result we can go into one of the next great themes of this instructional video the knee lever the knee lever is one of the Premier methods of off-balancing and reversing people from bottom position it has value as a sweep and it also has value as a means of

generating kazushi or off-balancing from bottom position we spend a lot of time looking at the problem of reverse half guard postures Sometimes opponents will sit through down to a hip and change the way their hips are configured relative to ours this creates new and interesting problems in need of solutions we show very very interesting and effective ways of dealing with this common common problem understand the tremendous value of the half guard position it forms an incredibly tight connection to your opponent which will slow the Pace of the match down it's equally ineffective both with and

without a ghee and it is unusually well suited to all body types including shorter short-limbed body types which often struggle with other forms of guards so for example closed guard half guard is a position which anyone in all age categories all weight categories and all skill levels can use with tremendous effect to slow down the match and create ideal sweeping conditions That'll take you from bottom position to top position let's start off with just a general introduction the big picture as it were of our general approach to half guard bottom possession let's start off with

a reflection that there is something of a paradox with regards half guard bottom position whenever most coaches are going to advise people on how to pass someone's Guard one of the absolute most popular options that they offer is the option of deliberately putting yourself into your opponent's half guard usually by stuffing one of your opponent's legs and forcing yourself into a half guard situation and this is seen as one of the most high percentage and one of the most effective ways to pass your opponent's gut so for example if I have an opponent Who's down

on the floor and I have control of one of my training Partners Legs and i stuff my training partner's legs down I can set myself up to go into a situation where I can surround my training partner's leg stop the knee between my legs and settle down into a half guard position and from here we can go into a very strong passing situation okay so this strategy of stuffing a leg and deliberately forcing yourself into a half guard is absolutely one of the most high percentage passing methodologies in the modern School of jujitsu On the

other hand many of those same coaches will also counsel their athletes when they're in bottom position to willingly go to a half guard situation I'm one of those coaches um how do we reconcile this isn't this something of a paradox on the one hand I'm telling my athletes hey if you're on top Force the half guard and pass from there it's one of the best things you can do and on the other hand I'm saying to Those same athletes if you're underneath your opponent force your way to half guard and that's one of the best

things you can do there's an obvious contradiction there how do we resolve this well we need to look at it in terms of the two Central problems associated with half guard and once you understand what these two Central problems are you'll See that we can work very successfully from half guard top as passes because we have certain conditions met and we can work very successfully as half guard sweepers from bottom if certain conditions are met the obvious question is what are those conditions well the first one and arguably the most important has to do with

your notion of head control every half guard battle that you're in Is essentially the same battle it's the battle for control of the bottom athlete's head and shoulders so we have an opponent down on the mat foreign partner's arm on one side so I have inside and under position with my right arm and I'm able to get my shoulder inside his shoulder and apply a strong cross face on the other side I now have a set of wedges my shoulder my left shoulder my left forearm my right Forearm wedged around my Trinity Partners Head and

Shoulders okay that gets locked in place by my head position and then I go into which my training partner sits and now we're in a fine position to initiate passing our training Partners guard we've set a series of wedges in this case because my hands are blocked closed wedges around our opponent's Head and Shoulders if I can do this if I can lock down my opponent's hidden shoulders this becomes A very very dominating passing position but what if I can't lock down his head and shoulders what if my opponent for example got his arm underneath

mine and team up on his elbow now I can't apply any kind of cross facepiration there's no way for me to do so the shoulder's aren't even on the mat there's a constant danger of my back being taken in situations like this I can't really go to apply pressure and weight on my training partner his elbow Supports my weight very easily okay so in this sense my opponent has denied me control of his head and as a result he's in an extremely strong sweeping position for example as he threatens my back I have to put

my arm in here as a wizard or overhaul to prevent him taking my back that makes it very easy for him to start scooping inside my legs and from here turning me over and causing all kinds of problems so there's an obvious sense here in Which everything comes down to the central question who controls the movement of the bottom athletes hit if the bottom athlete controls that movement and they can move their head and shoulders freely then they're going to be in a very strong position to sweep an off balance clean if on the other

hand the top athlete controls the movement of the head and shoulders then they're going to be in a Very strong position to pass and that's how we resolve the apparent Paradox of half guard position and how one position can be both one of the very best passing positions and one of the very best sweeping positions depending upon who controls the movement of the bottom Place Head and Shoulders so when it comes time to pass our parents guard a huge part of what we do is to lock down up on his head and Shoulders and when

it's time to work from bottom position a huge part of what we do is to protect our head and shoulders from our opponent and get inside those capturing wedges that our opponent goes to to make use of understand as always that the primary problem here is always the problem of wedges remember one of our big themes in the go for the faster series is that wedges uh sorry I'll say that again weight Without wedges are useless okay so I can put as much weight as I want coming up it's worthless for me to put weight

