week 1 = open guard offense
week 2 = upright guard offense upright guard vs combat base
week 3 =  offensive closed guard bottom
week 4 = closed guard defense & opening closed guard, standing in closed guard
week 5 = open guard defense guard passing posture
week 6 = upright guard defense
week 7 = crossides top
week 8 = half guard top/ passing
week 9 = half guard bottom
week 10 = headlock & head and arm escapes
week 11 = escapes from crossides
week 12 = 1/4 position bottom/ back escapes, quarter bottom frames escape
week 13 = 1/4 position top
week 14 = back control & attacks, defending the slump
week 15 = back escapes
week 16 = north/south off & def
week 17 = mount off & def and holding mount top, mount bottom,
mount bottom postures, pressure, frames
week 18 = knee ride off & def, knee ride bottom
week 19 = takedowns & stand up defense
week 20 = strategy & gamesmanship- how to roll

I’ll use this section to link to individual posts detailing each weeks topic.

I want to look at passing guard from standing in this post. It’s something that I haven’t been great at. When I was coming up in the ranks everybody was passing guard from the knees. Standing passes didn’t happen until competitions got more popular. I’ve been looking at standing passes lately from a posture and pressure perspective and want to share some posture tips today. It’ll take the form of 3 rules.

Rule 1- Primate Posture or Squat Posture.

This posture I got from John Kavanagh who runs SBGi Ireland. Thanks John! I hope I’m doing the posture justice. He talked about it during a session at our Spring Camp held at SBGi Montana last month. When John described the posture (Primate Posture) it looked a whole lot like proper squat posture. Think about what your posture would look like when squatting a barbell. Either the primate or squat analogy works. Use whatever one makes more sense you you.

Both images above essentially show the same posture. It’s a bit difficult to maintain as you are working to pass but it really is worth it. I’ve been experimenting with it since John showed it at camp and I just don’t get swept when I maintain good posture.

Here’s the posture. Gorilla or squat posture.

Same posture from a squatting down position.

Rule 2- Bottom Guy Can’t Touch Both Your Legs

This rule is huge. If you adhere to this one strictly you will be a lot of trouble from the top. Watch guys roll and you’ll see that when the guard player touches both legs of the passer then bad stuff happens. Prioritize this. Keep your elbows close to your hips but use your hands to keep the bottom guy’s hands and feet off your back leg.

You should never let your feet get paralell because the bottom guy will have easy access to both your legs. Keep one in front and one behind. The exception to this is if you have a hand and foot tied up on one side you can bring that leg up because the bottom guy won’t have a way to touch it.

Keeping the back leg safe here. Don’t get your feet paralell unless you’ve tied up the guard player’s hand and foot on that side so they can’t get to it.

Rule 3- Pressure Leg and Steering Leg

Your legs need to do more than just move you around. They need to be actively working to get you in a position to pass. In order to accomplish this they need to be doing 2 separate jobs.

Pressure Leg

Your lead leg is the pressure leg. It’s job is to find the hip and apply pressure to it. Drive with the knee towards the hip. This will give you a small amount of hip control. The person controlling the hip is always the person who is winning in BJJ.

Steering Leg

Your back leg is the steering leg. It’s job is to create angles. Use it to pivot as you find the best angle of attack. Keep it far enough away that the guard player can’t catch it. It’s possible to switch your legs up as you move. Keep your posture though.

That’s really it for posture. If you watch the video below I go over everything above and add in a few extras like killing butterfly hooks and De La Riva guard. The audio and video get out of sync towards the end of the video and I didn’t have time to fix. Sorry. Just focus on my posture and not my head for the last part.

Video of Concepts (10 minutes Long)

You can step into most any gym and tell most of what you need to know about coaching and curriculum in about 5 minutes. Don’t look at the coaches. That’s not where you’ll get the information. Look at the students. Really, look at the students and observe what you see. Not their technique or how good they are. Look at their age, race, sex, body type, athleticism and general overall fitness. Done that? Good. Here’s what you should know.

If all you see is young strong athletic guys then the coaching sucks. If all you see are nonathletic geeks then the curriculum sucks. If you see a wide range of body types, ages, athletic abilities and a mix of women and men then you might just have found a place with good coaching and curriculum. That’s it.

