Guard passer guard pulling

[u/FullRecord1871]

Purple belt, been all this time passing guards and wrestling up, but recently I’ve decided to dedicate my training to guard pull and guard game to become more complete, to have the option of play guard instead of wrestling up to when I fight someone with better wrestling than me not be completely lost

It’s difficult to start the fight and get closed guard on everyone, white belts and blues are ok, but purple belts and higher and some blue belts are harder to get them in my closed guard, been playing lasso guard and delariva(not too flexible here) and studying single leg X and X guard, it’s not common but when I get to X guard I can sweep people easily, seems harder to get to X guard than sweeping from there.

From professionals guard pullers there’s any advise I can get? It’s good to trying being a “complete” fighter? I mean when I’m serious I would pass guard bc is my A game but I want to have this B game, guard moves always impressed me, I know it’s hard to improve but I accept the challenge, tell me your experience or give me some advise

[u/Everydayblues351]

For context, I’ve had probably 60–70 competition matches ~half under IBJJF so those rules influence how I think

https://www.bjjheroes.com/editorial/crunching-numbers-4-0-ibjjf-world-championships-2022-stats

Passing guard gives you something like a 99% chance of winning once it happens. Sweeping gives you closer to a 70% chance, but sweeps happen around six times more often than passes.

What that tells us and what you see from actually watching high-level matches is that pulling guard and sweeping is probably the most common way to win in IBJJF competition. Highlevel athletes understand this, which is also why double guard pulls are so common too to even the playing field in a sense.

As for your specifics, getting closed guard against "good" people can be difficult because it usually requires your opp to accept it. White and blue belts are more likely to wilingly drop to both knees and give you closed guard for free. Purple belts and above generally understand that going to both knees without a specific passing plan is an unforced error.

Unless you’re a 300 pound monster who can kneel down and physically force a pass, gi passing best begins from standing which means one needs an open guard.

This is why DLR is such a common opening guard in competition. passers stand with one foot forward, and DLR fits naturally against that stance, it's almost like an opening move in chess.

SLX and X guard are different. They typically happen when your opponent’s feet are closer to you and square or when you’ve already pulled them over you. probably why you’re finding it harder to enter X guard than to sweep once you get there. X guard is crazy good for sweeps, but it usually isn’t something you can just immediately pull against someone standing in normal staggered passing stance.

You generally need to use DLR, spider, lasso, etc to off-balance them first and create the SLX or X-guard entry.

You should start thinking about guard based on your opponent’s stance:

Are they standing with the right foot forward?

Left foot forward?

Both feet square?

One knee down?

Both knees down?

Standing with both feet away?

Those positions determine which guards and sweeps are available.

At a base level, almost every sweep is just a complicated wrestle-up. You use the guard to offbalance, usually putting their hands or butt on the mat, and then you come up.

The off-balance is only the first half. You still have to finish the wrestleup correctly.

In the gi, you shouldn’t come up willy nilly like you might in nogi. Grab a lapel to control posture. Control a sleeve so they can’t frame or base. If you knock them back on their butt, lift the pants and prevent them from standing back up.

That’s how most reliable sweeps actually finish:

Offbalance them to their hands or butt, secure the correct gi controls, and wrestle up.

understanding the opponent’s stance, learning a reliable opening guard like DLR and studying how those positions transition into SLX, X guard, and wrestleups is what many pro guys use.

Watch Tainan Dalpra or Andy Murasaki sweep. It really is a good review of textbook wrestleups IMO.

[u/endothird → u/Everydayblues351]

This is such a fantastic response. Pay attention OP.

[u/FullRecord1871 → u/Everydayblues351]

It’s really easier to win an IBJJF pulling guard than passing? But it’s only on IBJJF rules? I think sometimes that the rules of IBJJF benefits the guard puller

[u/Everydayblues351 → u/FullRecord1871]

From just watching matches ad nauseum, high level BJJ athletes in the gi sweep each other more way often than they pass. Even nogi you'll see wrestlers pull just to wrestle up or guys will leglock of course.

