Ryan Hall’s Triangle from Inverted Guard
In case the marketing hype hasn’t reached you yet, Ryan Hall is Lloyd Irving’s latest “experiment”, a purple belt that he’s got doing The Game Plan and running through a ton of tournament, like Fowler did.
Ryan has done extremely well in competition, winning the majority of them by triangle (earning him the nickname “Ryangle”). He’s got a particular setup for it that’s especially interesting since it comes from him playing inverted (or “upside down”) guard.
Neither I nor Trog take any credit for the move shown below. We are admittedly ripping off Ryan Hall on this one.
That said, Trog has devoted a lot of time to breaking down how Ryan does this move, watching and paying close attention to his tournament footage, and he has very successfully incorporated it into his game. He’s caught me with this more times than I care to count, and I’ve seen him hit it on many others of every belt color.
Having had so much success with it, Trog wanted to put together tutorial on what he figured out from watching Ryan so others could make sense of it too. So all credit goes to Ryan.
You can set this move up from many different situations, but a common one is to spin to it when defending a guard pass. We also took photos of how to do this from under north-south, because it’s easier to show, but I feel that this is the more representative way of explaining it.
Here’s Trog showing how he defends the guard pass by spinning to inverted guard and then to the triangle:
I am trying to pass Trog’s guard with a basic stacking pass, pinning one knee to the mat while driving my shoulder into the other. He has a cross grip on my sleeve since he was likely going for cross guard.
Rather than resisting my effort to drive into him, Trog rolls to his left, swiveling on his shoulder.
As he spins, Trog grabs my other sleeve, so he’s controlling both of my arms.
With control of both sleeve and having spun all the way to inverted guard, Trog steps on each biceps like he’s playing an upside down spider guard.
Trog steps on the same biceps with both feet.
Then he kicks his right foot into the armpit. He also pulls my right hand out, stretching it away.
He takes his left foot off the biceps as his right leg shoots deeper under the armpit, which he uses to press against me and spins clockwise.
As he completes his spin, he traps my head and arm in the circle of his legs.
Note that he uses the momentum of the spin to cross my arm.
Grab the shin, step on the hip and triangle your legs to cinch up the choke. Finish like usual.
I won’t blame you if this move seems highly unusual, because it is. But I’ve come prepared to show you that it’s entirely possible and very effective, having gathered up all the footage I could find of Ryan doing it in competition.
Here’s it in action:
Grapplers Quest (Oct 2006)
You can see him spinning to inverted guard and then a triangle at 0:14.
Ryan Hall vs Justin Rader
A little bit of inverted guard at 5:55, then a lot more at 6:15, including a good triangle attempt.
Ryan at Arnolds
The match starts with some inverted guard action and a close triangle. Ryan defends a guard pass at 2:25 by spinning upside down, shooting for a triangle and returning to guard. At 3:25, he goes inverted one more time before spinning to the triangle that ends the match.
Ryan Hall vs Renato Tavares
He defends a guard pass at 0:24 by spinning to inverted guard. He goes inverted against at 0:47 and shoots for a triangle but Renato avoids it. Another spin to inverted guard at 3:53. At 5:05, he comes dangerously close to having his guard passed but spins to inverted guard at the last second. At 8:10 he goes to inverted guard one last time then quickly spins into a triangle, which he has all but cinched closed when the time runs out.
Lastly, you can check out this cheesy promo piece for Lloyd’s programs that does offer insight into what Ryan is looking to do when he spins to inverted:
I hope this breakdown of Ryan’s move gave you some ideas.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I’ll run them by Trog.
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Nice one. I think you can also transfer to cross guard from 6th photo if your opponent postures too much too get the triangle.
Yes, I will definitely NOT try to practice this one. :-)
But thanks for digging this stuff out. Seeing it at least keeps me from thinking there are too many “written in stone” rules or strategies in bjj.
Who is Lloyd Irvin though and what is the Game Plan?
Ah, http://www.lloydirvin.com/adult/bjj/testimonials.html
Now, what is the Grappler’s Blueprint? Never mind, I’ll just read their website and go from there. (Sounds potentially controversial, though….)
I do wish his students would just say “Coach Irving” instead of “Master Irving.” Or “Teach’”. Or even sensei; I think “sensei” for example, is used by grade school kids in Japan for their school teacher so it doesn’t have the kind of “heaviness” to it that “Master” does.
This is a kind of step by step setup . However, this is a move i use more on the fly. I use a single sleeve grip the majority of the time, and as soon as I go inverted I’m already looking for the opening to stick leg through their armpit. As they posture they give you the momentum to spin all the way into the setup; the grip on the sleeve helps but you can do this no-gi as well. Your hips must stay loose the entire time so you can swivel in and out of this guard from your regular guard. If you stay stiff your not going to hit it often. So just keep that in mind if any one gives it a shot. “Stay loose”
If you look at the first two pics, you can see where I actually hit the triangle. As they go to pass the guard I push on the shoulder and bring my right leg over the top turning inverted.
When I do I’m looking for my left heal to hook on his right hip. Then I use that heal and the sleeve grip to swing right back into the triangle.
I’m using the “backwards” triangle almost constantly from this transition.
Everyone who first saw me trying to figure this move out doubted it, and since then I’m triangled almost all of them with it. Or at least got in the position to triangle them but couldn’t quite close because my triangle ins’t good enough. Still you will get the head and arm you need to set up the triangle, and i think it will help a lot of people in opening their guards, and building good hip movement for everything else.
I think someone might have been applying this or a variant to me last week, based on Trog’s additional comment preceding this note. My practice partner wasn’t pulling a regular guard during sparring, it appeared he was sweeping but then triangling me…when I was watching him earlier it looked like he was “break dancing” when he was doing the same thing with another partner. Needless to say I was tapping a lot that session, because I was posturing but still getting triangled, and stacking the triangle wasn’t helping as much as it usually does.
Any defensive suggestions? This is a little difficult to defend becuase my first reaction when guard is thrown at me is to posture up….which makes the triangle easier, I guess.
Biggest problem I’ve had is one brown belt swims both his arms inside my legs and then lays heavy on me. It kills my controls and puts me into north-south, where I have to change what I’m doing.
He is a very aggressive player and does this well. He always says “Just fucking smash through it” and it works for him.
To kill it my coach throws his hips really hard into my legs, causing me to lose control for a second. Then he makes his move to whatever position is given to him.
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