Two Weeks of Half Guard
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There’s at least one way in which my school has a slightly different technical focus from other schools. My instructor and his instructor both admittedly prefer the half guard to the full-guard. In Dave’s words, it’s because once he has the half guard “I feel like I’m halfway to their back.”
We work a lot from the full guard, don’t get me wrong. But I’m guessing we spend more time earlier on with the half guard than other schools.
I’ve heard opinions that half guard is better suited to a more advanced level, like blue belt. There’s some merit to this; half guard is harder for beginners to conceptualize and understand than full guard. And it has its obvious downsides – the primary one being that your opponent is halfway to side control.
But the flipside is that if you’re looking for it, ending up in half guard is pretty common. Your opponent may be half way to side control, but you’re halfway to his back and halfway to recovering guard. Half guard is an escape from side control, it’s there during guard passing, it’s there when someone tries to mount. It’s there all the time, because if you’re in danger of being dominated, trapping a leg is a surefire way delay your opponent and work for some control yourself. With the right setup, just that one leg can be the doorway to some very advantageous positions.
In anticipation of a half-guard / x-guard workshop that Ica Medina will be staging at my school in two weeks, Dave has been really pushing this position in the early morning classes. (To read more about training, check out my Training Log for May 3 – 14. )
The intent of this is that when we actually take the workshop, we will be primed for the level of detail a half guard master like Ica will bring to the table and be able to get more out of the seminar.
The focus has really paid off for me. I’ve developed a level of confidence in four basic half guard escapes and sweeps and finally felt natural balling up underneath my opponent.
I’ve already summarized the positions in my training log, but here I think it appropriate to summarize the general principles we reviewed and progress I’ve made (not in any particular order).
- Trap the leg in a lockdown. The most important thing is to prevent your opponent from progressing into side mount or mount by trapping a leg. There are varying leg control tactics, but first and foremost, trap it.
- In half-guard, you want to be either parallel or perpendicular, not in an X position.
- Get the underhook. If you have only the semblance of an underhook, work until you have a full, shoulder-to-core underhook and you are on your side.
- Staying flat = near certain death. The easiest way for an opponent to flatten you is by crossfacing and getting an X position on you.
- Ball up. You do this by using your legs and core to buck your opponent. Literally, you can insert your knee in his backside and hoist him up over your head, creating space for the underhook. Arching and hoisting works, too.
- Use your legs to hoist more than your upper body. Much, much more effective.
- Depending on how you want to sweep, you can switch the leg you’re trapping with.
For each move we trained Dave would break it down and show that unless we had applied the basic principles to it, it didn’t work as well, if at all.
My greatest success during this training was finally comprehending this notion of using your lower body and core to move your opponent’s base and create space for yourself. By inserting a knee in their butt and crunching up with your legs and down with your core, you can literally work your way into a very nice ball and take their back or sweep with ease.
This is especially the case if you’re doing the old-school sweep with a toe trap. The lower you are, the easier it is to trap the toes with your opposite hand.
This principle even applies when you are perpendicular and working for a scoop. By bucking, you can cause them to base out toward your arm, which will put their leg in reach for a scoop sweep.
Balling up underneath them is not only advantageous for every single move from half guard (except the scoop sweep when you are perpendicular…but even then it has application) but it is the gateway to other positions such as deep half, which is enjoying quite a bit of popularity now.
During training, I have been experimenting with different grips that will aid in sweeping in particular. Also, I’ve tried to notice setups.
With the elevator sweep, after you hip out and set the butterfly hook with your outside leg, I have found it helpful to trap their opposite arm, and sometimes even reach clear over their arm and grab their gi pants, then clamp their arm in just before sweeping. It is helpful in this sweep also to use your inside leg hoist their weight forward before letting go of the half guard and following through with the sweep.
I’ve also noticed that when executing the old-school sweep and driving into them, it works for me to actually use an arch rather than trying to sit up into them. I arch with my outside leg, then let go with the inside leg use it to power off the arch as well. I end up with both feet in the air for a moment, but it gives me more power than just trying to sit up.
Here’s an example of the old-school sweep, no-gi (video originally from learnbjjtechniques.com).
And just to show you how totally wicked Ica is when it comes to this position, here’s a video of him performing a helicopter sweep to armbar from half guard.
I don’t expect to get to that level of control for a long, long time. But you have to admit, that’s beyond awesome.
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