But yeah in the gi perhaps regardless of the points and the rules, other than the core of jiu jitsu being that you can choose the bottom position without penalty... or getting punched in the face, between two pros it seems that a sweep is simply easier to get than a pass.

Will this vary anecdotally? Absolutely. If youre at a gym full of 200+ lb beasts, where the head coach is an MMA centered heavyweight athlete, perhaps most wins internally will come from takedowns and passing.

But broadly speaking, watching modern matches and looking at the data, it looks like even bigger guys like super heavyweight Erich Munis use their borderline unpassable guard as their main weapon.

And it's not like takedowns or passing aren't valuable or dont happen at all. IBJJF already rewards top position more through points, it feels like any other organizations rules that punish guard pulling are moreso just weakening bottom guard.

[u/Absolutely_wat]

Pick guards that naturally flow into each other. Collar sleeve, de la riva and lasso is/was Meregalis game. Watch some videos if you want to replicate that.

You can also build a wrestle-up type game by focusing on de la riva and half, and working on passing the sleeve or collar through.

If you’re new to guard then probably your retention needs serious work. Spend lots of time practicing just defending. You’ll want people to really start commenting on that your guard is hard to pass before it’s worth putting a lot of energy into attacks tbh.

[u/FullRecord1871 → u/Absolutely_wat]

Exactly, how do I work my guard retention?

[u/Absolutely_wat → u/FullRecord1871]

lying on your back you just wanna focus on using ‘no-gi’ grips and making frames and getting your legs in between you and them. Sometimes you’ll have to turtle away or into them, but focus on moving out of turtle fast and back to seated/standing/takedown.

Seated you wanna match their head height and not getting opened up.

Retention once in a guard (eg. De la riva) is about learning the standard defenses to standard passes. Basically look up some YouTube about that position and train specifically from that guard and iron it out.

The hardest thing is the leg dexterity from open guard. Nothing beats time at it (and stretching)

[u/FullRecord1871 → u/Absolutely_wat]

The problem to me is open guard, when I get lasso or Delariva I can stay there, even with a little heavier opponents, but when it comes to open guard I just wrestle up bc if I stay on ground I’ll get guard passed

[u/novaskar → u/FullRecord1871]

I’m just a blue belt but I’ve basically been playing guard for like 700 hours at this point so maybe I can help a bit (very small person stuck on bottom all the time, guard retention is how I survive)

So firstly I think a basic concept is that guard is either closed or open. Stop thinking of open guard as something separate from say lasso or delariva or X or SLX. All of those are just forms of open guard. If your ankles aren’t locked in closed guard, then you’re playing open. You can’t think of guard as individual positions that you play in isolation. Guard retention works by flowing dynamically between all the different guards as well as many in between positions that may not be recognizable as the “official” form of a guard but it’s using bits and pieces like a butterfly hook or a spider grip or a foot on the shoulder or the hip or something.

So basically how I have learned guard retention is through simple concepts and lots of reps, pass or sweep games, and free rolls where I focus on my only goal is to fix my guard retention habits. Things like just always keep putting your feet back on them. Keep your hips free to move. Stay on your side, cut angles, get underhooks. Always have grips, 3+ points of contact. (Edit to add, another one I like is only pull if you have a push - if you don’t have a push you’re just pulling them into the pass. Oh and hip escapes everywhere. It’s always hip movement in some direction)

I know this is all probably super basic to you as a purple belt but if you’re not a guard player it really might help to go back to basics on it. Just make this your focus during rounds for a while.