on my opponent from here if anything it'll make me more vulnerable to a simple roll through sweep it just facilitate the bottom end movements what counts here is not how much weight I put on my opponent but rather the mechanical efficiency of the wedges my weight only serves to lock my wedges In place it's the wedging Around The Head and Shoulders it's going to make me effective in situations like this and enable me to start passing okay so it's not weight per se but I'm interested in applying in top half guard rather the only purpose

of my weight is to lock the wedges that I put around my on his head and shoulders in place so there's the First Central problem of half guard how are we as the bottom athlete going To deny control of our head and shoulders to our opponent the second big problem with half guard is distance management if we're working from bottom position from open guard for example here I have quite a large degree of distance control over my opponent if he goes to move away from me my lapel grip makes it quite difficult if he goes

to move into me my feet on the hips make it quite difficult and as a result it's quite easy for us From here to go in and control distance between ourselves and our opponent interestingly my opponents for example stands up with my two legs in front of my opponent I have an ability to both pull with my upper body push with my lower body and by changing feet positions I can create pulling the figs with my legs my legs can pull him in and at the same time my legs can push away so we can

simultaneously both push and pull from The bottom position now let's contrast that with half guard once my opponent closes a chest chest position from here my legs can no longer push effectively on my opponent my legs can only pull so I've lost half the reason why we're effective from any bottom position which is our ability to both push and pull on our opponent now I'm limited to pushing with my hands it's just not the same okay I'll say this again because it's so important the moment opponent gets to a chest to chest position in half

guard you are now limited with your legs to the action of pulling you have lost the capacity to push that won't change until some kind of change occurs and leg position now I have a knee in front of his hip now I can stop pushing now I can govern distance going away from me like so okay so there's a sense in which bottom half guard chest the chest like This can be a very problematic position because I lose the ability to push with my legs I can only pull now and so distance management one of

the most important things for any bottom position is seemingly lost or at least greatly diminished that's why many people I'm not particularly in Ahmed of this position change the chest bottom half guard because it seems like from here there's very little I can do with my legs in terms of pushing Rather they can only pull inwards until we get some kind of fundamental change in body position where once again we can start the action of pushing with our legs okay so there's a sense then in which we lose something very significant when someone gets down

to that chest chest position and half guard you lose the ability to push with your legs and remember guard play is almost always the interplay between Your Capacity to push and pull with your legs And arms on your opponent it's that Push Pull Dynamic that makes you a difficult person to contend with when you're working from bottom position these then are the two Central problems associated with bottom half guard how we're going to protect our head and shoulders and how are we going to work to somehow maintain this push-pull dynamic in a situation where there's

a big danger of us losing it and ending up in half guard chest the chest where you Can only pull with your legs and no longer push now we just looked at the idea of the Paradox of half guard the idea that half guard can be both one of the very best guard passing positions for the top guy in the entire Sport yutsu and it can be one of the very best sweeping positions for the bottom athlete all dependent upon The Athlete's ability to control the bottom athlete's Head and Shoulders who wins that battle wins

the position In most cases we saw that there's a cost to go into half guard where our opponent goes chase the chest and that cost is you no longer have a strong ability to manage distance between you and your opponent now distance control is one of the most important elements for success in general from bottom position and Jiu-Jitsu so if you lose that it's a big deal um if that's one of the costs associated With half guard it's time we started looking at what are the benefits why would I choose half guard as a as

a bottom position what's the appeal of it if there's a potential downside what's the what's the upsell on this let's have a look at that right now the first thing you'll notice about the half guy at the bottom is if I can get to certain kinds of positions you form extremely strong connections to your opponent's body okay so for example if I Take a tight waist grip on my training partner and go all the way around my Trinity Partners waist and lock onto my training partner's hip then from here I have the choice of going

with my inside leg to hook onto my training partner or my outside leg this enables me to form a very very strong two-on-one connection to my training partner's leg two of my legs control one of his with my head and close to his chest when He goes to pull away from me when he goes to stand up these things are all exceptionally difficult for him because the connection is just so strong okay you're connected directly to your opponent's hips you're connected two on one to your training partner's legs and you have the option now of

connecting to the second leg in ways which will make sweeps and turnovers very very easy the idea behind half guard or one of the Ideas behind half guard is somewhat similar to the standing position when we work without a game and stay in position we often make use of so-called two-on-one grips where we have tremendous positional control over our training partner when we work with with the Geon we do more or less the same thing going over our training partner's back and controlling with two arms around one of our training Partners arms and gaining strong

control of our Training Partners upper body and from here we can often do very very good work in the standing position okay essentially what we're doing with half guard is exactly that we're taking our two legs and exerting very very strong control around one of our training Partners legs so it's a it's a species of two-on-one control augmented by the strong connection to our training Partners hips and waist so when my opponent tries to take his leg Out it's so difficult the connection of my ear to his chest combined with this very strong form of

