Less Impressed, More Involved: Advanced Guard Passing Strategies

1. Introduction and Background (opens in a new tab) (00:00)
2. Course Overview and Objectives (opens in a new tab) (00:59)
3. Warm-Up Drills and Techniques (opens in a new tab) (03:48)
4. Designated Winner Concept (opens in a new tab) (07:46)
5. Guard Passing Strategies (opens in a new tab) (19:56)
6. Half Guard Passing and Knee Shield (opens in a new tab) (30:02)
7. Cranial Shift and Leg Riding (opens in a new tab) (40:33)
8. Advanced Knee Pummeling Techniques (opens in a new tab) (47:33)
9. Combining Loose Passing with Pressure Passing (opens in a new tab) (50:37)
10. Insights from Gordon's ADCC Performance (opens in a new tab) (52:10)
11. Danaher's Four-Step System for Guard Passing (opens in a new tab) (55:04)
12. High Tripod vs. Low Passing Methods (opens in a new tab) (55:27)
13. Prioritizing Knee Direction in Guard Passing (opens in a new tab) (56:55)
14. Creating Upper and Lower Body Battles (opens in a new tab) (59:06)
15. Designated Winner: Training Methodology (opens in a new tab) (01:03:58)
16. Case Study: Eddie's Guard Passing Progress (opens in a new tab) (01:08:45)
17. Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways (opens in a new tab) (01:32:48)

1. C-grip Leg Drag (opens in a new tab) (03:48) a. Grab opponent's leg with a C-grip
   b. Bring the leg across your body and tuck it into your armpit
   c. Step as many times as needed to get your shin behind their knee
   d. Pin their leg to the floor with your shin
   e. Let go of the leg and complete the leg drag

2. Shin Pin to Hip and Knee Post (opens in a new tab) (03:48)
   a. Pin opponent's foot to their butt
   b. Replace your hand with your shin
   c. Place one hand on their hip, the other on their knee
   d. Step your shin pin leg back
   e. Run the circle to complete the pass
   f. Finish in pseudo half guard or side control

3. Footwork Pattern (opens in a new tab) (03:48)
   a. Create an initial angle
   b. When opponent reacts, do a quick shuffle to the other side
   c. Put yourself in a reverse knee-on-belly position
   d. When they turn to face you, take a quick step around to knee-on-belly

4. Cross Step (opens in a new tab) (03:48)
   a. Create an initial angle
   b. When opponent extends their bottom leg, step directly to their hip with your other foot

5. Smashed Half Guard Pass (opens in a new tab) (30:02)
   a. Pummel your left foot behind their bottom leg
   b. Post your right hand on their top knee
   c. Walk behind their guard
   d. Step into the flank position

6. Ankle Scoop Grip Pass (opens in a new tab) (30:02)
   a. Take your head to the far side of their body
   b. Use the ankle scoop grip to clear their knee shield
   c. Optional: Pummel your back leg over their bottom leg before using the ankle scoop grip

7. Overback Grip Pass (opens in a new tab) (30:02)
   a. Switch your hips in the opposite direction of the smashed half guard
   b. Take a high tripod position
   c. Crash your far shoulder
   d. Take a scoop grip around their ankle
   e. Walk your legs towards theirs to clear the knee shield

8. Cranial Shift (opens in a new tab) (40:33)
   a. Control the head and shoulders
   b. Place your head on the far side
   c. Get your shoulder in their armpit
   d. Work for a crossface, nearside underhook, or half nelson

9. Leg Riding (opens in a new tab) (40:33)
   a. Pummel in your butterfly hook
   b. Work to stretch them out
   c. Take your foot and pummel it over their leg to get to pseudo half guard

10. Three-Quarter Mount Transition (opens in a new tab) (40:33)
    a. Cut your knee into position
    b. Use your free leg to feed their top leg into a deep hook
    c. Use your free leg to help split your opponent's legs

11. Flank Position to Split (opens in a new tab) (40:33)
    a. Achieve the flank position
    b. Upgrade your legs to the split position
    c. Create pressure and control

12. Low Chest to Chest Half Guard Pass (opens in a new tab) (55:04)
    a. Establish a crossface without an underhook
    b. Make opponent's knees face away from you
    c. Free your knee to three-quarter mount
    d. Bring your head over opponent's head
    e. Use your second foot to help free your trapped foot

13. Leg Drag to Arm Triangle Setup (opens in a new tab) (01:08:45)
    a. Perform a leg drag
    b. Use the leg drag to split the opponent's legs
    c. Transition to an arm triangle position

1. Designated Winner Training (opens in a new tab) (07:46)

   a. Create small games within Jiu-Jitsu to highlight key battles

   b. Set clear rules and winning conditions for each game

   c. Use varying levels of resistance (20%, 40%, etc.)

   d. Focus on problem-solving rather than perfecting individual techniques

2. Threatening the J-point (opens in a new tab) (19:56)

   a. Constantly threaten the opponent's hip to stay in offensive cycles

   b. Use different techniques based on opponent's leg position (knees to chest vs. extended legs)

   c. Combine loose passing with pressure passing as needed

3. Flank Position and Pseudo Half Guard (opens in a new tab) (30:02)

   a. Prioritize these positions over traditional side control

   b. Use these positions as control points to set up further attacks

   c. Transition between these positions to maintain control

4. Creating Upper and Lower Body Battles (opens in a new tab) (59:06)

   a. Attack the upper body to expose the lower body, and vice versa

   b. Use leg riding to create dilemmas for the opponent

   c. Force opponents to choose between defending upper or lower body attacks

5. Respecting Frames to Stay in Offensive Cycles (opens in a new tab) (01:03:58)

   a. Acknowledge opponent's frames and work around them

   b. Chain attacks together instead of forcing a single technique

   c. Create multiple battles from a given position

6. Pressure vs. Loose Passing (opens in a new tab) (52:10)

   a. Use loose passing when prioritizing guard passing

   b. Employ pressure passing when maintaining top position is crucial

   c. Adapt passing strategy based on opponent's guard retention skills

7. Cranial Shift and Head Position (opens in a new tab) (40:33)

   a. Control opponent's head and shoulders to limit their options

   b. Use far-side head position to shut down underhooks

   c. Switch to near-side head position to threaten lower body attacks

8. The 20/80 Principle in Jiu-Jitsu (opens in a new tab) (00:59)

   a. Focus on the 20% of techniques that yield 80% of results

   b. Prioritize understanding concepts over memorizing specific techniques

   c. Adapt techniques as Jiu-Jitsu evolves over time

9. Defense vs. Resistance (opens in a new tab) (01:08:45)

   a. Distinguish between calculated defense and uncalculated resistance

   b. Create situations that turn opponent's defense into resistance

   c. Exploit moments when opponents become less disciplined in their defense

10. Connecting Loose Passing with Half Guard Passing (opens in a new tab) (50:37)

a. Stand up from half guard to initiate loose passing

b. Use hip-switching methods when opponent grips your legs

c. Combine loose passing and pressure passing based on opponent's reactions

[00:00:00] Jake Luigi: Hi, my name is Jake Luigi. I'm a purple belt under Mike Morrell. I'm actually wearing the, uh, the rash guard right now. Shout out to them in Pacifica, California. [00:00:10] Um, actually wear a rash guard when I'm recording all of my YouTube videos. And I started recently turning off my wifi as well and using a hotspot.

[00:00:18] I just feel like it puts me. [00:00:20] More of an uh, in a jujitsu mood, you know, so yeah back to back to a little bit about me I've uh been training for a little over seven years [00:00:30] and about a year ago My wife got a job out in the remote island of lanai and she gave me the okay to start a youtube channel So I started that youtube channel not [00:00:40] really knowing what it was going to be and it ended up being a jujitsu based youtube channel And that channel is the less impressed more involved bjj You YouTube channel and thanks to [00:00:50] support of people like you that so far it's worked out all right.

[00:00:54] So, um, thank you very much for, uh, for being here and thank you for your support. So, [00:01:00] um, the idea behind the course was that the internet nowadays is amazing because for people like you and me, we love to have, The most information available to us as possible. So [00:01:10] it's a great time to to be alive But at the same time all the information can be a bit overwhelming and we often find contradicting ideas So the [00:01:20] challenge becomes clarity at this point and kind of sifting through all the information out there to determine what Deserves our attention and how we go about implementing that [00:01:30] information into our training.

[00:01:31] So over the past few months, I've studied hundreds of hours of instructional content and competition footage with a [00:01:40] focus on passing guard and specifically half guard. And this has led to what I believe to be a tremendous amount of growth in my own skill in this area. And this [00:01:50] course is meant to shortcut your ability to have those same.

[00:01:55] Now, because what I'm trying to do is simplify hundreds of hours of content [00:02:00] for you all, by its nature, simplifying things means I'm not going to be able to address every situation, and I'm not going to be able to address every one. So, [00:02:10] without kind of sugarcoating it at all, I'm not going to hold your hand during this course.

[00:02:13] Now, Granted, none of the techniques we're going to cover are very complicated or anything, but the concepts [00:02:20] can get a bit complicated. So I ask you to have a basic understanding of guard passes, and at the same time, kind of lower your [00:02:30] expectations when it comes to production value. It's not going to be this crazy production value course, and it's not going to be a very detailed instructional on how to do [00:02:40] individual techniques.

[00:02:41] You're most likely someone who has seen, you know, John, Gordon, Lachlan, Craig, you've seen other instructors that are very much more qualified than [00:02:50] myself to teach you how to do techniques. My goal is to offer my findings after I've spent the past few months testing these [00:03:00] techniques and trying to see where they harmonize.

[00:03:02] So for example, I like the way Laughlin sets this up, but I like the way Gordon finishes it. So I'm just trying to combine different aspects from each [00:03:10] instructor, cause I definitely feel like they all have amazing insights and tools to offer us, but no one is really cross referencing them and combining them to create kind of like the [00:03:20] ultimate guide to anything.

[00:03:22] And this, we're going to start with half guard passing in this course. For every section, there's going to be a downloadable PDF that you can reference that's going to have a [00:03:30] summary of each section, as well as noting the instructionals I used and the timestamps from those instructionals if you want to dive deeper into a given technique or concept.

[00:03:39] And [00:03:40] of course, if you have any questions, I'm happy to help. You can reach out to me on Instagram, YouTube, or through my Outlier community online.

[00:03:48] [00:03:50] So the goal of these warmups is going to be to develop your footwork, gripping, and pattern recognition while we warm up our bodies. And we're going to start off [00:04:00] with my favorite one, and that is the C grip leg drag. And I'm not going to go into crazy detail on how to do any of the techniques in this course.

[00:04:07] And if you're interested in learning more detail on the [00:04:10] techniques, there'll be a PDF that you can download that'll point you to the source where I learned it. But the basic idea behind the C grip leg drag is I'm taking one of my partner's legs and I'm bringing it across my [00:04:20] body and tucking it into my armpit.