Let me explain further. I’ll use an analogy. Suppose you had a math class. In order to stay in the math class you have to maintain a B average. There are 3 different math teachers and students can move back and forth between them every 6 weeks. Class one has very tough tests. The textbook is college level. The tests are college level. The teacher doesn’t really teach the kids though. Instead he assigns them chapters from the book and reads magazines during class. He administers tests every 2 weeks. What do you think will happen in that class by the end of the year? I’ll tell you. Students will self select. The only students who will be left, the ones who will thrive, are the ones who were already good at math or they had a natural ability to learn it easily. If an administrator went into that class towards the end of the year they’d see a class full of very good math students.

The second class is very different. The teacher is actively engaged. He plans detailed lessons and teaches actively every class. He wants his students to succeed. He teaches low level math. Students get full credit for “effort.” How well you do on tests is irrelevant. As long as you are “trying” you get good grades. The teacher believes that high stakes testing is bad for self esteem and students should feel good about themselves and not feel pressure from rigorous testing. What will this class look like towards the end of the year? I think what would happen is that all the good math students would leave. Anyone interested in actually learning math would not find this environment satisfactory. Students in the class would have a false sense of their math mastery.

The third class has an active engaged teacher who plans detailed lessons. The teacher prepares kids thoroughly for rigorous testing. If kids don’t do well on the tests the teacher will re-evaluate his lesson plans and make adjustments. He’ll reteach and retest students as needed. The focus of the class is on performance but the teacher builds in scaffolds for students so that they get the support they need to gradually build their performance levels over the course of the year. I don’t have to tell you what this class will look like at the end of the year. Everyone will be successful.

What does this all have to do with Jiu Jitsu? It’s exactly the same. My gym has evolved a lot over the time that I’ve been a member. When I first joined SBG it was known as a very tough gym. If you went to class you had better expect to get your ass kicked. We were proud of that. We had the belief that if you trained hard and realistic you’d get good fast. That was partly true. We were much like that first class though. The only students who survived that tough training atmosphere were those who were athletically gifted and young. Women came and went. Nonathletic people lasted a class or two. If you walked into the gym during those days you’d see that everyone on the mat was a beast. It looked like we were a great gym. In fact we were not. Now mind you we were still better than most. Most schools were the second type. They were full of nonathletic geeks. The schools did no real testing. We were what I call a “meathead” school back then. It suited us fine and we loved it. The problem was that it wasn’t a good learning environment for 95% of the people who wanted to learn BJJ so our classes remained small even though our guys were consistently better than anyone else in town.

The second type of school from the analogy above is what most martial arts looked like back then. No real testing. Belt rank was awarded for effort. The coaching was good but the curriculum sucked. This is more rare in BJJ schools now. You see it some. Mostly in schools that have BJJ as an add on curriculum. If the coach won’t roll with students and students don’t do much rolling themselves then you get a school full of nonathletic geeks who think they know what they are doing but rarely have the opportunity to test it live to know for sure. Think Kenpo gym with a BJJ add on curriculum.

So, if you walk into a gym and see only “young meatheads” it’s a good indication that they train really hard and test everything live, but they don’t know how to teach the vast majority of people. Unless you fall into the category of being very good at BJJ already or maybe you are a gifted athlete this school will not be for you. It’s deceiving because everyone is very good when you look around the room.

If when you walk into the school and look around you only see geeky nonathletic types it means that they coach well but the curriculum sucks. They aren’t teaching the right things in the right way. No real testing. Athletic students won’t stay at a place like this. Gifted athletes crave high level testing. If it’s not happening they’ll go away. There may be diversity in this gym but the diversity doesn’t include athletic types.

If when you walk into the gym you see real diversity, athletes, people with all different body types, ages, and athletic abilities. If you see good representation by women as well as men, then you could be in a pretty good gym. A gym that knows how to teach a class that will satisfy the high level athlete and the nonathletic geek will be a special place. That gym needs quality coaching, good curriculum, and effective testing methods. If you have all 3 then it will work for every body. This is more rare than you think. Ask Keith Owen.