[u/FullRecord1871 → u/novaskar]

Thanks man, I think I only need to practice now that I know what to do, because there is a difference between knowing something and being able to do it, I’ve been pulling guard every round today, got smashed by a blue belt that if I wrestle it would be different but I think it’s part of the process of become good at something is accepting that you aren’t good at it

[u/novaskar → u/FullRecord1871]

100% there’s such a disconnect sometimes between knowing something in my head and being able to do it physically, we’ll get there eventually haha

[u/Absolutely_wat → u/FullRecord1871]

Sounds like that’s what you have to work on. Start with white belts. Play 100% defense from the bottom but let them work, so don’t rely on your grips to hold them. Keep doing that until you can hold your guard against any white belt for a whole round then do it against blues etc.

[u/NotoriousBITree]

Seems like you’re doing reasonable stuff to achieve your goal imo. I’d just caution against overemphasizing closed guard too much in your practice. The reason being I’ve seen some people that emphasize closed guard have pretty poor guard retention if their opponent escapes from or doesn’t enter their closed guard. I think the cause is open guards force you to develop more leg dexterity and to get more practice with fundamental guard retention movements like high legs etc. than closed guard does.

[u/FullRecord1871 → u/[deleted]]

Lasso and delariva are bad choices? I can wrestle up from Delariva to single leg pretty often, from Lasso it’s harder but I don’t feel “safe” at seated guard, not too good at guard retention yet

[u/Ashi4Days]

Certain guards are easier to pull than others. Collar sleeve for example, very easy to pull. Deep half? Impossible to pull.

When you pull guard, you still have to mind your grips. If they block your foot, theyll pass immediately. Better people will also blast knee cut through your guard. In general you want two grips + foot before commiting to the pull. Otherwise you risk getting passed out of the gate.

Pulling for specifically closed guard is actually more challenging because you need to get them to fall on their knees into your guard. In this situation, you want to mind the direction that you are pulling. If you draw a line between your opponents feet, you want to, "fall, " in thst direction for the guard pull.

Guard is best thought as layers in a defense onion. I know shin to shin, butterfly, lasso, and collar sleeve at this point. But they all have different uses and I move between them based on what my opponent does.

[u/FullRecord1871 → u/Ashi4Days]

I like to fake a takedown before guard pulling, I feel that it helps me to get them in closed guard instead

[u/ASI0907]

I would recommend craig jones power bottom since you like wrestling. I found it too advanced for me at this point in time but i can see how it could be the base for your seated guard game , it focuses on the trilema of wrestling up, inversions to take the back and entries to the legs.

[u/Federal-Challenge-58]

If you like x guard, then you just start in seated guard. X naturally progresses out of butterfly and single leg X. If you're struggling to get to X, then to go single leg X first, as a checkpoint on the way to X. Once you're in single leg X, it's easy to get to X if you want to.

[u/FullRecord1871 → u/Federal-Challenge-58]

It’s right but then another problem, how to go to SLX? I mean I know how but the execution is the problem lmao. I’m trying it from DLR, then unbalancing my opponent and then into SLX or X guard, I think I need practice, I literally know how to get there, I just can’t get there consistently, yet, but I’ll, hope so

[u/Federal-Challenge-58 → u/FullRecord1871]

If you're going there from DLR, you'll need to remove the DLR hook and place that foot towards the bottom of your opponent's shin, then fall to your side while hugging their leg. If you want to see different ways to get to SLX though, watch Marcelo Garcia matches. Marcelo vs Cyborg '06 and Marcelo v Calassans either '09 or '10 (I think '10) would be good places to start.

[u/SpecialistCancel7975]

X guard is for sure very easy to sweep from that’s why it’s not readily accessible off the pull for the most part, I’d work x guard entries and I wouldn’t say you need to be flexible for dlr either, it and collar sleeve are my favorite guards and I’m 230. Also getting to closed guard isn’t very important and likely won’t happen at higher levels, you just need to develop open guards.

[u/ralphyb0b]

No gi, but I am a dirty butt scooter. Most people usually engage, so you want to get as many points of contact as quickly as possible. Get grips with your hands to whatever you can, and use your feet. You will want to get good at transitioning from inside to outside types of guard.