[00:04:21] And I step as many times as I need to in that same direction to get my shin behind their knee. Once my shin is behind their knee, [00:04:30] that does a good job of pinning that leg to the floor. So now I can let go of that leg and complete my leg drag.[00:04:40]

[00:04:49] The [00:04:50] next movement is a shin pin to hip and knee post.[00:05:00]

[00:05:07] Where basically I can't bring my opponent's foot to my [00:05:10] armpit. So instead, I pin their foot to their butt, and then I replace my hand with my shin. From there, one hand goes to their hip, the other goes to their knee. We step our [00:05:20] shin pin leg back, and we run the circle, as Danaher would say. And you can see me finishing in pseudo half guard here, which I think is a personal preference of mine.

[00:05:27] You can also pass the side control. But that is [00:05:30] something that I'm hoping to convince you of by the end of this course.[00:05:40]

[00:05:42] The next warm up that we're going to do is a footwork pattern that Danaher went over in his guard passing instructional. And it's one that Gordon Ryan used [00:05:50] against Hall at Gracie. And the idea is you create an initial angle. And when they react to that angle, you do a quick shuffle to the other side and put yourself in kind of a reverse neon [00:06:00] belly type situation.

[00:06:01] And when they turn to face you this time, you're ready to take a quick step around to neon belly.[00:06:10] [00:06:20]

[00:06:27] Now, the last guard passing warm up that we're going to [00:06:30] go over is a cross step,

[00:06:34] where you create that initial angle and your opponent extends their bottom leg to catch you with their [00:06:40] hook. And when they do, there's now space for your other foot to step directly to their hip.[00:06:50]

[00:06:50] Now, we're going to switch roles, and I'm going to do a self frame high leg to counter that leg drag and retain my guard. I find it beneficial to add this defensive movement in the [00:07:00] warm ups, because as we continue on, it's going to be very beneficial for the bottom person to give us intelligent responses.

[00:07:06] And the basic idea behind this one is that whatever side they [00:07:10] drag us to, our hand goes to our own leg and our elbow touches the ground, which is called a self frame. The goal is to make it difficult for them to bring that leg to the ground while we're [00:07:20] framing their upper body with our other hand, giving us time to kick our leg out of their grip and high leg over to retain our guard.[00:07:30]

[00:07:36] So after getting the basic idea behind these warm up movements down, [00:07:40] I think it's important to dive relatively quickly into the application of these moves against minimal resistance. And there's this type of training that's quickly gaining [00:07:50] traction in the jiu jitsu community. I've heard Josh McKinney from the iSekka Jiu Jitsu show call a designated winner, and Greg Sauters, who's the coach of DeAndre [00:08:00] Cobre and Alex, I'm not even gonna attempt to pronounce her last name, but two very high level and successful athletes use this [00:08:10] concept in their training.

[00:08:11] And the basic idea is you create little games within Jiu Jitsu. that highlight the key battle that's taking place from that [00:08:20] position. So for example, if a goal of ours while we're loose passing is being able to constantly threaten our opponent's J point, this allows you to stay in offensive [00:08:30] cycles and keep your partner on defense.

[00:08:32] It's pretty much taken straight out of Gordon Ryan's guard passing 2. 0 instructional. Now, the movements we did in the warmup section are just [00:08:40] ways to get to your partner's J point and force them into a defensive cycle. So, you may currently have or, you know, in the future see different ways of doing that.

[00:08:49] So, I'm not [00:08:50] saying that the warm up movements are, you know, the only way to do that. They're currently my favorite ways of doing that, but I think it's important to keep in mind that my favorite ways in a year are going to be different [00:09:00] than they are now. So the goal of designated winner is to highlight the game of getting to your partner's J point as opposed to the specific techniques that get you there.

[00:09:09] And this [00:09:10] allows you to explore different ways of achieving that goal. Now when we're creating the game, we first have to have a starting position, and for this warm up drill, I like to have the [00:09:20] designated winner standing in the uke supine. The rules of the game are if the designated winner is able to stand at the J point or the shoulder line for three seconds, they win.

[00:09:29] And when they [00:09:30] win, you just reset. Now the uke is going to be giving varying levels of resistance, so at 20 percent resistance, the uke is allowed to use four. allowed to make [00:09:40] grips. And what I mean by that is you're not allowed to grip the designated winner's ankles, you're not allowed to entangle them in De La Riva, you're just putting up frames and forcing them to figure out [00:09:50] ways around those frames.

[00:09:54] Then when you ramp it up to 40 percent resistance, the UK is allowed to use. frames [00:10:00] and grips, but they're not allowed to complete sweeps. And the goal for this level of resistance is for the designated winner to kind of get tangled up in the guard and figure out ways to untangle [00:10:10] themselves and get to the J point, which is a major theme of Gordon Ryan's guard, passing 2.

[00:10:15] 0 instructional. Now, if you're the UK, your job is to make the designated winner better. And [00:10:20] you're going to do that by giving realistic responses to their movements. And they're going to come up with solutions to the problems that you're presenting. And you're not [00:10:30] allowed to win. That's the most important part.

[00:10:31] You cannot win. Because if you're not allowed to win, that means the designated winner can stay calm, breathe, and just kind of listen to the music [00:10:40] while they think of solutions. And the designated winner, I think one of the biggest benefits of this is you're not going to be able to have solutions to all the problems that [00:10:50] are presented to you.

[00:10:51] But you don't have to worry about losing so just think and when you can't come up with a good solution You've identified the problem area and once you've identified [00:11:00] that problem area You now have a question to ask your coach. You have something to look for when you're watching gordon's next instructional You've identified the problem and there are tons of resources [00:11:10] out there for you to find solutions But bringing the problem to light is the most difficult part and that is where designated winner shines And to piggyback off of that, you can [00:11:20] communicate with your partner if you want them to give you a specific reaction.

[00:11:23] If you're running into issues in a scenario, you can tell them, Hey, can you do that again? I need to think of a [00:11:30] solution to solve this problem. It's important to remember that this is a collaboration and they're trying to make it work. you better. So here's an example of how the game will look at a 20 percent resistance level, which I [00:11:40] recommend you doing for the warmup.

[00:11:41] The designated winner is standing and the uke is supine and the goal of the game is for the designated winner to get to the hip or the shoulders for [00:11:50] three seconds. Now you can see here the uke is trying to sit up and play a seated guard and I asked them to lay back down and play a supine guard, and I'll explain my reasoning behind that later on in the course.

[00:11:59] And I [00:12:00] decided to use this clip out of all of the clips that I filmed of me doing designated winner because it's a good example of the bottom person being pretty intense and grabbing my [00:12:10] ankles and just being all stiff. Now, this is the first thing we're doing today, and it's a warm up, you know? So it's not supposed to be too intense or anything.

[00:12:17] Now, what I should have done is communicated with him [00:12:20] and said, Hey, can you give me a little less resistance? But I didn't do that, and he's relatively new to jiu jitsu, and I kind of wanted to, you know, mess around with my techniques a little more, so It ended up working out, I think, for me, [00:12:30] but he was dead tired by the end of this, which should not be the case.

[00:12:33] But you can see I'm just using the warm up techniques that we went over to get to his J point or shoulder line and try and sit there for [00:12:40] three seconds. And I'm not trying to complete the pass or anything, I'm just trying to stay there for three seconds.

[00:12:48] Now this is the next round [00:12:50] that we did at 40 percent resistance. And I wanted to show you what, in my opinion, the bottom person should be doing during this game. Where you can see he kind of stepped in, and I'm able to catch De La Riva. [00:13:00] And he goes for a leg drag that I don't resist, but I try to frame and high leg over very deliberately.

[00:13:06] And he does a good job of not framing. forcing the pass so much and [00:13:10] letting me high leg over and thinking to himself, okay, that high leg is coming over. How can I deal with it and get to the J point? And that is how you develop the skill of recognizing patterns [00:13:20] and staying in offensive cycles. Now you can see this time I start off by grabbing his ankle and he does a good job of using his other foot to strip my grip and then I [00:13:30] grab his wrist and then extend my leg to hook his leg.

[00:13:33] He hits a beautiful cross step and I high leg over to defend and he counters that and gets to my j [00:13:40] point.[00:13:50] [00:14:00]

[00:14:08] So when I'm designing a game [00:14:10] of designated winner there has to be a starting position and in the case of our warm up here the designated winner was standing and the uke was Then there has to be a way for the designated [00:14:20] winner to win the game. And in this case, it was to stand at the J point or shoulder line for three seconds.

[00:14:25] Then, I like to give the designated winner a framework to look at the [00:14:30] position through. So, that was if the uke's knees are to their chest, you're using toriando and leg drag type passes. Or, if they extend their legs, you're [00:14:40] using cross step type passes. But again, for the warm up, I truly believe that you should not just go down the list of techniques that I gave you and just drill them over and over and [00:14:50] over again.

[00:14:50] Jiu jitsu is evolving so quickly. And if you're just sitting there drilling a technique over and over again, you're focusing on getting that leg drag perfect. When in reality [00:15:00] in a year, you're going to be doing a leg drag differently, because there's going to be a more efficient way to do it. So I think it's more important for you to figure out How to use techniques in [00:15:10] combination to get to your goal, which in this case is get to the J point, get to the shoulder line.

[00:15:15] Developing that skill is more important than having the perfect leg [00:15:20] drag. And Gordon Ryan talks about the idea of getting to your opponent's J point and shoulder line in his guard passing 2. 0 instructional and refers to it as the most [00:15:30] important principle of that whole instructional. And that's what you're practicing during your warmup.

[00:15:35] So I hope you can see that these kind of new way of doing warm ups are much [00:15:40] better than just tripping up and down the mat. I wanted to go into a bit more detail on how I like to structure the designated winner portion of my classes as far as round time and resistance goes. [00:15:50] Now for me, for the warmup, I like to do four, three minute rounds.

[00:15:53] So each person has the opportunity to do two rounds at three minutes of designated winner. [00:16:00] And I got this idea from Josh McKinney, but I really like the idea of using songs instead of setting a timer. And the reason I find this to [00:16:10] be beneficial is because if you don't recognize when the song ends, then I think you're going too hard, especially if it's a warm up.

[00:16:18] So the [00:16:20] idea is, you're trying to be very much in the moment, breathe, and recognize patterns and problem solve. You're not trying to beat your partner, you're trying to just, Problem solve and [00:16:30] warm up your body. And you should be breathing and listening to the music. And if you're not able to recognize when the song changed, that means you're probably going too hard.