One of the things I’m most proud of is that we made that transformation at my gym. It took a lot of years but we are there. The diversity on the mat is astonishing. I can’t tell you how much richer the BJJ experience is for me to have that kind of diversity. I love being able to have BJJ world champions, elite army special forces guys, and slightly out of shape computer programmer geeks on the mat at the same time. As a coach being able to effectively challenge all those groups in a class is super rewarding. And to watch them all grow together towards the same goals is really a thing of beauty.

On a personal note I’m really fond of those nonathletic geeks. They make me a better coach and BJJ student. They ask great questions and if you can coach them to better performance you know you are doing something right. There isn’t much on this earth that I find more rewarding than watching someone come into the gym a nonathletic geek and watch them transform themselves into an elite athlete. It’s a really powerful thing. I am always humbled by that experience and thankful to be a small part of it. If you want to see that firsthand stop by SBGi Portland any night of the week. You will see a beautiful cross section of the city on the mat. That and lots of smiling content athletes, and yes Keith Owen, lots of women.

The second guy takes his time. Instead of focusing his gaze on the other side of the field he look down. With care and precision he makes his way across noting the location of all the holes and thickets along the way. He’s careful to keep himself safe as he moves to the other side of the field. He’s obviously lost the race but then an interesting thing happens.

He asks his friend to try again. This time the battered and bruised runner takes a bit longer to get through while the careful runner picks up his pace as he knows the course better. It’s obvious that the fast runner is breaking down. His body isn’t handling the repeated scrapes and bruises and falls nearly as well the second time through.

By the 4th or 5th time through the careful runner is easily winning. His performance gets incrementally better as he learns the territory and finds more and more efficiency in his routes. By this time it’s no contest. The fast runner has to admit defeat as his body can’t endure anymore.

What does this have to do with BJJ you ask? Plenty. One of the paradoxes of  Jiujitsu is that if you focus too hard on winning you kill your ability to make progress.  I’ve seen this over and over. As instructors we often don’t do a good job of articulating it to students. We tell them to “relax” over and over again. This is good advice but hard to do when someone is driving their shin into your cheekbone. What we mean by “relax” and “slow down” is that for learning purposes the journey is more important than the destination. It’s cool to pull off an escape or even a submission but the important part, the part that creates the learning, is what happens prior to that. It’s the journey. If you don’t recognize the brambles and bushes that left you bruised you will likely get bruised the same exact way your next time through.

This is the be in the moment idea that we often hear talked about in BJJ circles. It is nothing more than noticing and using your senses to record what is happening in the moment. How does it feel? Where are your partner’s legs and arms and elbows? How is his weight loaded? How is he creating pressure? This noticing is an important job. It is what creates the efficiency that allows us to avoid the brambles next time through. It’s a bit counter intuitive though. The noticing isn’t exactly action. You aren’t escaping or subbing when you are noticing. So, on the surface it may not look like much.

On the flip side you can sometimes see with beginners a great effort. They thrash and struggle and move with all their might to pull off an escape. What they don’t realize is that they are accomplishing nothing much. Even if they get the escape it isn’t efficient, or effective. It’s no way to build a BJJ game.

The best part of this mindset is that you find yourself enjoying the game so much more. There is much to see and notice and feel from the bottom of a good cross sides position! And, if you do notice and feel and experience in the moment while there-you will learn to love all parts of the game. That’s the real benifit. When that happens even a shin on the cheek can be pure bliss.  That’s a much better win than any submission can ever be. No contest at all.

Surviving bad posture is a necessary thing to teach but should not be the first thing you teach beginners! Why? If you teach beginners how to survive from bad posture then they’ll go right to the bad posture when they roll because that’s all they know! I’ve seen this quite a lot. Of course this is problematic. We don’t want students to build their game based on escaping from bad postures.

With this in mind I decided this week to teach half guard bottom from the best possible posture. My goal was to have students work and internalize this posture so that when they are in half guard bottom they are working always towards great posture instead of trying to escape from bad. What you’ll see below is a simple game (I like simple) that works extremely well from this good posture.