connection two on one to the legs makes for tremendously strong connection to our opponent's body so that's one great advantage of it another great advantage of going into half guard position is your ability to get underneath your opponent's center of gravity now this will be contingent upon your arm grip if my opponent has his arm underneath Mine it's very difficult for me to get underneath the center of gravity however if I'm able to get underneath his arm it's very very simple for me now to get my hips through underneath my opponent and start working my

way under his center of gravity and as a result we're going to get many opportunities from here to get his body going forwards over our head and you can see his standard gravity is Directly over mine now and so from here turnovers getting up to our base all of these things are going to be relatively easy now because we've got so deep underneath our training part in the center of gravity um another great benefit of uh working from half guard position is essentially when you work from half guard you're cutting your training partner's body in

half and You're completely dominating one side of your opponent's body typically in an open guard situation it's my whole body against my training partner's whole body okay whether I work with straight or cross lapel grips his whole body is in front of my whole body however when I go to half guard the situation changes now my whole body is in front of half of his body and so by essentially cutting your training part this body in half you've gained a tremendous amount of focus over One part of your opponent's body and you're devoting now 100

of your screens on 50 of his and this can be used in technical ways which are very very useful okay another great advantage to the half guide position that might make us more to favor it is it any time I'm underneath my opponent's arm like so and I'm coming up on my elbow I'm halfway to my opponent's back okay the only thing between he is so between me and his back now is this Overhook or wizard arm in this case it says right arm which has come around like sir if that was around should ever

relinquish and move away you are now just seconds away from going behind your opponent and getting into a good attacking position behind your opponent's back okay so again this is another one of the great appeals of the half guard situation if my arms are in certain kinds of positions you're only a Heartbeat away from your opponent's back at any given moment in the match and we'll be looking at many different ways to get to our opponents back from half guard so these are some of the reasons why we favor half guard as a position yes

certain kinds of half guard do come at a cost if my opponent's chest to chest then yeah I've lost any pretense of an ability to push with my legs and so Distance control from here chase the chest is a difficult thing to deal with okay however if I can get into certain kinds of positions like so now distance control is relatively easy I can manage my training partner's body weight I can prevent them from Framing and wedging around my head and shoulders and as a result all kinds of body movements so for example heisting which

gets us up to our knees and into a position where we can start putting Weight and pressure into our training partner all become possible okay so these are some of the reasons why you might favor half guard possession as uh as one with the go-to in a proactive fashion to enhance our sweeping game from bottom position now we're looking at the idea of an overview of the uh of the approach the half guard that we want you going through at fundamental level in the sport Um there are three prerequisites that I often push on my

students for getting your progress in in half guard accelerated uh these are the notion of connection to your opponent's leg your opponent is one leg between yours how we're going to connect to it properly the idea of kazushi getting our opponent out of balance because if we can get someone out of balance from half guard it's a lot easier for us to attack them And the third is movement how we're going to move our body efficiently so that we can perform the various moves that we try from half guard very very easily so connection kazushi

and movement are the three main prerequisites that we preach let's have a look first at the idea of connection to my opponent's leg you've got a bunch of good options here let's quickly run through them we know that one of his legs is to be Controlled by ours let's understand that we have a bunch of options here okay I've got two legs to control his leg I can go with an inside hook that's the leg that goes inside my opponent's legs can come over and hook my training partner's leg just like so okay so that

would be an inside book and this is something we often make use of an outside hook would be one where my outside leg comes over my training partner's leg and hooks from the outside Let's make sure that when we use this method my knee points down towards the back of his knee it's no good my knee pointing up at the ceiling now my phone can easily thread his leg down here and start passing it into good position so we want to make sure if we use that outside hook we go in and our knee points

at the back of his knee just like so so we have our two main forms of connection at the legs inside hook and outside look you often have the Option in these situations of blocking a triangle nothing wrong with this under certain circumstances be aware however that when you do lock a triangle you limit your movement from underneath your opponent so there's not something you want to hang on to for long periods of time okay however for short periods of time this can be a very useful thing let's understand something about the outside hook there

are two main forms of outside hope that we make Use of there is a outside hook above the knee as we're working with now and there's going to be a lower leg shift this will become very important when we look at uh some of the main moves from from bottom half guard this is where I shift my legs into a situation where I lock around his ankle rather than his knee okay and from here just the ankle is being controlled as opposed to the situation where here I'm hooking from the outside above the Knee here