[00:16:39] Now, [00:16:40] that kind of changes for me when we get into the actual technique aspect, where we're doing new things that maybe I taught a technique that day and we're trying to implement it in the designated [00:16:50] winner section. Now at that point, I would set a timer because me as the coach, I'm going to be watching them, watching my students very intently and [00:17:00] trying to pick out maybe like one or two things that I think they can improve.

[00:17:03] And then maybe after one round of three minutes each, I stop and I say, okay, this [00:17:10] seems to be a common error that I want to emphasize on, um, correcting. So then in their second round, they'll do it again and I'll watch [00:17:20] them. And I'm not necessarily paying as much attention to the music because I'm focused a lot on them and they are focused on a new technique, whereas the [00:17:30] warm up, it's probably something that we've done for the past two weeks.

[00:17:32] And you're just kind of like connecting the dots, right? And, uh, trying to recognize patterns and where you're running into resistance is not [00:17:40] as cognitive intensive as Learning a new technique and trying to apply it in a dynamic scenario, right? And then if you're able to implement new techniques at the 20 percent resistance [00:17:50] level then I think it's okay to ramp up to 40% 40 percent and then transition to positional sparring.

[00:17:54] But I think this is a good transition to get into how I like to structure the [00:18:00] resistance of the training. Cause that can be a difficult thing to measure, especially for like newer people on how hard they're going. So the way I like to do this, and again, I stole this from [00:18:10] Josh McKinney, but anything over 40 percent consider it a hundred percent because most of the time when you're going a hundred percent, you're actually baselining at about 60%.[00:18:20]

[00:18:20] And then you ramp up to 80, you ramp up to 100, but you're not like constantly going 100 percent at your max, you know, resistance level. So [00:18:30] what he's found and what I've found to be true as well is that anything over 40, you should just be doing positional sparring at that point. So resistance levels stop at [00:18:40] 40 for designated winners.

[00:18:41] Now I found a good way to kind of gauge whether you're at 20 or whether you're at 40 to define what each percentage means. Now in my [00:18:50] class recently we've transitioned over to leg locks and we've been focusing primarily on defense and basically what I told my students is that the first line of defense is that you need to prevent your [00:19:00] opponent from getting both of their feet inside and if they're able to get both of their feet inside then you need to prevent them from getting their hips.

[00:19:08] close to yours. That's the two [00:19:10] stages of them entering into your legs. So at 20 percent resistance, the bad guy, the UK is allowed to get both of their feet inside, but they're not [00:19:20] allowed to connect their hips to the designated winner's hips. So the designated winner is going to be able to problem solve and figure out ways to re [00:19:30] pummel their feet back inside and win that initial battle.

[00:19:32] But then at the 40 percent resistance level, the UK is allowed to get their feet inside and then close the distance and [00:19:40] connect their hips to the designated winners. So you can see the resistance level isn't necessarily defined at how hard they're going. It's defined at what they're allowed to do. [00:19:50] So that's another little trick you can do to help out and make sure that you're giving the appropriate level of resistance to your partner.

[00:19:56] Speaker: [00:20:00] Now when it comes time to actually pass someone's guard, in my opinion, the majority of the time against good people, you're going to have to go through the path that Danaher lays out in [00:20:10] his guard passing instruction. which is you use the pressure of toriando passing, body lock passing, floating passing to force chest to chest half guard.

[00:20:19] Now [00:20:20] initially when he says the word pressure, I myself was thinking, Oh yeah, you're pressuring towards more dominant positions like side control, north south mount. And when [00:20:30] your partner reacts to that, you are able to force chest to chest half guard. That's the way I was looking at it until a few weeks ago.

[00:20:37] But, Craig Jones brings up a very [00:20:40] good point in his Power Ride Instructional. If our goal as a jiu jitsu community is to establish control that leads to submission, it's important to define what control means. And [00:20:50] I really like Craig's definition of this, where he says, Your opponent cannot move without conceding a worse position.

[00:20:56] By this definition, there are better positions that [00:21:00] we can get to that establish more control than things like side control. So with this in mind, I think guard passing is most effective when we're using passing pressure on our partner to [00:21:10] achieve the flank position Pseudo half guard and if we can't get either of those two, then we settle for chest to chest half guard And this is me explaining to my class [00:21:20] how we're going to practice this through the game of designated winner The starting position for this round is going to be the same the designated winner is standing and the uke is supine But this time, the [00:21:30] designated winner wins the game if they're able to achieve the flank position, pseudo half guard, or low chest to chest half guard.

[00:21:36] Now, one of my favorite ways to achieve the flank position, pseudo [00:21:40] half guard, or low chest to chest half guard is by first threatening your partner's J point, and when they react to your passing pressure, you look for ways to win the game. And I [00:21:50] remind them that a good way to threaten your partner's J point, if their knees are to their chest, is through the use of toriando or leg drag type passing.

[00:21:58] And if they extend their legs, [00:22:00] that's when you use things like cross steps to threaten the J point, but the ultimate goal is to get to the flank. pseudo half guard or low chest to chest position. Now for this designated winner [00:22:10] round, the uke has a bit more responsibility because it relies on them giving realistic responses to the passing pressure.

[00:22:17] They should be looking to do things like high leg or [00:22:20] invert to recover their guard, but again, remember that while you're trying to give realistic responses as the uke, your job is to make the designated winner better, [00:22:30] not for you to recover your guard. So, in other words, you're not allowed to win. And then, I do a little demonstration where I kind of create a little angle and start to threaten a leg drag, but he's resisting the [00:22:40] foot going to my armpit, so his leg is extended, so I hit a cross step.

[00:22:43] And as he recovers, I go into like a little side to side movement, but we end up kind of resetting. But then, I do pretty much [00:22:50] the same exact sequence, but then complete it with the secret leg drag.

[00:22:56] Now this is an example of one designated winner round of [00:23:00] me doing it at 20%. So the bottom person is not using any grips. They're just using frames. And I start out just doing a shin pin to hip and knee post, and they don't really respect it. So I [00:23:10] just complete the movement. Now you'll see during this designated winner round that I end up in this position here, which is not the flank position.

[00:23:17] It's not pseudo half guard and it's not chest to chest. [00:23:20] But from this position, if my opponent's knee is still facing away from me, I can go into the flank position. If they try and hip escape and face me, that means their [00:23:30] knee is going to be coming down towards the mat, which I can use to transition to pseudo half guard.

[00:23:35] Or if I'm trying to force my way into the flank position and they're straightening their leg to make that [00:23:40] difficult. That means that their knee is drifting away from their chest and I can mount very easily. So often the way this will look is I'll start with a C grip leg drag and [00:23:50] as they recover I'll transition to the hip and knee post.

[00:23:52] And pass initially to side control but immediately start to threaten the flank position.[00:24:00]

[00:24:00] But if I get to side control and they're really trying to turn towards me, often that means their leg is going to drift towards the ground and I can shoot directly into pseudo half guard. [00:24:10] Or if I'm trying to force my way into the flank position and they're straightening their leg to make that difficult, I can pike my hips up in the air and drive my knee across their belly towards mount.

[00:24:18] So I just wanted to give a [00:24:20] little context to this position here before we watch the rest of this designated winter round.[00:24:30] [00:24:40]

[00:24:41] Now this is one of my favorite sequences here and I did this because not anyone told me to do it, but because I did it once during a designated winter round, and I watched the film, and I was like, [00:24:50] that's pretty cool, I'm gonna do that again. So again, it's just a great way to kind of explore options and figure out ways these techniques connect to one another.

[00:24:57] For this sequence here, I take a cross step [00:25:00] initially, and because my hand is already grabbing their top leg, I just go two on one and drag that by very aggressively to put me in the flank position.[00:25:10]

[00:25:14] I start this one out with the Gordon Ryan footwork, but when I step around trying to get to knee on belly, I don't quite [00:25:20] get there, so I just go, cool, I'm in the shin pin anyway, so I go hip and knee post and complete the pass.[00:25:30] [00:25:40] [00:25:50] [00:26:00] [00:26:10] [00:26:20] [00:26:30] [00:26:40]

[00:26:40] And this here is an example of how it will look at 40%, where now he's able to take grips on me and entangle me in guards. But he's not able to sweep me or submit me or anything, it's [00:26:50] my responsibility to just respect the grip and try and figure out ways around it.[00:27:00] [00:27:10]

[00:27:11] On this hip and knee post here, he was able to slip his knee underneath my elbow. And then I kind of went down like I was going to go into a little bit of a smash pass type position, [00:27:20] but then I was like, okay, he's not grabbing my feet at this point, so I can just stand up and get right back into my loose passing.

[00:27:25] This one I thought was kind of interesting, because he was doing a good job of countering my leg drag, and then he was taking [00:27:30] a grip on my foot, kind of like a De La Riva type position. So ideally, I would like to bring his right leg over, you know, towards the leg drag, but I couldn't do that. So instead, I just shoved his [00:27:40] legs down towards the shin pin.

[00:27:43] But I'm pinning with the wrong shin, so I switch, I hand it off, and then I try and beat his knee, which I end up doing, I'm not sure if it would [00:27:50] have worked in reality, because, you know, he was kind of being nice to me here, but either way, I beat his knee, and now he let go of my foot, so I'm free to go side to side at this point.

[00:27:58] So I'm just waiting for [00:28:00] him to recover, and as soon as he does, I'm throwing his legs by and going right into a hip and knee post and completing the pass.[00:28:10]

[00:28:17] This, I will have to say, is probably my favorite [00:28:20] thing to do right now, where basically, you go side to side with the leg drag, and as they're fighting for the leg drag, you just transfer to a hip and knee post, and complete the pass. Now, I wanted to give you a bit more [00:28:30] detail on this sequence here, because it's my favorite right now, and it looks super smooth, and it's something I see a lot of people doing at the highest level.

[00:28:37] Now, I didn't want to include any footage of professionals [00:28:40] doing it in here, but there'll be links down in the PDF for you to check those out. But the basic dilemma here is that we're going to go into this C grip leg drag, and our opponent can either recover [00:28:50] with their knee position, like you see here.

[00:28:52] And if that's the case, we go into the hip and knee post, and camp at the J point, or complete the pass. Now the other option our opponent [00:29:00] has from the C grip leg drag is instead of recovering with their knee, they're able to pummel their foot back in between our legs. And if their foot goes in between our legs, then we go cross step.

[00:29:08] And I'll include the link [00:29:10] down below, but you'll see Gordon even pushing the foot in between his legs so he can go into this cross step. And instead of a cross step, you can also use a knee cut. And I'll include a link of Craig doing that down [00:29:20] below. But if you can get a good starting angle with that C grip leg drag, it really makes it difficult for your opponent to defend this cross step hip and knee post dilemma.