Posture

The posture is simple. We want an upright posture up on one hip. Playing flat on your back is OK if you have an awesome guard but I never want to build a game based on being good at Jiu Jitsu. The posture looks a lot like clinch game. We have a deep low underhook, head in the pocket and good front shoulder contact. We move constantly to the back. This will set up our attacks and keep the other guy from being able to grab our rear posting hand.

Here's the basic posture we'll be working. Upright with low underhook.

Head in the pocket. Good shoulder contact. Arm builds base. Keep moving to the back.

Pressure

Pressure 1 is the shrimp. Shrimping means moving he hip away from our partner. Because I have the leg trapped this will effectively split her base wide and affect her balance.

Moving the hip away from the top guy. This causes them to do the "split" which breaks down their balance.

Taking top from here is as easy as driving forward hard. You can also grab the far knee or arm as you drive to make it work better.

The 2nd pressure from here is the upa. An upa is moving your hips towards your opponent. Because you have a good angle on the other guy’s hips from this posture a sharp upa into the hips will cause them to lose balance. Simply drive your hips hard and fast upwards and at an angle towards their hips. If the angles are right they’ll go right over.

Upa. Driving my hips forward and into hers. Notice her balance being affected here.

These two pressures work very well from this posture. Sometimes the top guy will open their base really wide and load up their weight on the trapped leg to minimize your ability to work these pressures. When they do this they are immediately open for the next pressure. The 3rd pressure I call the dive in pressure. What I look for is a big opening. Their base is extremely wide. Wide enough that I could dive into the hole between the legs.

This pressure is most effective if done right off one of the other pressures. It works best off of the shrimp pressure because this one tends to open up the base. When the hole opens up we’ll dive right under. Our hips will face the ceiling. Our head will go right to and contact the hip, and our base arm will dive as far as it can go between the legs. As soon as we hit this posture we’ll bridge over our outside shoulder and complete the reversal.

Rolling reversal. Head on hip and arm deep between the legs.

If the reversal gets stuffed you have time to come back out and build your posture again if you act quickly. They will either go right away or they won’t. No reason to ever hang out in the posture because it’s a momentum move. You only get the momentum once so if you don’t hit the reversal right away bail and go back to posture. You should be able to do this if you move right away.

That’s it! Simple but effective game to teach beginners. I’ve seen this really sharpen up new student’s half guard bottom game quite a lot in a short period of time. Once students feel good about this game you can introduce escaping from bad postures. They now have a good posture base from which to better understand what bad posture looks like.

Video of Concepts

He had the satisfaction of winning 3rd place in his division. A huge accomplishment. He had no points scored on him in any of his matches. None. He lost his last match by advantages. He proved that he is a world class athlete and can compete with the very best out there.

An interesting thing that he told me was that all the top guys in his bracket were full time athletes. Every single one. They were either full time gym owners, MMA fighters, or young guys who live at the gym. I was shocked that even at purple belt level guys have to train full time to be competitive. It was also a testament to our guy’s BJJ training that he could compete effectively with those full time athletes while still training part time.

Having said that though, his part time training was still way more than most of us could or would endure. If someone told me that I had to now train at that intensity level all the time I’d probably leave the art. That kind of training would take all the enjoyment out of it for me and would make it another chore to add to the list of chores I already dread doing. It’s this way for many of us. We have found an intensity level and frequency of training that fits comfortably in our lives. We manage to find a balance that keeps us healthy and happy and still ensures steady progress. Our training is a positive influence on our lives and personal relationships. It does not harm them.

