Posture2Posture: a guide to guard positions

[Hedgehogey]

Many instructors don't seem to adequately address breaking down posture, nor which type of guard goes against which posture your opponent wants to take in your guard. This thread is for discussion of positioning within the guard. Pictures to be added later, for those of you viewing this thread on your fifteen minutes of computer time at your group home for the developmentally challenged.

Many people seem to forget that guard is still a neutral position in many aspects. You must have control of the upper body, underhooks and climbing your legs up around their upper body work best for this, but all other clinch positions, including wrist control, are helpful here.

Firstly, i've been entertaining this theory for a while now that guardwork is almost always done from very close or as far away as you can get. when upper body control fails (for instance he is sitting up in your butterfly guard and pushes your head back) and I can't reestablish it, I almost always kick their body, hips or shoulders to create space.

If you read that and found yourself having to frantically rewind the Gracie Basics tape you bought to supplement your aikido training in order to understand what i'm talking about, stop now.

I'm going to list postures your opponent can take and my own reccomended guard positions to counter. Assume that you are ultra close for all of these, unless I put a carrat next to it's name. Those are positions which need space.

Each comma denotes another position.

Feel free to make commentaries or go into further depth on these.

Standard passing posture (he is sitting up, controlling your hips): Underhook and butterfly (cling tight), feet on hips^ (wrist control reccomended), feet on biceps6 (ditto), feet on pretty much anywhere really^

Going backwards to put his weight on your legs: rubber, high lock, grasshopper

stacking: butterfly, grasshopper (if he's trying the leg underhook pass)

standing and attempting to stack or run backwards: feet on hips (watch for leg subs), de la riva, feet on biceps w/ wrist control, sitting guard (sitting on their foot, one arm wrapped around their leg so when they collapse into your quarter guard you roll and come out on top), (and my own personal favorite and the reason noone stands in my guard anymore besides coach) ankle lock guard (threading one leg under and through their leg while over or underhooking their instep/heel, the other leg kicking out their support leg)

standing and attempting a toreador pass or other similiar pass that requires them to run around your guard: coccoon guard (one shin in the crook of their elbow like you're doing a bicep splicer, other shin across their body)

They have just pulled their arm out of your triangle: crucifix guard (their head in the crook of your knee, smash their head to the mat with that leg, other leg with shin on their ribs or calf on their back)

they have just passed to side: coccoon guard (shin over the controlled arm tricep this time), cradle guard, reverse triangle, crucifix guard

[EnaeS]

what is grasshopper

Going backwards to put his weight on your legs: rubber, high lock, grasshopper

stacking: butterfly, grasshopper (if he's trying the leg underhook pass)

by going backwards do you mean the oppisite of stacking like he trying to stretch out your legs and if so how would you use the rubber guard in this position, isn't the rubber gaurd for when he's in close, chest to chest?

[Darkpaladin]

by going backwards do you mean the oppisite of stacking like he trying to stretch out your legs and if so how would you use the rubber guard in this position, isn't the rubber gaurd for when he's in close, chest to chest?

I think he means when you have closed guard, and opponent starts to move his hips back (forcing your guard higher on his torso), most likely for the knee in tailbone guardbreak.
I agree though, is rubber guard workable from there?

[Hedgehogey]

That's the one. It's the only closed or close guard position I can consistently hold just after he's broken my legs open that way. It actually requires much less flexibility because his upper body's so much closer to your legs.