I'm hooking from the outside below the knee and this will be an important thing as we'll soon see in this video now in addition to the motion of an inside hook and an outside hook we also have a combination of both which is a scorpion but a scorpion I take my outside leg over his and I lock a triangle with my legs the end of the triangle my shoelaces are put inside his shoelaces and as a result My opponent goes to drive forward there's a lot of resistance you can manage distance here and a scorpion

is interesting because it represents one of the few ways in which we can push on an opponent from bottom position so it has a special importance in the half guard repertoire if I just have my legs around my opponent I don't really have any true capacity to push with my legs my opponent drives into me here and I have no ability to push back with my legs That changes when we go to apply a scorpion the Scorpion is interesting because it gives us this ability to push back with our legs into our opponent's legs because

he drives forward I can push back on my opponent's legs and prevent him getting strong cross faces etc etc not only does it give me an ability to push on my opponent's leg it also gives me a strong ability to off balance people with a scorpion elevator okay we'll be looking at that uh fairly Shortly now another form of connection we can make to our opponent is worth a half butterfly Hook from situations where my opponent takes his knee off the floor he turns through on his hips this is a good time for us to

start coming down to our tuning partner's leg and hooking my foot inside my training partner's knee and as a result from situations like this we can now start to elevate people or can take them backwards and turn and bring them across The body Etc et cetera okay now we're learning to use that butterfly Hook connection so once again the main forms of connection that we have to our training partner from half guard I had two legs every half guard is essentially A Tail of Two of my legs against one of my opponent's legs I have

the option of inside hook this can be augmented by a triangle outside hook which can be done above the knee or Below the knee a scorpion which is a combination of outside leg over the top triangle shoelace the shoelace and when he drives forwards this is unusual in Surprise it gives us the ability to push with our legs from bottom position okay then the idea my punt goes to sit through of a half butterfly hook and my foot goes through underneath my training partner and now gives us an ability to Start lifting or balancing etc

etc okay so these are the main ways in which you form connection to our training partner from bottom possession understand that the heart and soul of the connection is the connection of your two legs to your opponent's one leg every half goddess is kind of a species of two-on-one control at least it's in it initially when you first tie up with your opponent so we want to learn how to fight without feet and get control of his legs in the most Efficient ways possible um the next element is kazushi we're going to get people out

of balance we can get the top man moving and out of balance it's going to be a lot easier to sweep them and get to his back so let's look at the main options for off balancing from bottom whenever we work in situations like this one very very useful form of off-balancing from bottom position especially when my opponent elects the Turner sets in is to use a windmill kind of action where I take one arm and I chop down towards my training partner's legs and at the same time my upper body cross faces my training

partner and we go into a bridging action so we use an inside hook up to my tuning partner's calf muscle with a lock on board and then in one motion my two arms windmill one blocks his knee and the other cross faces his head as a result we form a strong off balance In action now as your opponent increases and expertise you're going to find you may not always knock them all the way over but at the very least they will have to base out with either a hand or a leg to prevent being taken

over so for example if I blocked his leg and I pretty strongly he may well have to reach the floor with his left hand to prevent going over and that will give me inside position on my training partner and as a result we could start working Very effectively now from bottom half guard and uh and getting into our attacks another very strong form of off-balancing which we often make use of is one called a knee lever where I take an inside hook my foot goes to my training partner's knee and I cross my two toes

just like so the two big toes I don't cross my ankles just the two big toes now I take my hips off the floor and I just point my body over in this direction get my Opponent out of balance if it doesn't react I'll come up on top most of your opponents will react they'll put hands on the floor etc etc so as we first go to off balance someone here now if your body out of balance you can start going into various defensive movements from bottom position I can show that one from a different

angle inside hook goes over my chain Partners knee my two big toes cross I take my hips just slightly off the floor and Then from here my two knees point out in this direction forcing a defensive reaction which gives us many of the grips etc etc that we like to work with from bottom position um another excellent means of taking someone out of balance from bottom position and creating kazushis through the use of a butterfly hook it's my opponent's knee comes off the floor we're going to get opportunities To go underneath our training Partners knee

just like so and from here I can off balance to my right lifting getting the man out of balance so I can shift my hips and get them off balance in the opposite direction so this is another excellent way to get people out of balance from bottom position and create kazushi one of the strongest is the so-called scorpion elevator where I have a Scorpio on my training partner and my two arms are underneath His two arms like so and from here so we apply a scorpion on our training partner we're going to take our hands

underneath and we're going to bump forward with our knees so that his weight goes over our head just like so now I push and sniff up out to the side and we end up right here next to our training partner this will force him to put on a wizard if he doesn't I'll take his back and now we're propped up off The floor and in a good position to start me very useful forms of attack so once again I managed to get my two arms underneath my shiny part there's two arms I go in and

apply a scorpion on my tuning partner's legs from here my hands go into a pushing position I can grip the gear I can just put my hands on my tuning partner as a rib cage and then the whole thing is my knees going forward That gets weight onto his hand and then from here watch my hands and feet come out in this direction so we change levels upwards and now we find ourselves in a very good attacking position you can switch now from scorpion to inside or outside hooks etc etc now um in addition to