[00:29:28] Now let's go back and finish up the [00:29:30] designated winner round.[00:29:40] [00:29:50]

[00:29:52] And you can see here, I'm just kind of stepping into his guard to allow him to get some grips. I don't just want to play on the outside the whole time and not let him get grips. I want to [00:30:00] be able to practice that skill as well.

[00:30:02] Speaker 2: At this point you're probably wondering whether you bought a loose passing course or a half guard passing course But this is the stage where we [00:30:10] start to talk about half guard and what I believe to be The most frustrating part of half guard which is passing the knee shield and the reason I think it's so frustrating for a lot of people [00:30:20] is Because it's such a common position yet.

[00:30:23] No one can give you a clear answer on how to pass it So, the reason I think this is [00:30:30] the case is because when you ask that question, how do I beat a knee shield, people want to give you the answer you want to hear. And what you want to hear is that there's one [00:30:40] technique that's going to work to solve the problem you have.

[00:30:42] And unfortunately, this just isn't the case. So, I think there are two things we need to keep in mind when we're addressing this problem. The first [00:30:50] being that no one technique is going to work. You're going to need multiple techniques to deal with this situation. And two is don't be greedy. I think a lot of people make it [00:31:00] much more difficult of a task by trying to get all the way to side control, by trying to get all the way to Mount or North South, when in reality, If you can get to the flank [00:31:10] position, pseudo half guard, or just clear their knee shield and get to a low chest, to chest half guard, they're much easier positions to achieve, and in my opinion, they're actually better in a lot of [00:31:20] ways.

[00:31:20] So it makes a lot of sense to work towards these positions instead of being greedy and trying to pass the guard completely. Now, I've spent a lot of time studying [00:31:30] this, watching a lot of competition footage and instructional content. And my findings have been that there are three main ways that [00:31:40] I have had success in dealing with the knee shield.

[00:31:42] The three ways are loose passing, smashed half guard, and over back grips. And I'm going to show you what I believe to be the [00:31:50] 20 percent of the techniques that are going to yield 80 percent of your results. Both John Danaher and Gordon Ryan talk about the idea that you can just stand up out of someone's half guard and now they [00:32:00] no longer have a knee shield.

[00:32:01] And the first time I heard this, I just kind of like, glossed over it, didn't really think too much of it, and I went to the more flashy stuff. But, after watching Gordon compete, he [00:32:10] does this all the time. So I started to incorporate it into my own game, and I have to tell you, this has become my favorite way to deal with a knee shield.

[00:32:18] You stand up and you do [00:32:20] all of the things we've done up until now with our loose passing. And you force the flank position, pseudo half guard, or a low chest to chest half guard. And the idea is we're [00:32:30] constantly sharpening these skills so we're able to deal with this resistance and force a situation where we never have to deal with a knee shield to begin with.

[00:32:38] Now, when you're passing half guard or loose [00:32:40] passing, sometimes your opponent will take a grip on your leg that you find difficult to deal with. Now, keep in mind, if their hand is on your leg, it's not framing away at your upper body. So the [00:32:50] next two things we're going to discuss are ways to pressure forward and take advantage that your partner is not using their hands as frames.

[00:32:58] And I believe the first of [00:33:00] these techniques should be the smashed half guard position. And the reason I believe that is because one of our goals is to force a chest to chest half guard And if we fail and our [00:33:10] opponent is able to bring back in their knee shield and recover It leads perfectly into the smashed half guard position And what we don't want is to just back out and reset [00:33:20] when we could be taking advantage of this situation And that is why I think it's important to study it because it leads well into our overall game Now my primary [00:33:30] strategy from this position is to pummel my left foot behind their bottom leg, post my right hand on their top knee as I walk behind their guard and step into the flank [00:33:40] position.[00:33:50] [00:34:00] [00:34:10] [00:34:20] [00:34:30]

[00:34:33] If you're not able to successfully pummel your left foot behind their bottom leg, I take my head to the far [00:34:40] side of their body and from there use the ankle scoop grip that Gordon talks about in his half guard instructional.[00:34:50] [00:35:00] [00:35:10]

[00:35:10] Now, this is a great technique, but if you want a gold star, an upgraded version of this is to first pummel your back leg over their bottom leg, so when you do [00:35:20] use that ankle scoop grip to clear their knee shield, you're now in pseudo half guard.[00:35:30] [00:35:40]

[00:35:41] Also, keep in mind that from a smashed half guard position, they'll often just let go of your leg, so at any time you can just stand up and go right back into your loose passing. [00:35:50] Now, sometimes when you try and switch your hips to go into that smashed half guard position, it can be a bit difficult. So instead, you can switch your hips in the other direction and [00:36:00] start going into over back grips.

[00:36:01] And this is something we've seen Gordon do a lot, especially recently in competition. And what I found to be very useful and taking a page out of Gordon's book [00:36:10] is taking that high tripod position and really crashing that far shoulder. And then from there, trying to switch your hips in either direction to either go into smash half guard or the [00:36:20] overback grip.

[00:36:20] Now, once you get to the overback grip, I've found the standard variation to be very effective where you take a scoop grip around their ankle as you walk your legs [00:36:30] towards theirs. This will often clear the knee shield and it'll force a chest to chest half guard situation.[00:36:40]

[00:36:45] Now even though Gordon uses this overback grip a ton in competition, I put it as my [00:36:50] third option and the reason I do that is is because I feel like there's more direct paths to the flank position and a pseudo half guard from the smashed half guard or [00:37:00] loose passing. If you use this overback grip, I feel like it's great for forcing chest to chest half guard, but not as reliable if you're trying to go into the other positions.

[00:37:09] So now we're going to play [00:37:10] designated winner to practice the skill of combining all of these techniques to beat the knee shield. So the starting position is going to be the designated winner starting in half guard and the uke has [00:37:20] a low knee shield. And again, remember you can communicate with your partner if you're struggling with but if I half guard you can have them start in but if I half guard.

[00:37:26] But the goal of the game is for the designated winner to get to the flank [00:37:30] position, pseudo half guard, or a low chest to chest half guard position. And if they're able to do that, then they win. And before we started this, I asked the ukes to give different reactions with their [00:37:40] upper body. So sometimes they would use a cross shoulder post, and sometimes they would use a straight post.

[00:37:44] So we're practicing this at 20%, so there's not going to be any deep half guard entries or anything like that. [00:37:50] But if we were practicing at 40%, you'd be allowed to shoot into deep half guard, but you're not allowed to finish any sweeps. You just allow the designated winner to figure out how to get out of it.[00:38:00]

[00:38:06] Now, this one I thought was kind of cool, because I was able to hook his foot [00:38:10] successfully with my left foot, but then he freed himself. But then I pinned his bottom leg with my back leg and transitioned to pseudo half guard. Now, I thought this was kind of cool. And after [00:38:20] watching the film, what I'm going to start doing is hooking their leg with my left foot and then pummeling over to that shin pin.

[00:38:26] So again, I think this is just a cool aspect of playing designated winner.[00:38:30] [00:38:40] [00:38:50] [00:39:00] [00:39:10] [00:39:20] [00:39:30]

[00:39:30] So you can see here I'm kind of struggling to complete the pass, but he's not grabbing my feet. So I decide to stand while I push his knee shield down and create a nice angle. [00:39:40] And because I played a lot of designated winner, I'm just kind of waiting for this high leg to come over so I can switch sides.

[00:39:48] And when I went into the hip and knee [00:39:50] post, I felt like his top knee was going to give me trouble. So I grabbed that top leg and tried to throw it by to switch sides once again, but he did a good job of catching me and preventing me from [00:40:00] doing that. So I created another little angle, and because he wasn't really respecting my leg drag, I just finished the leg drag.[00:40:10]

[00:40:10] Now Gordon talks about this in his half guard instructional, which is why I wanted the uke to give different upper body frames, because if they give you two shoulder posts like you see here, it's gonna be difficult to [00:40:20] do either of the hip switching methods, but they're not grabbing your leg. So that means you can stand up and go right into your loose passing.

[00:40:26] And again, by practicing Designated Winner in this way, you're [00:40:30] developing the skill of analyzing a position and developing a solution.

[00:40:33] Speaker 3: Once we get past the knee shield, our next step [00:40:40] is going to be to make the cranial shift and control the head and shoulders. Now, I made a whole YouTube video about this, emphasizing the position of your head when you make the cranial [00:40:50] shift. And at the time I was making that video, I was really only focused on the upper body battle and pinning the head and shoulders.

[00:40:57] And my favorite way to do that was by [00:41:00] putting my head on the far side and ideally getting my shoulder in their armpit. And this makes it very difficult for them to hand fight or sit up for a kimura. [00:41:10] From there, I work to get a crossface, nearside underhook, or a half nelson. Now, I had a decent amount of success with this strategy, and still do.

[00:41:18] I see Gordon doing it [00:41:20] all the time. But, it felt pretty one dimensional. And, I started thinking about the idea that Danaher and the Donaher Death Squad, [00:41:30] they really preached the idea. That you attack the upper body and then when your opponent defends the upper body They leave their lower body vulnerable and vice versa you see a lot of top [00:41:40] level athletes now attacking the lower body and then when someone sits down to defend the Lower body attacks.

[00:41:46] They're using it to wrestle up same idea just in reverse But I never thought [00:41:50] about applying this principle to guard passing until now I started using cranial shift And it has improved my guard passing tremendously. So the [00:42:00] idea is that when we achieve the flank position pseudo half guard or low chest to chest Our opponent is going to be very disciplined with their elbow position And it's going to make it very [00:42:10] difficult for us to achieve the cranial shift because that's all our partner has to worry about But leg riding gives us the ability to say, okay, I can't win the upper body battle.

[00:42:19] So instead I'm going [00:42:20] to focus on winning the lower body battle and making you more uncomfortable. So now your partner has an option, right? They either let you upgrade your leg position or they extend their arms [00:42:30] away to defend the leg position, giving you the cranial shift. Now one way of stating this that really resonated with me is that there's a difference between defense and resistance.

[00:42:38] And I wish I could remember the [00:42:40] coach that said this, but basically they said that defense is was a calculated movement and resistance is an uncalculated movement. Now most of the time our opponents are going to have good defense. [00:42:50] They're going to be very disciplined with their elbow position and they're going to make it difficult for us to achieve the cranial shift.

[00:42:55] But through leg riding, we can create lower body and upper [00:43:00] body battles and make them uncomfortable. And the idea is now we can turn their defense into resistance. Their movements become less calculated the [00:43:10] more problems we can throw at them or the more uncomfortable we can make them. As crazy as this sounds, I've been using the same principle from Mount, where if I'm having trouble getting a crossface or an [00:43:20] underhook, I go back into their legs, work to split their legs to make them uncomfortable, and therefore less disciplined with their elbow position.

