The second part of the long distance and deep half guard videos.

Pass prevention: scissors, hugging, stacking and reverse scarf (Marcelo) pass counters. Backroll sweep.

A friend of mine asked me to film something on the half guard I’ve been working on. This turned into 30 minutes of footage that I’ve broken it down into 6 videos. I’ll be putting these up throughout the week. To start, here is the first one on the basics of the position and my main sweep.

In the past I’ve been criticized for not showing anything original and just copying techniques from famous people. I thought about it and maybe they’re right; I learn from all over and often end up teaching it later. I’ve always given credit to whoever I learned from and I try to offer something more, if just a clearer explanation. I didn’t think much of this until people started nagging me about it.

When I was talking with Leo Kirby about learning from people by copying then teaching others, he just said “Yeah, but isn’t that what everyone does?”

So I’ll be the first to say that I owe a great many people for what I show in these videos. This includes:

• Eduardo de Lima, my instructor, who teaches a great half guard that he attributes to his friends Gordo (yes, that Gordo) and Jean-Jacques Machado.
• Trog, my training partner (and contributor to one of the videos) for trouble shooting with me.
• Crazy James, a black belt who’s been teaching me his half guard since I was a white belt.
• Jay Valko for his amazing open guard transitions.
• Leo Kirby for his z-guard instructional and advice.
• Jeff Rockwell for his deep half guard tutorials, which he’ll say he got from Minotauro (more of that nasty copying then teaching).
• Andreh Anderson for his half guard tutorials.
• Marcelo Garcia for his approach to half guard, x-guard and the “leglock” guard.
• Stephan Kesting for his half guard, butterfly guard and even kneebar DVDs.
• Indrek Reiland for his free half guard instructional with good ideas like the double paw grip.
• Gordo for his DVDs and for having done this since the dawn of time.
• Eddie Bravo for bits and pieces of his half guard system.
• Saulo Ribeiro for his half guard DVD and how he and his brother do reverse De la Riva and open guard.
• Jean-Jacques Machado for his half and open guard in his books and ADCC matches.
• Kenny Florian for his half guard sweeps in his no-gi seminar DVD.
• Jeff Glover for the half guard I’ve picked up from watching him compete.
• Franjinha for teaching half guard on the Paragon DVD.
• Wilson Reis for his butterfly/half guard sweep underhooking the leg like in his EGO matches.
• Gustavo Machado for his instructional DVD on half and quarter (arm wrapping) guard.
• Baret Yoshida for his half guard sweeps in his Japanese book/DVD combo.

I’ve also got a lot of very helpful advice from posters on several BJJ forums.

I’m sure I’m forgetting people, but that’s a good chunk.

So what do I have to offer if I’m just “stealing” from all of these sources? In sampling from each of these people, I put together an approach and techniques that I liked better and I think I can explain how and why well enough to add a little more.

“Yeah, but isn’t that what everyone does?”

Yup.

Passing along seminar footage my e-friend Boyd shot. Here are his words and videos:

Attention white belts of the world: put down your copy of Mastering the Rubber Guard for about an hour and watch this video. I realize it may be hard to pull yourself away from all the bright colors and exotic nomenclature, but trust my judgment on this. What follows is a seminar I shot for my first BJJ instructor, Bryan Harper, recently promoted to black belt. He is very very good. In particular, he is very very good at passing the guard and choking people, which is great because I’ve included ten choking and passing techniques that I think will be extremely beneficial to your collective games. Best of all, they’re all tailor-made to be applicable to that most elusive of creatures: MMA-specific grappling techniques.

So check it out. This was my first time shooting a seminar, and yes, I’m well aware that the camera gets a little…dynamic at times. I was constantly fighting for a good angle without getting in front of the seminar attendees or losing audio, so sometimes I had to adjust at inopportune moments.

Attention colored belts and no-gi wrestlers: Same thing, but with a tone less smarmy and condescending, and more enthusiastic.

Also, question for anyone knowledgable in the field of video encoding: this was only my second time uploading to Youtube. I shot all of this on very, very expensive miniDV and exported it from Final Cut as MPEG4 files. On my computer it looks pristine. On Youtube it looks and sounds like everyone’s being attacked by a swarm of killer bees disguised as MPEG artifacts. Is there any way around this, or is this just Youtube’s stupid fault?

Defense against a guillotine applied from within the guard

Introduction to the basic guillotine

Standing guillotine defense

Introduction to the arm-in guillotine

Turnover off opponent’s half guard guillotine defense.

Passing the open guard in MMA

Frankenstein guard pass

Step-through guard pass

Step-over guard pass, with Don Richards

This video builds on the last by using the same overhook grip from butterfly guard, but now it’s submissions (instead of sweeps).

Take the first technique from the last video (switching from half to butterfly guard) and add these submissions to the end and in effect you’ve almost got triangles, armlocks and omoplatas from half guard.

If you’re enjoying these videos, please consider hitting the donation button and helping me upgrade my video editing equipment. Right now I’m running on an outdated computer and using built-in editing software. A couple donations would help a lot.

While down at Leo’s gym, I taught him and his student Ralph a lesson that revolved around half guard and butterfly guard when they’ve got the underhook on you. Rather than struggling to get it back, we worked on what you can do while keeping the overhook.

- Being flattened out by the underhook and crossface in half guard and switching to half butterfly (one hook) then full butterfly guard.

- Half butterfly guard sweep by underhooking the leg when they bring it too high (+ bonus switch to x-guard.)

- 90 degree hook sweep from butterfly guard with overhook.

- Switching from the hook sweep to the underhooking leg sweep (same as before) when they post their leg to defend.

Leo showed this move to me the first time we trained together and it stuck out, so I made sure to get it on film this time.

Simple but it works.