Functional Half Guard - Free Instructional (87 minutes)

**Aesopian** · Posted On: 6/10/2006 12:44am

Indrek Reiland is the instructor of Aliveness Gym Estonia (Straight Blast Gym) and an e-buddy of mine. Just to try his hand at it and see what it was like to create an instructional, he produced one called Functional Half Guard. Despite the guerilla filming, I have to admit that it is one of my favorite half guard instructionals.

I've seen ones by Gordo, Gustavo Machado, Saulo, Bob Bass, Ze Mario and others. While those are all good, Indrek's was the first I'd seen break down the half guard into truly basic basics like hip, head and hand position, posture, defending the cross face, defending the underhook. The overall quality is surprisingly good considering the it was filmed on a digicam in the corner of a karate club with one training partner as his dummy.

What I felt really made the video worth watching was the quality of the material. Most of it is simple, solid and safe, making it some of the most useful techniques and positions for half guard. The paw and double paw are staples of my half guard now, and the safety position is invaluable when passing. Watch those if nothing else.

I also found it interesting how he approached it like he was teaching the viewer how to better coach their own students, and the use of the I-Method and Isolation stage drilling to focus on specific skills or add them to the game.

I asked Indrek for permission it put his video online, and he was happy to share all it for free. So I present:

Functional Half Guard by Indrek Reiland (Aliveness Gym Estonia)

Here is the table of contents prefixed with timecodes (rounded down to the nearest minute) of each section:

Contents

00: Introduction
00: Basic Positioning
- 01: Stay on your side
- 02: Paw and underhook
- 04: Crossface and flatten (top guy)
- 06: Isolation: paw vs crossface
- 07: Triangling the legs
- 08: Returning to closed guard
- 10: Isolation: adding the guard return
- 11: Double paw
- 13: Defending the brabo choke
- 14: Isolation: adding the double paw
- 16: Wedge
- 18: Isolation: adding the wedge
- 19: Behind the back arm trapping + sweep
- 22: Isolation: adding the arm trapping
- 23: On teaching basic positions and isolated drilling
24: Basic Techniques
- 24: Two ways of taking the back
  1. 25: Stretch the underhook
  2. 27: Exploding crunch
- 28: Toe grab sweep
- 32: Isolation: adding toe grab sweep
- 33: Sweeps off the wedge
  - 33: Going out the backdoor
  - 36: Grab pants sweep
- 38: When to teach half guard, the more advanced games and the basics
39: Half Guard Top
- 39: Basic goal - crossface and turning out
- 41: Safety position 1
  - 42: Down by hips to negate the underhook
  - 42: Pinching knees to prevent the guard return
  - 43: Cupping elbow to negate the paw
  - 43: Head in landing pad to flatten them out
  - 45: Isolation: safety position
  - 46: Importance of head position
- 48: Brabo choke
- 51: Safety position 2
- 53: Whizzer
- 55: Why not to kill the paw with a knee
- 57: Isolation: safety positions and whizzer
- 58: Basic goal in detail
  - 58: Crossface
  - 59: Turning out
  - 60: Hand on hip
- 61: Gi grips
  - 61: Shoulder lockdown
  - 62: Face covering
- 63: Passing off their bridge
- 66: Wristlock
- 68: Passing to mount
- 71: Passing to side control
- 73: Passing to side control or mount
- 75: Isolation: passes
- 77: Hip switch pass
- 79: Isolation: Review of passing drills
- 82: Putting the whole passing game together
83: Closing and Thanks

**daGorilla** · Posted On: 6/10/2006 9:21am

Haven't watched it all yet, but so far it's great.

I need this -- as a NOOB I end up pulling half-guard a lot, but I haven't learned a lot about what to do or where to go with it.

Thanks!

-daGorilla

**theraydiator** · Posted On: 6/11/2006 3:44pm

Thanks for posting this - looks like some really useful material - i can't wait to try it!

-Jordan

**Bang!** · Posted On: 6/11/2006 4:37pm

**Aesopian** · Posted On: 6/12/2006 11:08am

Someone on another forum added minute markers to my table of contents, so I've updated the original post here accordingly.

**RedBaron** · Posted On: 7/12/2010 7:44am

hi is there a torrent for this at the moment?

**Kintanon** · Posted On: 7/12/2010 11:39am

Since it's free on Google Video there is not a torrent (at least not one that I have found) however I do have a copy of the video in AVI format that I can make available for you if you would like it.