[00:43:27] So from chest to chest half guard, a few ways [00:43:30] I like to upgrade my leg position is to pummel in my butterfly hook and work to stretch them out. And then I just take my foot and pummel it over their leg to get to pseudo half guard.[00:43:40]

[00:43:43] Now, sometimes they're super annoying with this hook here. And if you try to pummel with their foot still hooked, it's going to prevent [00:43:50] you from getting the pseudo half guard. So what I found is that you can just cut that knee into this position here, which Gordon talks about in his instructional as a great way to transition to mount.[00:44:00]

[00:44:06] But again, sometimes when you do that, they keep a good trap on your foot [00:44:10] and you end up in three quarter mount. But honestly, this is becoming one of my favorite things to do to people. We're from three quarter mount. I try to use my free leg to feed their top leg into a deep [00:44:20] hook. And from there, I use my free leg to help split my opponent's legs.

[00:44:28] Now in my opinion, the [00:44:30] flank position is the best position to be in because you can make your opponent's life so miserable from here by upgrading your legs to the split position here that Craig Jones covers in [00:44:40] his Power Ride Instructional. But I want to be clear, I don't think you should reorient your whole game around this idea.

[00:44:46] I think you should see leg riding as a great addition to your [00:44:50] game. So when you can't win the upper body battle, it gives you the ability to now win the lower body battle. So with that said, I still put my head on the far side when I'm trying [00:45:00] to make the cranial shift. With my head on the far side, it's great for shutting down an underhook if they get it.

[00:45:06] But it also makes it difficult for me to pummel in my butterfly hook and [00:45:10] start to threaten lower body battles. So often I'll start with my head on the far side, but if I can't make the cranial shift, I'll switch my head to the near side, pummel in my butterfly hook, [00:45:20] and start to try to upgrade my lower body position.

[00:45:23] Now be aware with your head on the near side, you're more vulnerable to them hip escaping and reinserting their knee shield. So be ready to [00:45:30] transition to your smashed half guard follow ups. So to practice the skill of making the cranial shift through designated winner, the starting position was the designated winner had a low [00:45:40] chest to chest half guard.

[00:45:40] And the game is won if the designated winner can make the uke's upper body face the opposite direction as their lower body. So in other words, we're just trying to establish a very [00:45:50] controlling position. And the framework that I wanted the designated winner to look at this through was if you can't win the upper body battle, try to improve your lower body position.

[00:45:58] And if you can't win your lower body [00:46:00] battles, Start focusing on winning at the upper body. Now, for the uke, I want you to try to exploit where the designated winner is vulnerable. So, if their head is on the far side, try to sit up. [00:46:10] If their head is on the near side, they're more vulnerable when you punch in your underhook, and it's easier for you to hip escape and reinsert your knee shield.

[00:46:17] But again, remember, you're not allowed to win. So [00:46:20] if you're able to reinsert your knee shield, just chill and let the designated winner figure out how to solve the problem. So here we are playing designated winner and my head is on the far side. So right now I'm [00:46:30] completely focused on winning the upper body battle.

[00:46:32] And my favorite way to do that right now is taking this grip on their top arm. and use it to push their arm slightly north as I [00:46:40] shuck my shoulder underneath their elbow and ideally all the way in their armpit. And that allows me to punch my arm through towards a crossface. But his second hand coming in right here is gonna do a good job at [00:46:50] preventing me from getting a deep crossface.

[00:46:52] So instead of going in front of his face, I go behind his head and use a half Nelson to flatten him out. And again, he's doing a very good job with his hand [00:47:00] positioning here because if his hand was not hooking my arm like it is, I could just loop my arm around his head for a crossface. But he's doing a good job at preventing that.

[00:47:09] [00:47:10] So I bring my head down first to kind of take that top arm out of the hand fight. So now with my head on the near side, I have the ability to threaten lower body and upper body [00:47:20] attacks. So I basically just look at his nearside arm and do the opposite. And since in this case his nearside arm is pushing at my legs, I say, Okay, great, I'm going to take my cross face.

[00:47:29] And we touched on [00:47:30] this a little bit briefly, but we're going to go over it more in the following section. But the basic idea is I free my knee towards three quarter mount, then I switch my cross facing arm as I [00:47:40] use the foot pummeling sequence to split their legs and make their lower body face in the opposite direction as their upper body.[00:47:50]

[00:47:55] For this one I brought my head to the near side a bit earlier and he was able to do a good job of getting his [00:48:00] knee shield in. And I tried to pummel my foot behind his a few times but it wasn't working so then I transferred to the overback grip to clear his knee shield.[00:48:10] [00:48:20] [00:48:30] [00:48:40]

[00:48:41] Again, he does a great job of exploiting where I'm vulnerable because my head is on the near side and I feel his underhook coming in so I bring my head back to the far [00:48:50] side, take my cross shoulder post so I can re pummel in my underhook safely.[00:49:00] [00:49:10] [00:49:20]

[00:49:28] We started to go off [00:49:30] camera a bit on this one, but you can see initially I pummeled in my butterfly hook and started to upgrade my lower body position. Then I was able to get my shoulder in his armpit and transition to that same [00:49:40] half nelson we looked at previously. And then I start to pass straight to mount, but I realize that his face is facing to my right, so I want his legs to face to my left.

[00:49:48] So I do this foot [00:49:50] pummeling technique that I think is pretty slick that we're going to cover later on in the course.[00:50:00] [00:50:10] [00:50:20] [00:50:30]

[00:50:37] Another way to incorporate this skill into [00:50:40] your training is by doing the same loose passing designated winner type of warm up. But this time you're allowed to combine the loose passing methods with the more pressure and hip switching based [00:50:50] methods.

[00:50:58] So when they grab your [00:51:00] ankle you can crash their far shoulder and really go into that tripod position and transition to an over back grip to get chest to chest half guard. And I think this is a great way to start connecting all [00:51:10] the pieces together.[00:51:20] [00:51:30] [00:51:40] [00:51:50] [00:52:00] [00:52:10]

[00:52:10] I recently watched Gordon's instructional where he breaks down his ADCC 2022 performance. And in that instructional, he brings up a really good point that I think fits well [00:52:20] into this section of the course. He talks about his match against Victor Hugo and how Victor, for heavyweight, is someone who is very comfortable playing their guard.

[00:52:28] So in that [00:52:30] match, Victor actually pulled guard against Gordon, meaning that Gordon didn't worry. Victor down and instead he prioritized just passing the guard and that led [00:52:40] to him displaying some beautiful guard passing and led to some pretty iconic guard passes and highlights of ADCC. But if you compare that to someone [00:52:50] like Andre, Where Gordon had to work to get on top of Andre and in that match Gordon prioritized holding Andre down As [00:53:00] opposed to passing his guard and what that means is often you have to worry about pressuring forward using overback grips using the smash half card as opposed to loose passing [00:53:10] because loose passing gives your partner the ability to I went to gördandiş dilerinin [00:53:20] Italian translated from english Italian translated from English So mostly I was like learning Authentication [00:53:30] and My signature trick in uh It makes sense after hearing this from Gordon because he was prioritizing holding Felipe Pena down as opposed to [00:53:40] passing his guard.

[00:53:40] And yes, Felipe Pena was able to stand up, but he was had to do so very labored. And it was difficult for him to do that. But around like the 30 minute [00:53:50] mark or so, you can see Gordon's priorities switched, and he wasn't using as much pressure passing, and he was using more loose passing and footwork. So I really think when Gordon wants to pass the [00:54:00] guard, and he's prioritizing passing the guard, he uses loose passing and If someone is not grabbing his feet and he pressures when someone's grabbing his feet, but it might make sense if you had [00:54:10] to work to get on top of your partner to prioritize the pressure as opposed to lose passing because you really don't want them to get up and you have to You know, start from [00:54:20] square one.

[00:54:20] So basically what I'm saying is if you don't have to worry about holding someone down and you just have to worry about passing your guard, you have the luxury of doing what we did in the designated winner [00:54:30] section, where if they're grabbing your feet, you can pressure forward. And if they're not grabbing your feet, you can go into your loose passing.

[00:54:35] But if you had to work to achieve top position, you should prioritize the [00:54:40] pressure passing as opposed to the loose passing, even if they are not grabbing your feet.

[00:54:44] Speaker 4: So if we're not able to achieve any [00:54:50] of the leg riding positions, we're going to settle for a chest to chest half guard. And once we get there, we're going to need a good game plan to, you know, solidify our pass. So I've already talked about this [00:55:00] quite a bit on my YouTube channel, so I'm just going to kind of skim over it here.

[00:55:04] But we're basically going to follow Dana Hur's four step system, where step one is to establish a good [00:55:10] starting position. Step two is to free the knee of your trapped leg. Step three is to drive your knee to the near hip or far hip. And then step four is [00:55:20] to free your ankle. Now, in terms of the starting position, John talks about a few different ones in his instructional and Gordon does as well.

[00:55:27] And I basically tend to think of this as either [00:55:30] like a high tripod version where your hips are high or a low version where you keep your hips low. And I think the high tripod method is great for an ideal scenario where you have both a [00:55:40] crossface and an underhook, or even better, you have two. you're able to pummel your foot free and go straight to mount like we've seen Gordon do many times in competition [00:55:50] But I found when I do the high tripod method against people that are more flexible, especially women They're able to get their knee shield in pretty easily or it could pummeling their butterfly [00:56:00] hook.

[00:56:00] Now this guy here is not the most flexible, but I think you can see what I'm getting at. So to solve that problem, Gordon recommends that you slightly turn your far hip down to make it more difficult for their knee shield to [00:56:10] come in. But Laughlin talks about on submeta that if your hips are oriented in this direction, you're more likely to be bridged over your far shoulder.[00:56:20]

[00:56:20] Gordon also talks about how he doesn't like to use an underhook if his opponent has a butterfly hook. So, in other words, you use the high tripod method when you can check all the [00:56:30] boxes. And by check all the boxes, I mean you have a crossface and an underhook, and you're even able to switch your head to the other side to get a second underhook.

[00:56:37] And they don't have any butterfly hooks or anything, then it's [00:56:40] great. You can go into the high tripod and pass directly to mount, ideally. And you use the low passing method in pretty much every other scenario, which is why I think John [00:56:50] Danaher says that he uses the crossface with no underhook variation more than anything else.

[00:56:55] So I think it's important to start with the low passing method and our primary [00:57:00] sequence is going to be we're able to achieve a crossface without an underhook and we start to make our opponent's knees face away from us as we free our knee to three quarter mount. From [00:57:10] there, we bring our head over our opponent's head and use our second foot to help free our trapped foot.[00:57:20] [00:57:30]

[00:57:31] Now when making the cranial shift, I really like the idea of getting my near shoulder underneath their elbow or in their armpit. So when I go for a crossface [00:57:40] and they use their second hand to stop it, I can redirect and go to the half nelson to flatten them out. Then you can just loop your arm around their head to reestablish your cross face and [00:57:50] go into the same path we just did.

