One of the main lessons I took away from Eddie Bravo’s seminar is how you can develop a game that always has an intelligent “next step”.

From every position (rubber guard included, of course) Eddies start with a primary attack and systematically advances, gaining better and better grips and positions, each offering greater control than the last, as he works towards sweeps or submissions.

Each step dovetails nicely into the next, with the grip from one position being used to improve the next grip.

The importance of this can be easily overlooked if you’re only interested in submissions, but you need to fully understand each control position of rubber guard to have success with it. Every little grip change serves a purpose.

His choice of grips and positions limits his opponent’s options, and with limited options, Eddie is already prepared for all major defenses and counters. They may defend his initial attack, but he was already expecting it, and smoothly start running down another fork in his game plan that was specifically designed to handle this situation.

At the seminar, Eddie referred to the basics of rubber guard that he taught as the trunk of the tree. Each of the branches are alternate paths that were developed to deal with each of the main defenses and counters. You need a firm understanding and ability with the primary path first, and then you can moves off into all of the variations and re-counters.

An understanding of this strategic thinking will aide you when you’re working on rubber guard. If you really understand each of the progressive grips for rubber guard, you shouldn’t have much trouble with stalling or any of the common problems.

The primary rubber guard progression is:

1. Break posture


2. Mission Control


3. Zombie


4. New York


5. Sanchin*
   
6. Chill Dog


7. Invisible Collar


8. Kung Fu Move


9. Jiu-claw

*In true Bravo fashion, I made up a stupid name for how you should move your elbow and forearm from one side of the head to the other, based on it reminding me of the arm movements in sanchin kata.

This basic progression (minus invisible collar) is shown in the rubber guard tutorial I did a while back. Eddie’s new book Mastering the Rubber Guard explains this in far greater detail and shows all of the techniques to use at each stage.

Each of these stages (or “levels”, as Eddie calls them in his video game analogy from the book) are the primary moves that will work on most people most of the time. It is your opponent’s counters and defenses to these will give you the alternate paths.

For example, you have multiple ways to break posture, but even if you fail, you can still switch to butterfly guard or underhook and come to your knees (for what Eddie calls the dogfight).

If you getting stacked when you have mission control, you have a number of sweeps and counters.

If you have trouble getting the hand to the floor with the zombie, you can try several other methods. Or you can go for submissions like bicep slicers and the meat hook to triangle. Or you can also use their defense to cross their elbow and start playing an armbar game.

If they are stalling in New York, you can usually still just move to chill dog with a strong sanchin “block and chamber” (circle your arm and drive your elbow in). If they really block this, you can quickly switch to New York on the other side, which they will usually expose if they’re worried about the currently trapped side.

If they try to defend the invisible collar or kung fu move from chill dog, you still have more options like armbars and alternate grips.

Once you get to jiu-claw, you have the obvious omoplata and all of the other sweeps and submissions that build on it.

All the while, you should be prepared to skip ahead as many steps as possible if given the chance. If they put their hand on the mat before you even try to make them, jump right into New York to Kung Fu Move to Jiu-claw as quickly as you can.

I’ve only just scratched the surface. If you want a complete breakdown of the rubber guard (and its complimentary half and butterfly guards), I highly recommend getting Mastering the Rubber Guard. He actually gives the beef of what I’m only talking about here.

Even if you don’t want to get into rubber guard, I still think that you can learn a lot about developing a game plan and applying logic to the positions and techniques you use by studying Eddie Bravo’s methods.