On the Mat Day 359: Pass Guard Drills

F-sensei did something different during the Sunday morning practice. Usually he shows us a technique then gets us to drill it a few times. This few times is usually 4 times each which is never enough. Instead he got us to do drills for guard passing and made us do them from 10 to 20 times each. It was very beneficial and each drill was very useful. I'll try to briefly explain them.

1. I'm standing. Opponent is in open guard with both feet hooking behind my knees. I cup the top of his knees (not grab the pants) as if I want to push his feet to the floor. I bring my knees in slightly which prevents him controlling me. My left knee pushes down into his shin as I turn slightly to the right and swivel my lower leg over his. I do the same with the right side so my legs end up in between his feet.

2. The next drill was a repeat of drill 1 but afterwards I had to bring my legs back to the original position outside his legs by first pushing with the knee and rotating my lower leg over his shin to the outside. It is important to push with my knee against his leg before rotating.

3. I start as in drill 1, rotate my left knee over his right shin. Then I trap his right leg between both of mine and rotate my right leg across the same leg. I'm on his outside now. As I do the final rotation, without dropping my foot to the floor, I immediately push my right knee into his to flatten both his legs to the floor.

4. We also did a leg drag pass but I still need to go over that to get the fine details in my head.

I constantly see the emphasis F-sensei places on passing guard. He is a big advocate of it. In fact I would say that Marco Barbosa had a big part in this style of jiu-jitsu. He was a judoka and those types rarely play bottom. Saying that, I have noticed that F-sensei seems to promote students quickly who show a lot of skill playing guard - myself included. In my opinion the essence of BJJ is the guard so I spend a lot of time on bottom. One other thing he mentioned about passing guard was that you should always be close to them putting pressure on their legs with your legs. Always driving forward. Of course, spider guard is the exception in this case.

Sparring time: 9 x 6 mins = 54 mins

(really pushed myself to keep going despite being tired. I feel like this is the way to go. Depleted stamina during rolling means more dependence on technique and a means to kill the ego by not caring about who taps me).