[00:57:51] But again, the idea is by getting my shoulder underneath their elbow, I now have the ability to use a cross face or a half Nelson. [00:58:00] So I'm creating multiple battles from a given position. But in my opinion, the most important thing from this low passing position is we make our opponent's knees face away from [00:58:10] us.

[00:58:11] Too often we get the crossface and then we kind of hang back to get the underhook as well. But as we're digging for the underhook, they're also digging for their butterfly hook or to [00:58:20] reinsert their knee shield or to do whatever they're going to do to recover their guard. So it becomes a race. But what I'm saying is instead of racing, your priority should be to make their knees [00:58:30] point away from you because this shuts down all of their options.

[00:58:33] And then as you free your knee towards three quarter mount, they have a decision to make. And if they decide to stop your knee from going to [00:58:40] three quarter mount, they're gonna give you the underhook. So as soon as you get your crossface, prioritize their knees facing away from you as opposed to getting your underhook.

[00:58:48] But if you do end up getting the [00:58:50] underhook, my preference is to switch my head to the other side, get double underhooks before completing the high tripod version of the pass. But again, this is why I think you should prioritize the low version [00:59:00] of this pass because doing it well will set up a very secure variation of the high tripod version.

[00:59:06] But now is where things start to get interesting because we've talked a lot about [00:59:10] making our opponent's upper body face in a different direction as their lower body. And when we do this low version, we're cross facing them in the same direction. direction their legs are facing. So what we're [00:59:20] going to do is we're going to drive our knee into their hip to make it difficult for them to hip escape, and then we'll switch our cross facing arm to make their upper body face the opposite direction that their [00:59:30] lower body is facing.

[00:59:30] And then we work to exaggerate the split of their legs by taking a deep hook with my right leg here and pummeling my left toes above their [00:59:40] bottom leg.[00:59:50]

[00:59:58] So a little more explanation on [01:00:00] the footwork here, and basically sometimes it's hard to get a deep hook with my right leg here. So I can use my second leg to come over the top and really solidify a strong hook before I [01:00:10] use my free leg to exaggerate the split even further.

[01:00:19] [01:00:20] So in an ideal world, we're able to free our knee to the far hip towards three quarter mount. But if they put up a frame to stop our knee from going in that direction, if we just try and plow [01:00:30] through it, it's a bit risky because if it doesn't work, now he's recovering half guard with an underhook on me.

[01:00:35] So now I'm on defense because I didn't respect his frame. Now if we [01:00:40] switch our cross facing arm to make our opponent's upper body and lower body face opposite directions, then another frame that we really have to respect is their elbow getting inside of our knee. Because [01:00:50] this is the beginning of them doing an elbow escape and being able to turn towards us.

[01:00:53] And because we switched our cross facing arm, we basically gave them an underhook on that side, and they can go right on the [01:01:00] attack. So if we're gonna switch our cross face from three quarter mount, we really need to exaggerate the drive of our knee into their hip. Because if we don't, they're gonna come out the back door and give us some [01:01:10] problems.

[01:01:18] So sometimes it's going to be [01:01:20] necessary for us to respect the frame, take the underhook, and free our knee to the near hip towards side control. From here, I really enjoy leaving both of my feet trapped so I can [01:01:30] raise my hips and start working my way towards mount. But instead of mounting, like, Danaher and Gordon show in their instructionals, I've really been messing with the idea of making their lower [01:01:40] body face the opposite direction as their upper body.

[01:01:42] So because I'm cross facing my partner to my right, I want his legs facing to my left. And the way I like to achieve this is [01:01:50] freeing my foot and using that foot to feed his top leg to my other hook. And then going into that same leg split that we already went over, we're just on the other [01:02:00] side now.

[01:02:08] And again, when I do this feed right [01:02:10] here, and right now I feel like I don't have a deep hook with my left leg. So I pummel my right leg over the top to solidify a deeper hook before I go into splitting their [01:02:20] legs.

[01:02:24] And once you get their legs split like this, they're not bridging, they're not kipping, they're not doing any of their [01:02:30] classic escapes. Their life is honestly a bit in your hands at this point. It's just such a controlling position. Often, it's a good idea to not rush to the next step. and do what Craig [01:02:40] Jones refers to as create the loop.

[01:02:42] And this here is a different position, it's me trying to make the cranial shift, but it's a good example in my opinion of creating the loop. Where I'm having a hard time getting the [01:02:50] crossface, so I start to pummel in my butterfly hook and upgrade my lower body positioning. Then I cut my knee to the near hip and you can see his hands are still respecting the upper [01:03:00] body battle.

[01:03:00] So I start to make my way towards mount. But then his hand comes down and does a good job of framing at my hip. So if I were to mount right now, I feel like I would lose it right away. So I [01:03:10] say it's okay, I'm gonna let you use your frame to prevent me from mounting, but we're gonna go all the way to the other side and end up in pseudo half guard.

[01:03:17] And because your frame was at my lower body, it [01:03:20] gives me a cross face right away. and allows me to immediately stay in an offensive cycle and start to work towards mount. I'm trying to make it so that every time you successfully defend one of my [01:03:30] attacks, you recover to a position where I have the ability to immediately threaten more offense.

[01:03:35] And when I find myself in three quarter mount trying to do that leg pummeling, but I feel like his [01:03:40] upper leg is starting to slip over my hook. So I shut that down by using my other foot to pummel over the top and solidify my hook. And with all these lower battles taking place, [01:03:50] I switch my attention to the upper body and take my crossface.

[01:03:53] And because I was able to upgrade my upper body position, now the leg pummeling becomes much easier. Now there are a lot of ways to [01:04:00] play designated winner depending on the skill you want to highlight and for me I really wanted to emphasize the idea of creating the loop so the way I structured the game was that we started in a [01:04:10] low chest to chest half guard and the Designated winner wins if they're able to achieve mount or chain three leg riding positions together And the framework [01:04:20] that I really emphasized is the idea of respecting frames to stay in offensive cycles.

[01:04:25] And a great way to go about this is by creating upper body and lower body battles. If [01:04:30] you're struggling as a designated winner to win a lower body battle, turn your attention to the upper body. And vice versa, if you can't get a cross face, try and achieve a leg riding position. And the [01:04:40] goal was not necessarily to cross face your partner as hard as you can, but almost allow them to recover and insert their frames.

[01:04:46] So you can try and work around those frames and see how [01:04:50] these positions connect with one another so you can practice the skill of staying in an offensive cycle.[01:05:00] [01:05:10] [01:05:20] [01:05:30]

[01:05:36] So you can see here, I have his legs split pretty well, so now I [01:05:40] turn my attention to the upper body and I'm trying to get my shoulder in his armpit. And if you can do that, you can go to the half Nelson and things like that and just make life. super miserable for them.[01:05:50]

[01:05:54] And here you can see I'm trying to pull on my butterfly hook with no luck, but he's also reaching for my legs. So I say, [01:06:00] cool, you're fighting the lower body, so I'm going to take the win at the upper [01:06:10] [01:06:20] [01:06:30] [01:06:40] [01:06:50] body.

[01:06:51] If you made it all the way through the course here, I just wanted to thank you for sticking with me. I know the [01:07:00] camera angles and camera quality and audio wasn't all that impressive or anything, but I just wanted to thank you and I hope now you have clarity on passing half guard. I just wanted to [01:07:10] give you a core set of techniques and show you how I implement those techniques into my training, but keep in mind that my favorite techniques are going to change over time, [01:07:20] and I imagine the techniques shown in here Are not going to address every situation that you run into and they're definitely not for everyone So with that in mind, I think there's two main [01:07:30] takeaways I want you to have after watching this course and that is number one.

[01:07:34] There's not a single technique that's going to work We're going to need to chain attacks together and stay in offensive cycles. [01:07:40] And the way we do that is by respecting frames So once we respect their frames We stay in offensive cycles by either chaining attacks together like we did in loose passing and going [01:07:50] side to side You Or by creating multiple battles in a given situation like we did when we introduced Leg writing into the equation to create lower body and upper body [01:08:00] battles The second big takeaway that I really wanted to drive home is the training process because it's exactly what I do To make youtube videos that are useful I use things like [01:08:10] designated winner to highlight areas in my game where i'm having trouble and then I go and I watch Instructional content and I watch competition footage You to see how other people are dealing with that resistance, [01:08:20] and I try to apply that to my own training.

[01:08:22] And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but that's just kind of the nature of it, and we keep refining the process until we can narrow our techniques down to the [01:08:30] 20 percent of techniques that give us 80 percent of our results. And that's what I shared with you during this course. So I hope you all found it helpful.

[01:08:38] Let me know what you thought through [01:08:40] YouTube, through Instagram, or through my outlier community online, and we'll see you in the next one.

[01:08:45] Speaker 5: I wanted to include a little bonus case study that I did before I made [01:08:50] any of this course, and I really think it's going to be helpful for all of you. For those of you that don't know, I live on a small island next to Maui called Lanai, and there's only 3, 000 people that [01:09:00] live here. It's super remote, so as you can imagine, it's a bit difficult to find training partners.

[01:09:04] But Eddie here was visiting for the holidays. And he has been training for about 14 months and [01:09:10] he's just super stoked on jiu jitsu and he was excited to hear that we have a jiu jitsu program here on the island. So I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to test out the ideas that I had [01:09:20] written originally in the course and modify them accordingly and then share with you guys the process that I went through.

[01:09:25] And so you guys can see the growth that Eddie had in his guard passing ability in just the [01:09:30] short time we were able to train together on the island. So, the first time we trained together was just me and him, and I explained to him what the game of designated winner is, and I said, for [01:09:40] our purposes here, we're gonna start with the person on bottom being supine, and the person on top just trying to step to their hip.

[01:09:47] And I explained to him that we were gonna start at 20 percent [01:09:50] resistance, which means I'm not gonna make any grips on him or entangle him in any sort of guard, and I'm just gonna make frames, and his responsibility is to figure out a way around those [01:10:00] frames to get to my hip. And I was never gonna sweep him or try and submit him or anything.

[01:10:05] He was always going to win. He didn't have to worry about losing. So you can see he's, he's going side [01:10:10] to side, trying to get to my hip, which I think it's a very classic strategy. And then he asked me if it's okay for him to do a knee cut. And I said, yeah, it's okay. But you know, the knee cut wasn't really there.

[01:10:18] So I opened it up for him so he could do a [01:10:20] knee cut. And then we went up to 40 percent resistance, where I explained to him that I'm just going to start making grips on him. And he was going to have to figure out a way to deal with those grips, deal with those [01:10:30] entanglements in my legs. and step to my hip or what the new wave people call the J point.

