The guard is the most important position in jiu-jitsu.
And developing rock solid guard retention is one of the two highest bang-for-the-buck skills you can develop (the other is gripfighting).
So whether you play half guard, spider guard, butterfly guard or upside-down inside-out reverse de-la-worm guard you absolutely have to know the principles and techniques to counter your opponent’s guard passing attempts.
Having good guard retention not only makes your guard harder to pass (duh) but it also frees you up to be much more confident with your attacks from the bottom.
Knowing that you can always recover guard and not get smashed makes you much more likely to go for that crazy attack, try to hit that sweep, or chase that surprising submission. If it doesn’t work, well, you’re just back in the guard where you started.
To help you make your guard much harder to pass check out The Guard Retention Formula that I filmed with BJJ black belt Rory Van Vliet.
In this conceptually grounded instructional you’ll get step-by-step methods to stop all of the most common and most powerful guard passes, including the knee cut, toreando, smash pass, over-under, leg drag, double unders, and more.
It’s incredibly extensive and will have gi, no gi, MMA and self defense applications.
As we were filming it I kept on thinking that if I had had this material as a white belt I would have had an absolutely impassible guard. It would have taken years off of my learning curve.
I’ve been a black belt now for almost 14 years and I still learned a ton from Rory’s teachings. I’ve already used some of the techniques and approaches in my own sparring and it has really helped.
So I can confidently say that this instructional will help everyone from white belt to black belt.
This is the best resource on the topic of guard retention that I have ever seen.
Click here for more information about The Guard Retention Formula!
Cheers,
Stephan
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