For many of us taking time to train at that elite athlete level would mean giving up things that are far too important like time with children. Maybe our personal relationships would suffer. Or even our health. It just would not be in our best interest to put aside large chunks of our lives and replace them with BJJ training. This is why the vast majority of us will never progress beyond the level of hobbyist.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t be very good at the art though. It doesn’t even mean that I can’t have better BJJ than the world class competitive athletes. It only means I won’t have world class COMPETITION BJJ. I’m OK with that. As are many who train with me. For those of us who think this way a slightly different path is required. We need a way to get good that doesn’t require full time high intensity training. For that here are some ideas that I propose:

Tips on being a great mediocre grappler-

1. Be consistent. Training 2 times a week every week is going to pay off more than training very intensely for short periods followed by stretches of time off. Of course I have no scientific data to back this up but I’ve seen it play out over and over again at the gym. Enough to confidently make this claim.
2. Focus on fundamentals. At it’s core fundamentals can be broken down into Posture, Pressure, and Possibilities. Building a library of techniques is not a great or efficient way to get good. You only have so much room on your bookshelf. At a certain point the shelf will be filled and you’ll have to throw some out to make room for new ones. In my personal experience I’ve rarely seen anyone who is good at more than about 5 submissions at one time. They may know way more than that but their A game is mostly limited to the top 5. Adding 50 more moves won’t help your game much.
3. Focus on Posture most of all.I tell students that the posture should do about 80% of the work for you. You should always be asking yourself “Am I in posture?” If the answer is no then you know what you have to do. If posture does 80% of the work then you should be spending most of your time either working to get posture, improving the posture you have, or fighting to keep it. If you are doing this then BJJ will be way easier.Focusing on posture means getting the best possible posture you can get WHILE putting the other person in the worst possible posture you can. If you create this posture imbalance then you don’t have to be good at BJJ in order to beat the other guy. Remember, the posture does 80% of the work.
4. Don’t roll above 70%.(Link to post on 70%) I you go all out all the time then you will be building a game that requires that you go all out all the time. That’s hard to do if you aren’t young and in super shape. Instead try building a posture based game that REQUIRES that you move slower and concentrate on simply building good posture along the way. A good goal is to build efficient postures that use leverage and structure instead of muscle strength. To use efficient motion that requires less intensity of movement. And to use fewer movements in your overall game. My goal is to win by moving less and less until eventually you won’t even notice that I’m moving at all.
5. Focus on breathing. If you can’t devote lots of extra time to conditioning exercises you need to be very mindful of your breathing. Stop and check during a roll. Are you breathing heavier than the other guy? If the answer is yes then you need to slow down and focus on posture. Catch your breath before you exert too much energy. Breathing heavy is a sure sign that you are not attending to posture effectively.
6. Simplify the game. Can I use the same posture in mount bottom that I use in cross sides bottom? How many ways can I use this triangle submission? Finding multiple uses for things that you already do well is a great way to improve your game without having to put a tremendous amount of extra time in. As you learn new things try to relate them to things you already know and look for commonalities wherever you can.
7. Don’t keep score. The worst thing you can do for your game is to keep track of who you tapped and who tapped you. It’s counter productive and probably the worst way to measure progress. If you focus on the tap you miss most of the joy of BJJ. You won’t notice the beautiful guard pass, the gorgeous butterfly sweep, the perfectly timed escape… All the things that happen in a roll that show mastery of the game. A gym where nobody keeps score is a healthy gym. If you are in a gym where there are a lot of side conversations about who tapped who you’ll find the atmosphere unhealthy. A tap should only be treated as an event that happens in grappling that tells you when to stop. Nothing more. There are many better ways to measure progress.
8. Enjoy the journey. In only every case those who enjoy it more are better at it. Train in a way that is healthy, smart, and most of all fun. Will power will get you a year of training at best. If you aren’t having a blast on the mat you won’t stick around or train in a way that will allow you to make much progress. This is perhaps the most important rule. It’s certainly not about “dedication” or “work ethic” as some will describe. Look around you. What looks like dedication is actually someone following their bliss. They are doing it because it’s the most enjoyable and rewarding thing they can think of to do. This is only always the case.

This is my list. It’s what has kept me in the game for the last 14 years or so. It has also allowed me to find a balance where my BJJ training is a positive influence on my life. It doesn’t get in the way of my other responsibilities and relationships. It also has a positive effect on my physical and mental health. I’m happier and healthier and still competitive in the gym. The young guys know that they are in for all kinds of hell when they roll with me. My game is improving at a pace that I’m very comfortable with. That’s important. This way of training has set me on the path to achieving my goal of being the best mediocre grappler in the gym. Happy training!