the idea of connection and to Sushi it's also body movement I have to move my body efficiently around My opponent to make these half guide moves work the most important General forms of body movement that we work with in half guard are shrimping movements we'll just practice sliding shrimps where I slide my hips along the floor bridging shrimps or power shrimps we Bridge up like so and then slide along the floor reverse shrimping or we reach along the mat and use a pulling action instead of a push in action and physically pull our body Towards

our feet the exact opposite of conventional shrimp in a conventional shrimping with plant a foot and we push our hips away from the foot reverse shrimping we plant our foot and we pull our hips towards I'll put in addition the idea of a pendulum that takes us from a lying down or Supine position we use a pendulum leg to impart momentum so we can sit up very effectively this takes us some Situations we're working from our back to one where we come up into a props position underneath our training partner the fourth one from a

situation where we're seated we use a planted foot to Heist and go on to our knees okay and we use these body movements all the time from half guard bottom either shrimping out to the side reverse shrimping to change angle and location to change from one shoulder to the other the idea of a pendulum to come up into a Prop position underneath our training partner and the idea of a hip hose so we can go from a seated situation to when we're on two knees and then from here we can start taking people down from

bottom position so these elements of connection kazushi or off balancing as it's often referred to and this idea of fighting for control of our training partner's feet two on one connection here like so These are the key elements involved in control for bottom half guard these are the prerequisites that we work with without these uh mastered a skills it'll be difficult to hit the various movements and moves that we'll be looking at throughout this video okay so let's start going down into the actual nitty-gritty the the basic overview of what we're going to be doing

from half guard um let's start off with what we said Earlier when we talked about the notion of distance control whenever you look in bottom position it's a wonderful thing if you can control distance between you and your opponent because the biggest problem you're going to face is people getting on top of you and you can't move so if you can control distance push them back it's a wonderful thing we saw that if someone gets chested chest on us our ability to do that is greatly diminished So there's an obvious lesson from that we should

probably start our investigation of half Guard from situations where we have something to push back with and that means knee Shields so probably the single best place for us to start a systematic overview of half guide bottle is with the notion of a knee Shield if my opponent gets chest to chest we saw earlier we now pretty much lack an ability to push back effectively On our opponent's body probably the best we can do here in terms of pushing is the use of a scorpion and that's not going to be much use to me if

my opponent has an underhog here it can still easily extract this leg from a scorpion under these circumstances so most of the time it's very much in our interest to start putting some kind of Shield between my chest and my opponent's chest and the way that's typically done when we work with the Jacket is to take our knee and place it right here on our training partner pointed towards our training Partners jaw let's not put our knee pointing towards the opposite hip it's very easy for him to put weight down over our hip now and

crush the knee Shield it's not going to be very effective here okay instead we want our knee up by the sternum just like so now from here I'm going to take my hand and I'm going to take a Cross grip on my training partner Nice and high this means that if my opponent goes to pull away from me we manage distance in that direction through the lapel because my wrist elbow and knee are all in a straight line when he goes to push into me we have a great ability to prevent him going forward chest

and chest All That Remains is to monitor our training Partners inside elbow so when he tries to make grips on me it's a difficult thing a thumb post Inside my training partner and as a result we can monitor the movements of his arm to make it very difficult for him to go and control our head etc etc now once we get to a position like this it's very very hard for him to put any kind of serious forward pressure we control distance in two directions if he goes to move away my left hand controls distance

if he goes to move forward my left knee controls distance and as a result we're in a position where we can Start changing our levels on our training partner okay and from here we can make adjustments into one of our favorite attacking grips the tight waist where my ear goes to my training partner's chest my hand goes to the far hip and we've propped up on our elbow like so and now we're in the perfect position to go on the attack once again the idea of a knee Shield when we work with a jacket the

knee points right at our training Partners chin the knee is High roughly 45 degree angle and from here we use a two on one lapel feed to get a good grip underneath our training partner's ear the more my hand comes down towards the pectorals the less control it has of his head so we want to make sure our hand goes up and passes the line of his ear and as a result we control distance in two directions forward and backwards initially we like to monitor the inside of our training partner's elbow but at some point

we're Going to get options now to come up to an elbow I use my knee Shield as a pendulum and we switch around into a tight waist grip now you've got that excellent two-on-one connection to your opponent your head's in a strong position you've locked your opponent's waist and when he tries to put weight on us it's very difficult because we're propped up on our elbow if he tries to cross face us it's impossible because our head and Shoulders are not even on the mat to be cross-faced and it's very difficult for him to try

and get under hooks on me in this position because we're so far around our opponent's body with a tight waist and as a result we're in a superb attacking position okay so one more time the proper use of a knee Shield come in here on a training partner controlling with that cross lapel grip knee in place and now excellent ability to pull and push as a general rule when We work from knee Shields it's usually a good thing to draw his head towards us this is done by a combination of left hand and left knee

pulling our training partner forward the more his weight is back on his heels the higher it is for me to to get this man out of balance so as a general rule we're looking to bring everything forward now we come in and monitor our training part this bicep and this creates good positions for us to bring the elbow out come up and now We're locked into our training partner's waist and ready to play in this way the knee Shield can get us around the single biggest problem the central problem associated with half guard position how