[01:10:34] But still, I was not going to try and sweep him or submit him or anything. It was just his job to work around [01:10:40] those frames and grips and get to my J point. And you can see every time I made a grip, he would break that grip and then reset and then try his technique. So then after that round I said, [01:10:50] okay, we're gonna do the 40 percent again where I'm gonna make grips on you But this time instead of trying to break my grip you're gonna try and work around my grips So you're not allowed to reach down and [01:11:00] break my grip on your leg You have to figure out a way around that grip.

[01:11:03] But again, you're not gonna lose You don't have to worry about me trying to sweep you or submit you Just take your time figure out a [01:11:10] way around that grip and you can see him still trying to reach down He's like, oh, nope And, you know, does he come up with the best solution to deal with these grips? No, not in my opinion.

[01:11:19] [01:11:20] It's not the best solution. But what it does is it gets him thinking a bit differently on how to win this game. And then after that, I said, OK, now we're going to learn a [01:11:30] technique, which is one of my favorite.

[01:11:33] And that is the C grip leg drag, and we went over a few reps of that. And when we were doing the designated winner rounds, I [01:11:40] didn't like the way he was grabbing my legs all the way up by my knees. Because it's too easy, in my opinion, for the bottom person to get a solid grip on you. So I made sure to mention during [01:11:50] the teaching of that C grip leg drag that I was grabbing more mid shin or down by their ankle even.

[01:11:55] And when he was doing his handful of reps with the C grip leg drag, I felt like the biggest [01:12:00] mistake he was making was that his foot was so far away from my knee pit area. So I made sure to show it one more time, and I started off by saying that if you do a normal leg drag, [01:12:10] and you don't do anything to control their secondary leg, Then that secondary leg is going to high leg over and they're going to recover their guard every time.

[01:12:17] So the key to making this technique work is [01:12:20] pinning their second leg to the ground. And the way we do that is by stepping behind their knee with our foot. And if your first step doesn't get there, step again. But make sure that you get [01:12:30] All the way behind their knee before you let go of that secondary leg.

[01:12:33] So obviously there's more things to correct, but I felt like that was the most important thing to emphasize [01:12:40] and to let Eddie just try it a few more times before we went back to designated winner. And you can see me pointing to my hips here because I'm explaining to Eddie that Getting to your opponent's J point is [01:12:50] a good way to set up the leg drag.

[01:12:51] So the goal of this designated winner section is to get to the leg drag or flank position, whatever you want to call it. And I was encouraging him to be creative [01:13:00] and do whatever he had to do to get to that flank position. And one strategy is to threaten the J point first. But that wasn't what he had to do.

[01:13:07] And you can see he does a little side [01:13:10] to side movement and he's starting to see the entry, right? And then all of a sudden he hits this side to side c grip leg drag, which is, I thought was super cool. And then he started to ask [01:13:20] questions like, okay, where should my knee be right here? Like, I'm not really sure how to finish the pass.

[01:13:23] And then my response to that in the, in the moment was, you know, don't worry about that for now. Just go back to playing designated winner [01:13:30] and we'll worry about that later. But for now, just focus on that entry. And that entry that you just did was beautiful. So we went back to playing designated winner, but this time it was at [01:13:40] 40%, and I told him that I was going to be gripping him and trying to entangle his legs, but his job was to still get to that leg drag position.

[01:13:47] This is where things start to get really cool, and I've never [01:13:50] taught him this sequence or anything, but he goes C grip, leg drag, and I grab his ankle, and he threatens a leg drag on the other side, which forces me to let go of my grip to respect the [01:14:00] threat. But he didn't really capitalize on it, but I think he saw the opening that was there, because he does the same exact thing on the other side.

[01:14:05] He goes So, um, I'm going to show you how to do a C grip leg drag, I grab his ankle, and as I [01:14:10] high leg, he shoots right into a leg drag on the other side. I mean, that just blows my mind a little bit. Like, how cool is that? I didn't show him that technique, all we did was go over maybe like 5 reps [01:14:20] of doing a leg drag, and then just had him do it on his own, and he's doing sequences with that leg drag instead of static drilling.

[01:14:27] But one thing I think I forgot to [01:14:30] mention to Eddie in the way I worded it wasn't very good because I said you need a step to my hip. That was the goal, a step to my hip. But in reality, I can step past your hip. I can step all the way up to the shoulder line like you [01:14:40] see me doing here. And that's one thing that I'm going to emphasize on day two with Eddie.

[01:14:44] But I'm just gonna let this play a little bit so you can see what this idea of designated winner looks like.[01:14:50] [01:15:00] [01:15:10] [01:15:20] [01:15:30]

[01:15:34] And again, my basic strategy, which is why they're in the warm ups, is to use a C grip leg drag to threaten [01:15:40] an angle, and then off that angle, you can go to things like a hip and knee post, and go to a leg drag, or just pass the guard, whatever you want to do.[01:15:50] [01:16:00] [01:16:10]

[01:16:10] My goal heading into day two was to connect the loose passing that we did in day one with a knee shield and how to pass a knee shield. We started out reviewing the leg drag that we did the previous day. [01:16:20] So he did a couple reps of that and then we hopped right into designated winner at 20 percent resistance.

[01:16:26] And the goal of the game was to get to the flank position. And I [01:16:30] reiterated one strategy to get there could be to first step to my hip, but I added that you could step beyond my hip up to my shoulders. And my reaction to retain my [01:16:40] guard will open up opportunities for you to enter into the flank position.

[01:16:43] So then we started playing designated winner and you can see that he's not really threatening too much of an angle He's kind of staying in front of me [01:16:50] and trying to you know, replay that leg drag in his mind a bit And he's not quite getting it[01:17:00]

[01:17:04] But then he's starting to see it a little better. He starts to get it once, he starts to get it twice, he even gets it a third [01:17:10] time. And I just felt like it was turning into him, I think it was good that he was getting the movement down, but I just felt like it was him just drilling the move over and over and over again.

[01:17:18] And that's not what Designated Winner [01:17:20] is designed to do. So I said, okay, time, let's switch. And I didn't say anything to him, but I just wanted him to feel what it felt like when I was walking up past his shoulders.[01:17:30] [01:17:40]

[01:17:49] [01:17:50] And after I did it a few times, I just said that my general strategy was to walk up past your hip to your shoulder and get you to react. As opposed to just kind [01:18:00] of sitting in front of them trying to go back and forth with a leg drag. And as I walk past their hip towards their shoulders, it's going to force them to go into some sort of defensive reaction, which I'm trying to capitalize on [01:18:10] to get to the flank position.

[01:18:12] So we switch one more time, still playing the same game of designated winner at 20%, but this time he's immediately walking to my shoulder line. And you can [01:18:20] see he's trying to figure out how to, you know, maneuver my legs into the leg drag, which, you know, he ends up going to more of a dope mount, but, you know, regardless, he's getting the picture.

[01:18:28] And then, right after [01:18:30] that, he gets up and he goes right into a side to side C grip leg drag. That looked a lot smoother than when he was 100 percent focused on getting that C grip leg drag. And I'm just gonna [01:18:40] let this play, but I just think it's pretty amazing how much smoother this round looked than the round just 10 minutes before.

[01:18:46] And all we've talked about thus far in our two days is pretty much [01:18:50] a C grip leg drag and walking to the shoulder line.[01:19:00] [01:19:10]

[01:19:18] And I think going [01:19:20] into the next class of day three, I think what I'm going to focus on is the Finishing point of that leg drag because I think you know right now you can see he's passing to side control [01:19:30] You know i've explained to him that I think the flank position is a really good position to be in but I don't think he's completely bought into that strategy because i'm just some random dude on some random island who's [01:19:40] contradicting the 14 months of jiu jitsu that he's been previously taught.

[01:19:43] So, you know, I don't blame him for not, um, settling in that flank position and wanting to move towards side control, but I do [01:19:50] think day three, I want to just show him the value of that flank position and then he can decide for himself, you know, based on the rule set or, you know, the situation [01:20:00] on what he wants to do.

[01:20:01] But at least he'll kind of see where I'm coming from. But I feel like he's getting the loose passing down pretty well. So I decided that it was a good time to connect it with passing the knee [01:20:10] shield. So we started a knee shield. I stood up and I said, Hey, if they're not grabbing your foot right here, you can go into all the passes that we just did.

[01:20:17] So I showed him a few examples of how we would get [01:20:20] there. And then we played designated winner at 20 percent from the knee shield position. And I started as the designated winner.[01:20:30] [01:20:40] [01:20:50] [01:21:00]

[01:21:01] So now it's Eddie's turn and he stands up. I think he's just trying to, you know, get a sense to where he's at right now. And he, he finds his way to that flank [01:21:10] position. I do think he's starting to get this loose passing down and it was a pretty easy connection to make with the knee shield. I mean, you just stand up and go right into the same thing we were doing.

[01:21:17] So now I upped the resistance [01:21:20] to 40%, which means I can now take grips because I wanted him to feel that it's hard to walk to my shoulder line. If I take a grip on your foot, sometimes it's hard to free that foot and [01:21:30] you can't move it. And I wanted him to feel that and feel that frustration.

[01:21:38] And then I explained to [01:21:40] him that if we stand up and they don't grab our foot, it's great, we can walk to their shoulder line and go into the same thing we've been doing. But if they grab our foot, we need another strategy that involves not moving [01:21:50] that foot, but allows us to stay on offense. And in my opinion, the two best ways of doing this are to either turn my hips in the same direction that your hips are facing, and then work my way [01:22:00] to the flank position.

[01:22:07] But if that's not working, then you can always turn your [01:22:10] hips in the other direction to face the person and you can work to get chest to chest half guard. So now we started playing designated winner once again, and you can see him starting to implement [01:22:20] these new hip switching methods.[01:22:30]

[01:22:39] But I think [01:22:40] he was starting to get a little tunnel vision on those two hip switching techniques, and he forgot that if I'm just framing on his upper body and his foot is free, he has the option to just stand up [01:22:50] and go into what we had been doing previously. So this time, I put both my hands on his upper body, leaving his foot free, and I tried to make it difficult for him to do either of those hip switching [01:23:00] methods.

[01:23:00] So I think, like, the biggest takeaway of this is that when we're doing Designated Winner, we're not drilling specific techniques. We're drilling problem solving, and we're trying to present [01:23:10] ourselves with problems and then work our way through them. But sometimes we just get so tunnel visioned on practicing one or two techniques that we forget to, you know, Analyze the situation and make sure it's the [01:23:20] correct time to do those techniques.

[01:23:21] And that I think is where Designated Winner shines. So I reiterated with him that if both of their hands are addressing your upper body, it's going to be [01:23:30] difficult for you to go into these hip switching methods. But it's going to be very easy for you to free your foot and start to go into your loose passing.