Here’s a list of things I’ve learned from experience make a huge difference in getting good at BJJ. In no particular order-

1. Slow down! I tend to try and roll at 70% or less most of the time. If you roll any harder than that you are most likely using strength, speed, and athleticism to cover mistakes. This will allow you to escape, win, tap the other guy but it won’t help you to learn BJJ. Slow things down to a pace where you are relying on your good BJJ to get you through.
2. Focus on posture over everything else. For beginners this is sage advice. Don’t worry about learning tons of techniques. The best thing you can be doing is focusing on how to posture in all the different positions. The definition of a blue belt is someone who builds good posture no matter the position. Once you have good posture the rest is much easier.
3. Let the posture do the work. The posture should take care of about 80%. Pressure from the posture should take care of the other 20. This means that you are constantly checking to see if you are in posture. If you aren’t then you prioritize that over everything else. The posture will take care of putting you in a spot where you can access the techniques that you know. Not the other way around. If you are doing it this way the other guy should be breathing harder than you.
4. Check your breathing. Is the other guy breathing harder than you? If he is it isn’t because he’s in worse shape. It’s because you have better posture. The guy who is consistently building better posture won’t be tired or out of breath. Remember the 80% rule? The posture does 80% all by itself. You only need 20% pressure if your posture is good. What this means is that you won’t be working as hard as the other guy. Your breathing will tell you a lot about your posture.
5. Don’t get behind on your breathing. There is a point of no return where getting behind on your breathing means you are done. You’ll have to tap just to catch your breath. Don’t let this happen. When I’m getting close to this line (because I’m not attending to posture) I will focus on breath management over posture. You have to at this point. Your body is like a car and breath is like gas. It won’t run without it. If you find yourself struggling to breathe then stop wherever you are and hunker down. Let your breathing even out. THEN go back to building your posture.
6. Simplify the game. BJJ is not built by adding techniques and positions to your game. It’s built by finding connections and simplifying the routes. I want to learn simple principles that work all over BJJ. Things like- keep the elbows close to the body, the person who controls the hips is winning, build frames and move away from them etc. These are principles that we apply to all different postures, positions and situations. Finding more universal posture points, frames, and pressures allows you to make a game that is more intuitive and easier to access. That way you aren’t having to learn something different for every different scenario  you may encounter. To use the map analogy I want the game to go through routes that I know very well and land in locations that I’ve spent a lot of time. No side trips to places I haven’t been.
7. Don’t keep score. Focusing on the tap is the worst way to improve your game. It should only be a marker to tell you when to stop rolling. All the stuff that happened before the tap is way more important. Keeping score makes you too timid a grappler and could tempt you to not roll with some people who would be good training partners. You have to always be ready to throw your hat into the ring and see what happens.
8. Have fun! This is really the most important one. If you aren’t having a lot of fun you won’t progress. Will power will get you about a year of training if you are lucky. If you aren’t having fun you’ll leave after that. It’s just too hard to do if you aren’t enjoying it. The best BJJ guys I know all have one thing in common. They love what they do. They have a blast on the mat. It’s really important to train in a way that you are having fun too. For me it means that I have to limit my training. I can’t come in 5 nights a week. This wouldn’t be fun for me. It also means that I don’t watch a bunch of videos and obsess about BJJ when off the mat. I have found the right kind of boundaries that make it extremely enjoyable when I’m there. Because of that I’ll still be training 10 years from now when most other guys around me have gone away.
9. Measure your progress but don’t get too caught up in it. I have found over the years that it’s very difficult to measure my own progress. Everyone around me is improving so using someone else as a measure is trying to hit a moving target. There are some ways to measure progress that are effective but we shouldn’t get too caught up in them. Relax and enjoy the ride. Your instructors know what they are doing. Just showing up on the mat and participating in class will insure that you are making progress. Over time you will see a huge difference.
10. Make some friends. The people I know from my gym are some of my favorite people in the world. They really enrich my life tremendously. If you are a person who comes into the gym and is all about business you are missing out. BJJ is a social activity. A roll is a conversation and a relationship. Your gym is a tribe and a family. You should take advantage of this. The people who tend to stick around and get good are the ones who enjoy friendships and the social aspects of the gym atmosphere.