we're going to monitor distance and how we're going to manage our opponent's body weight and how we're going to control uh the distance between my opponent's chest and my chest now if our primary interest is in maintaining or controlling distance Between myself and my opponent and being able to stop him from moving away and stop him coming forward chest to chest what are we going to do with this how we're going to use it profitably well in my opinion the single most useful means of attack from half guard bottom and if you walk away from

this video series with nothing else walk away with this is to attack out of a tight waist grip propped on your elbow okay this position gives you numerous forms of Attack which go first towards your opponent's back second rolling your opponent over well look at that very soon and thirdly coming up and grabbing your opponent's opposite leg either with ankle picks or double legs and putting them down to the mat okay so it gives you three complementary directions of attack that work like a charm I'll just cook we'll spend a lot of time later in

the video looking at these but I'll just quickly Run you through the main idea from a situation where we have initial on our training partner and we're doing a good job of monitoring and uh dealing with the distance problem here we can come up onto an elbow we can release the Cross grip and use our leg like a pendulum come around and get to a tight waist grip from the tight waist our whole thing is to use a pass off where we go from an inside hook to an outside hook and then a critical element

Here if we go down to our training partner's leg and we perform what we'll be looking at later in the video a lower leg shift where I go from above my training partner's knee to a situation where I'm locked around the ankle this forces my opponent to put on a wizard if he doesn't I'll go straight to his back now three directions of attack I can roll my opponent through and take him over if my opponent puts his hand on the Floor to prevent this there's no reason now why I can't hit a simple reverse

shrimp bring my head out to the side pull on my tight waist and put my ear on his back so when he tries to reach back with his wizard it's impossible and then from here it's a simple thing for us to come up and move straight in towards our training Partners back and go on the attack alternatively in situations where I'm propped up just like so this is also an excellent time For us to start going on the attack with ankle pics of various clients we'll be looking at a bunch of them from here we

can go through and connect to our training Partners uh uh heels like so and then we start taking people out of balances it goes to balance out putting his hands on the floor that's not difficult for us now to come up to our baits as he tries to come back and hold his balance and get back to a wizard situation from here we can easily put Them in down to the floor and knock them down so we've got three great direction to protect we can go towards his back we can roll the man through or

we can come up to the second leg and put him down between those three you can form tremendously effective attacking patterns on your opponent that's going to be the primary series that we look at from bottom position we're spending a lot of time on that a lot of detail another one we spent a lot of time with Is a knee lever series the knee lever as we saw earlier is a method of off-balancing people and we know that if we can get our foot outside of our training Partners knee so foot over foot bring our

hips off the mat is that too many people can get them out of balance it's also possible to use this as a direct form of sweep so for example if I have control of my training partner's sleeves and here make a small base from Here it's an easy thing for us to get that same knee level position and turn our training partner over start scoring top position so combined with the correct grip knee levers are another series that we work from half guide bottom whenever we're trying to off balance people and we have the benefit

of going underneath our training partner's arm now another form of attack very very useful from here also coming out of Situations where we have that initial knee shield in place and we come up and get around our training Partners waist like so we can transfer from a tight waist to a single leg type situation okay how are we going to do this well many ways for us to do so but from here very often what we'll do is we'll get a hold of our training Partners lapel and start feeding our hand through below our training

Partners buttocks so we go from tight waist to single leg situation and Then from here we lock our training Partners lapel into a very very tight grip like so now this grip on the lapel is much easier for me to maintain than a no gear grip on my training partner's leg so that when I Heist up to my knees and I find myself in a situation where matase goes to Wizard and sprawl I can easily hold on to his legs if I just held the leg itself and he sprawled the hand tends to come off

but when I grew up to my training Partners lapel There won't be any slippage in my grip and as he goes back back and away my grip is maintained and now all we need to do is start bringing our head up in this numerous ways in which we can knock our Penny harder down from this position we'll be looking at a bunch of them the key idea is that starting from a general half guard type situation where we prop up and go through to our training partner's waist we can make a transfer where we Teach

our arm here below the buttocks and feed the lapel in and then from this situation not so difficult for us to come up to our base okay from a situation like this you can go for your opponent's second leak or you can just work hard to off balance him in this direction here okay and then on the situation guide we'll talk and double leg your opponent down to the mat so this lapel series also is an extremely effective way of working from bottom Position where we get underneath our training partner's arm another excellent way for

us to work from here is to go deep underneath our training partner's legs a fundamental series is not the time to be going into the intricacies of deep half guard but there are some simplifications of deep half guard which I believe are appropriate even at a fundamentals level so from a situation where we start off with our knee shield in place and we come up We go around our training partner we're going to come in and get a hold of our training partner's leg just like so so we have tightways scoop grip on our training