[01:23:36] So we went back to playing Designated Winner at 40 [01:23:40] percent and I immediately put both my hands on his upper body, but he still went into the hip switching method.

[01:23:48] So I was like, okay, maybe that was just a [01:23:50] fluke, so I did it again, I put both my hands on his upper body and then he switched his hips the other way and, you know, passed, which, I mean, it might work, might not, but, you know, it wasn't the message I was trying to get [01:24:00] across. I was trying to get him to, you know, free his foot if I'm pushing at his upper body.

[01:24:04] So I said, you know what, I'm just gonna show a specific technique to do it, that way he'll have an [01:24:10] actual tool in his arsenal to do it, you know, effectively. So I showed what Gordon Ryan teaches in his Guard Passing 2. 0 Instructional.[01:24:20]

[01:24:27] So then he just drilled the technique a few times and then we [01:24:30] hopped back into Designated Winner. And you can see immediately I pushed both my hands on his upper body and he does a great job of freeing his foot and starting to go into his loose passing.[01:24:40]

[01:24:48] And instead of mixing it up, I [01:24:50] decided to do it again to give him a little more confidence in the technique.[01:25:00]

[01:25:05] But this time, I grabbed his foot, and you can see him still trying to do that same technique, but it's [01:25:10] hard, man. It's hard when people grab your feet. And then he just kind of settles down into an overback grip, which is, you know, what I wanted him to do, but, um, sometimes I just get too excited, and we had been doing this for like [01:25:20] a half hour straight, and I forgot to, you know, break for water or anything like that, so we took a water break here.

[01:25:25] But after we return all refreshed, I think you can see he's starting to put the pieces together a bit and [01:25:30] connect his loose passing with his hip switch passing.[01:25:40] [01:25:50]

[01:25:54] And that was the end of our day. But at the end of the video, I wanted to kind of give you guys an idea of what it looks [01:26:00] like when I do it. So I put this video here[01:26:10] [01:26:20] [01:26:30] [01:26:40] [01:26:50] [01:27:00] [01:27:10]

[01:27:17] and this part here is a little preview for what I think we're going to go [01:27:20] over in day three, where basically we just regurgitate what Craig Jones talks about in his power ride instructional, and we exaggerate the split of that leg drag. And I wanted him [01:27:30] to feel it so he can get a glimpse into what it's like because it sucks.[01:27:40]

[01:27:47] So day three actually happened about a week later [01:27:50] because my man Eddie here, he works for a restaurant. And it was the holidays, so New Year's and stuff, one of the busiest times of the year, and he wasn't able to come for about a week. And since it was after the [01:28:00] holidays, we had other people joining us for class.

[01:28:02] So I started out just showing a C grip leg drag, which for everyone else, it was their first time seeing it, but Eddie had seen this before. So I just wanted everyone [01:28:10] to drill the mechanics of it, and to refresh Eddie of how to do the leg drag. We didn't go over the leg drag in too crazy of detail or anything, we just moved on pretty quickly to the cross step.

[01:28:19] And [01:28:20] here you can just see them trying to figure out how to do it, and eventually they figure it out. And I thought it was important to put this clip in here because it shows that it's brand new information to them. It's not [01:28:30] something we've been working on for weeks in class. Everyone in here, it's the first time they're seeing this movement.[01:28:40] [01:28:50]

[01:28:52] So now after they've drilled the leg drag and they've drilled the cross step, it's time to play designated winner so we can connect these [01:29:00] techniques and paint a picture. So basically all I said to them was if our partner's knees are to their chest, it's a good time to go into things like a leg drag or other forms [01:29:10] of toriondo passing to step to our partner's hip or to their shoulder line.

[01:29:14] Then Eddie gets a little cramp, but the second part of the equation here, is that if our opponent extends their leg [01:29:20] for us, they're opening up the space by their hip. So that is when we'll do things like a cross step. So the basic game we played was the top player was trying to pass the bottom player's guard, and if the bottom [01:29:30] player had their knees to their chest, it's probably a good idea to do things like a leg drag or toriando.

[01:29:35] If the bottom player was extending, it's probably a good idea to do a cross step. And you can see none [01:29:40] of this is super technical. He's driving the wrong knee through sometimes into like a more dope mount kind of situation. But the point is that I was always taught how to do a perfect leg drag. But [01:29:50] nobody ever told me where that leg drag fit into the picture.

[01:29:53] And that is the most important part. And I'm going to show them how I like to do a leg drag. But to be honest, in a year, I'm probably going to do leg drags [01:30:00] differently. So in my opinion, it's more beneficial to give someone the broad outline of the picture because the details are going to change over time.

[01:30:07] So with that said, we started out the [01:30:10] class using the overall game we're playing as a warm up. And that's really where I think Designated Winner shines. So people got nice and warm by practicing the idea of combining leg drags and [01:30:20] cross steps to threaten your partner's j point. And now I tightened up what I believe to be the most important detail that people were missing on the leg drag.

[01:30:28] Speaker 6: I want my [01:30:30] knee turning down towards his hip as opposed to my knee driving over his knee right there. Yeah. [01:30:40] The number one mistake is that. And then I showed him the Craig Jones special of using the leg drag to exaggerate the split of our partner's [01:30:50] legs as opposed to using the leg drag to pass the side control.

[01:30:53] And my knee is driving down towards his hip. I'm picking him up for me and my head is on his ear. [01:31:00] From here, I'm letting, I'm turning him forward, I'm letting my toes stick out and I replace it with my other toe. And I just extend. Thank you.[01:31:10]

[01:31:17] Speaker 5: So after that, we split up and we drilled [01:31:20] technique very traditionally, and I went around and corrected people where I thought they needed correcting.[01:31:30]

[01:31:38] And in Eddie's [01:31:40] case, I felt like I needed to emphasize that you need to trap that knee with your armpit. So if we get a better angle of Eddie here, you can see he's not really doing anything to trap [01:31:50] that knee behind his armpit. So I wanted to correct him on that. And I told him my favorite way to achieve that result is to roll my shoulder forward, but however you can get his knee behind [01:32:00] your armpit, that's what you're trying to do.

[01:32:09] So [01:32:10] now, after drilling that, we hopped back into designated winner, and the rules of this game were that we had to threaten our opponent's J point or shoulder line. And the way we do that is we look at our [01:32:20] opponent's knees. If their knees are towards their chest, we're doing things like leg drags. or toriondo type passes to get to their J point or their shoulders.

[01:32:28] If their knees are away from their [01:32:30] chest, we're looking for things like cross steps. And you can see he's cross stepping with the wrong foot here. He's not doing the techniques 100 percent right. But the point is that he's playing the right game. And it took me 7 years [01:32:40] to figure out what this game is.

[01:32:41] And in my opinion, just by giving him this lens to see guard passing through, his performance is gonna improve dramatically. So again, the point is to not get [01:32:50] caught up so much in the weeds and just make sure people are playing the correct game And this game was oriented around threatening the j point But instead of passing to side control neon belly or north [01:33:00] south We were trying to force the leg drag position and then when I see things that I need to correct technique wise I'll do that in between rounds or even better is after you play [01:33:10] designated winner You have some sort of resistance that you're not entirely sure how to deal with Sure, you were able to win because your partner's letting you win, but you're not happy with your answer.

[01:33:18] You're like, man, I [01:33:20] wish I had a better answer to this resistance that I'm running into. So, in my opinion, you should have questions after playing this game. And there are plenty of resources out there for you to find the [01:33:30] answers. So, unfortunately, I forgot to film it, but I tightened up the cross step in between rounds, just to make sure people were stepping with the correct foot, and then we hopped back into Designated Winner.

[01:33:39] And after [01:33:40] months of studying guard passing, I felt like the most effective path and the one I wanted to primarily funnel my students down was to use the leg drag to split the legs into an [01:33:50] arm triangle finish.

[01:33:58] Now, we didn't go over the arm [01:34:00] triangle finish in this class, but I thought it was really interesting that this guy here It was his first class in months because he's the wrestling coach here on the island. So, obviously, he has a lot of grappling experience [01:34:10] through wrestling, and he's trained Jiu Jitsu for about four months.

[01:34:12] He actually had a stripe on a white belt that I didn't know about because I never go to a Gi class, but he actually got a stripe from a school in San [01:34:20] Diego. So, he has a good amount of grappling experience, but very little Jiu Jitsu experience. And just by going to this one class on passing the guard, I think you can tell he's gonna be a handful to [01:34:30] roll with.

[01:34:30] Now, obviously, we're gonna have to tighten up this armbar attempt and fix things technique wise, but I think you can see just by letting people play the game and seeing where they're running into resistance and having [01:34:40] trouble dealing with it is something that I really love as an instructor because I can give my students very helpful criticism and feedback and even resources that they can go study on their own.

[01:34:49] And again, [01:34:50] as a student, you should try and be very observant to try and find out where the little speed bumps are in your game. So you can figure out how to ask the right questions. And once you have the right questions, [01:35:00] you can go find the answers. Now, when I was watching Kali, I felt like the biggest thing was that he was too tunnel vision on getting the underhook.

[01:35:06] And by doing so, he was sacrificing his head position and [01:35:10] relinquishing a lot of the control that was established. So he was missing the bigger picture that our goal is to control our partner and make them unathletic. If we're able to do that well enough, they're gonna willingly give [01:35:20] us the underhook to alleviate the pressure.

[01:35:22] So we're gonna finish out watching Coley's designated win around here, and then I'm gonna gather everyone together and reemphasize our goal[01:35:30] [01:35:40] [01:35:50]

[01:35:55] Speaker 7: when we get here and maybe[01:36:00]

[01:36:04] Speaker 6: a lot of us are pulling our head away to try and punch in the underhook and then [01:36:10] coming down. But if this person is being disciplined, it's going to be very hard for us to do that. So, our focus shouldn't be on getting it under the Our focus should be on pinning their shoulder to the mat. And [01:36:20] if you do that, you together.

[01:36:23] So, if he's turning towards me, and I'm like, Man, I can't keep this together. I just say, cool, but I'm going to be like, Drop face, and I'm going to [01:36:30] stand out wide, And I'm going to pin your shoulder to the mat. And I'm going to come here, and I'm just going to give you my perspective. And I'm not going to try to convince you.

[01:36:38] I'm just going to give [01:36:40] you my point of view. If I'm giving you my point of view, you're already giving me your point of view. You already have your point of view. So, our goal is not to give [01:36:50] you your point of view. Not necessarily to give you your point of view. So, yeah. I'm trying to do something that I'm more[01:37:00]

[01:37:01] I'm in chess with chess half heart, and I just have a black face and I don't have another move. If I start walking my legs this way, and I free my knee, [01:37:10] he basically has a choice. Is he going to stop me from denouncing, or is he going to give me another move? Denouncing would cover, but I have another move.