Posture

There are a few key points to north south bottom posture. Your hands are in boxing position. This makes your arms harder to harvest and it allows you to create an initial frame. You want your elbows to be as close together as possible. This keeps the top guy from getting chest to chest contact. Bring your feet up as close to your rear as possible. This gets you ready for an upa.

Elbows close together. This prevents bottom guy from getting chest to chest contact.

Pressure

Our initial pressure is an upa. We use the upa for one thing only at this point. We are using it to build frames. The frames are used to create some space for hip movement. Our frames are built with our elbows (short frames). We can place them in different spots depending on how deep the top guy is.

Basically you upa hard and extend your elbows from your body while in the top of the upa. Then you drop your hips but leave your elbows where they are. The top guy is resting on your elbows.

Upa pressure to set up frames.

Upa pressure to set up frames.

Potential

Once you build your frames you have room for your hips to move. Use a pendulum motion to get up on your side. As you do this shoot your bottom arm under your body and tuck it into your hip.

Tuck in the bottom elbow hard. Get up on your side.

Pendulum pressure in action. Extend the legs out and keep them together. Move them back and forth like a pendulum to generate momentum.

Tuck posture built.

Leg catch: This is the best conclusion to the turn to quarter position. Instead of hunkering down in quarter position bottom and trying to fight from there I find it way more productive to instead immediately look for the ankle when you get to your knees. You can circle to that side as you reach with your hand to find the ankle. This will allow you to drive forward hard and end up on top.

Reaching for the anke here as I circle to that side.

Circling towards the captured ankle.

Foot goes over and replaces the hand on the ankle. This will allow me to get an underhook and drive hard.

Underhook obtained. Ready to drive.

Forward drive forces bottom guy to go over.

That’s the basic escape sequence from north south bottom. Everything else that people teach can hang onto that sequence. This is what I teach to beginners and what I use in my personal game. I think it’s the most high percentage way to deal with this particular position. The video below explains all these concepts and goes into a bit more detail.

I shot a quick video after class the other night outlining some material I covered in class that night. Specifically I worked on holding the back from a seated position with harness grip. I wanted to work on how to defend when the other guy slumps down as a defensive posture. It’s a fairly common defense and if you don’t know what do it can be really tough to launch an attack from here.

Hooks and harness from the seated position.

In the video I focus on regaining your grips and re-establishing your posture. At the end of the video I show one option for when the other guy slumps WAY down. If they get a really deep slump it can be difficult to pull them back up or establish your starting position. In the video I show a great alternative position for this scenario.

I hope to be able to update the blog a bit more in the coming months. Anyway, enjoy!

Steve Whittier (SBGi Blackbelt) and Matt Thornton both use this analogy quite a bit. I think it fits well with BJJ. I look at it as a map with routes and locations. The routes are the movements and the locations are postures and rest spots. My job as a BJJ guy is to make sure we are taking the route that I know very well and that we stop at the rest stops that I feel comfortable with. If I can get you to take my routes with me I can beat you. I know that territory very well. If you take me off path and put me on a different route that I don’t know so well I get lost. I have to rely on stamina, wit, and cunning to figure it out. I don’t want to do that.

Our half guard route today is a fairly straight one. Not many side routes to take if we do it right. There are only 3 stops. They are the leg, the hips and the shoulders. You’ll see how we get to stop and rest at those points as we progress through the journey. So, here goes…

Step 1- The Leg

The first step in half guard top is controlling the leg. If you don’t control the trapped leg a good guy will simply pull it out and take full guard. We can hold the bottom leg 3 ways:

1. With our weight. Sit on it and be heavy. Squeeze your knees together. Point your outside knee towards his hip.
2. With your hand. Reach way back between your legs. Grab his gi pants at the knee and staple the cloth to the mat. Be sure to keep your arm straight. Lean forward a bit and put the shoulder of the grabbing arm against his chest if needed. Be sure to squeeze your knees together.
3. With your foot. Either one… Foot must be above knee. Squeeze knees together.

Step 2- Control the Hip

Step 3- Flatten Him Out

Step 4- Lock down the shoulders