partner from the situation I'm going to shorten my tight waist and put my hand on my training Partners let my Soldier selects up we're going to move our training Partners head over our body to my right hand side so that his hands go forward this enlightens our training partner's leg and create situations Where we can start moving often around in this direction from here it won't be difficult for us to start separating our training Partners legs and coming up to our base and as a result we're in perfect position we start running our finger partner

down either with double legs or if he stands up with us with single legs we'll be spending quite a bit of time on this network we'll be seeing all kinds of details from here so as we move Around the corner come out to the side once we start making this hook movement that brings us up if my opponent then nicely the second leg when we stand up without any Partners legal work to be a difficult thing for us straight in and put them in down to the mat out of a single leg situation so these

are all very effective ways for us to attack we'll be looking at all of them in considerable detail throughout this uh throughout this off guard video Series but it all starts out of a situation where we are able to hold our opponent's chest off our chest courtesy of the knee shield and then from there work underneath our training partners are if we get the dominant undergrip there's so many ways using the methods we've just outlined here where we can form highly successful sweeping and positional attacks upon our opponent now we're trying to give you a

big overview for Our approach to teaching fundamentals half god um the the big picture that we're trying to throw at you is that there's a fundamental Paradox involved with half guard that on the one hand it's one of the best passing positions in the sport and on the other hand it's one of the best sweeping positions in the sport and it all comes down to how are you going to control the bottom man's head and shoulders and how you're going to Control distance half guard can be problematic when you lose in those two areas and

it can be incredibly beneficial if you win in those two areas so there's two very distinct sides to our half guard game there's the side where we can control distance usually a courtesy of a knee Shield so this is the um uh working forward from the best possible case scenario where we are in control of distance courtesy of a knee Shield then we typically go to a tight waist and we have a bunch of series that we work out of there all of which are very very useful for sweeping and scoring points but there's a

second side to what we do now I've got to look at the worst case scenario where my opponent is chest to chest with his arms wedged around my head and shoulders so now he's got complete control of my head and shoulders and I have no ability to Control distance so now we've got to start with the worst case scenario and walk backwards out of there previously we looked at starting with the best case scenario knee Shield we're working in control of distance and we walk walked forwards to our favorite attacks out of a tight waist

now we're looking to our least favorite position where our opponent is chest to chest wedged around our head and shoulders he's in control of distance he's got the wedges sit Around our head and shoulders and controlling the game how are we going to work backwards out of there and get into a better scenario so my opponent's on top of me and he's gotten chest to chest and he has inside position with a cross face his shoulder inside my shoulder his head inside my head his right arm inside and underneath my arm and as a result

he's formed an effective set of wedges around my head and shoulders which means I cannot get My shoulders off the mat and as a result it's pretty easy for my opponent to start working a spot to an inside position from here and threatening to pass into Mount or side or what have you um okay this is obviously uh much less desirable than the knee Shield situation we looked at previously if someone walked into the room right now and saw us here in oyasa who's got the better position everyone with pointed materials And they'd be right

okay this is a good passing position for him so what are we going to do as bad as this looks let's understand something you are never more than one elbow Escape away from tuning this from a completely losing situation to a winning situation okay I currently have no ability to push with my legs I can create some pushing ability here by putting on a scorpion but because I don't have an underclass with my left Arm it's not going to do me much good it's pretty easy for my tires to put a foot inside or to

wedge underneath my heels and lift his uh my scorpion out etc etc so we've got to do some something more extreme than that and that subling is almost always an elbow skin so what we're going to do is we're going to put our hands down towards our tuning partner's belt on both sides okay as my opponent comes in close with his knees does all those things that people Like to do we're going to start with a power shrimp that gets our opponent's knee moving out in this direction so we move in so and as a

result we go right in with our knee inside and in front of his hip something magical happens when your knee goes in front of that hip as matteus tries to put weight on me tries to apply its cross face now for the first time I have an ability to push with my legs okay that changes everything that's a Huge thing now I go further out and that cross face which just a few minutes ago a few seconds ago rather was such a powerful weapon against me it's now become a liability to him so I trap

it and as a result for every inch that I move out in this direction now we can start getting strong off balancing forces limitations when I start basing out with his other leg not easy for him and from here we can start taking away our training party's based support and Sweeping people so understand that if we can hit a simple single elbow Scape on our training partner you can turn that cross face into a liability in so many different ways again my opponent starts off and what's a very good position for him I have no

ability to hear a push with my legs but if I can start an elbow Escape motion bridging elbow inside knee in front of the hip just one single elbow Escape now We can start pushing but if I can push I can trap an arm okay and from here so many ways for us to go we'll be looking at a bunch of great attacking options from this position your neighbor wants to turn and get top position in multiple different directions now in addition to the single elbow Escape we also have another series here the double elbow

Escape series is one of my favorites you know a situation where my chair says The desirable chest the chest position underneath uh inside control on both sides wedging around my head and shoulders another fine way to work here is a double elbow Escape but once again we start pushing we go single elbow Escape we push and my second elbow Escape goes here at the arm so two elbow skates on one side of the body we shrimp out we bring the knee in front and as a result the head and one arm get completely trapped and

from situations Like this it's relatively easy for us to go into various kinds of submission holds okay it's also relatively easy for us now to stop lifting calmly and go into various Alternative forms of guard from where we can go on the attack so a double elbow escapers two elbow escapes performed on one side of the body to be looking at this in a lot of detail so starting off what seems to be a losing situation we come down and from Here 's the first elbow escape the push with now we elbow escaped inside the

shoulder instead of the hip and as a result now we can control distance when he tries to come towards me my right knee makes it impossible when he tries to move away from me my left knee makes it impossible and as a result from here so easy for us now to go in and start attacking with various other forms of of God or what have you okay Foreign so these are some simple ways in which we can use our legs courtesy of the elbow escape to to start to generate a pushing force which can overcome

the strongest crossfaces the strongest wages around our head and shoulders and turn what seems to be a losing position around so we're in a position now to give a quick summary as to where the entire direction of this video will be taking You we know that there's a primary central problem associated with half guard it's this is always going to be the problem of distance the distance between his chest and my chest that's one of the critical Central problems as a general rule the more we can monitor this distance through the use of both pushing

and Pulling the more success we're going to have okay as a general rule if I don't have some kind of barrier between his chest and mine my opponent gets direct cheers to chest contact I no longer have an ability to push on my opponent with my lower body and as a result this can be a very very damaging position for the guy on bottom this is one of the strongest passing positions in the sport And so in situations like this somewhat undesirable our whole thing is to reconfigure our body so we can start pushing again

and the only way we can do that is clear to sit the elbow straight so we have single elbow escapes with my knee finishes on the hip and we can now push and we have double elbow escapes where my knee finishes on the shoulder and once again we can push with that lower leg okay now you're in control of Distance again okay so we have the worst case scenarios we're our opponents gets chased the chest and our general response is either single or double elbow escapes okay you've got to get back your ability to push

so you're once again to control the Distance game here my my opponent completely controls distance you have almost no capacity to push with your lower body and now you're you're a loser in the Distance game but The moment we hit that initial elbow escape and from here we get a knee in front of the head and now you can push push push okay if I do it again on the same side I can put a knee in front of his shoulder once again I can push push push now you're in control of distance okay so

our general response to the chest to chest position is always going to be some variation of elbow escaping there are some exceptions to that rule that's By far and away the most important one regardless of how our opponent configures his body whether he stays on two knees whether he sits through to a hip doesn't matter elbow Escape is always going to be king now the second half of our general approach that we want to push upon you for half guard fundamentals because the idea that okay if that's the worst case scenario or the best case

scenario is one where I start off controlling Distance usually with some kind of knee Shield where my knee provides an ability to push with my with my non-half guard leg so here's my right leg is the half guard leg my left leg is The Shield leg and when my opponent tries to come forward he's caught by that knee when he tries to pull away the cross lapel holds him in place okay and from here we can take advantage of the fact that there is no chest to chest contact to start changing levels and if I

can change Levels then I can change my hit position and take inside position with my head and then from here we can get the vaunted tight waist grip this tight waist grip is an incredibly controlling method of getting into my opponent's hips and it gives us three incredible Avenues of attack okay if my opponent is naive and takes away his wisdom there's no reason why I can't immediately start going behind people if my opponent is not naive and holds on Uh without wizard to protect his back it becomes rather vulnerable now to roll through its

sweeps if my opponent has a good skill level and recognizes the danger of getting rolled through and starts putting his hands on the floor there's no reason now why we can't start coming up behind our training Partners back and and situations like this are playing With them there's also the other great option here the option of going into and scoring our training partner's leg okay where we can get up on our training partner and use momentum to come up with your base and then attack the second leg often with ankle picks sometimes with knee perks

and in this way this triple form of attack between back the far leg and the roll through you're Going to be a very very difficult player to stop so everything goes in two directions best case scenario you're in control of distance and as a result come up to our favorite attack and grip tight waist with your head in the inside position look at a vast number of moves from that position okay absolutely one of the ones we favor then the worst case scenario where your Opponent is completely in control of distance and his chest chest

from there it's always about single and double elbow escapes so once again we can start a push pull Dynamic on our opponent and get back into counter offense and so the half guard game splits at fundamental level between these two situations are we in control of distance with the knee Shield well we go the tight waist we're up are we not in control of distance well then we must go Into a program of recovery and the the basic idea of recovery here is always going to be some variation of an elbow Escape once we've hit

some form of elbow Escape we can start pushing on an opponent we're back in control of distance and once we control distance from bottom half guard that's when you can start attacking people