What is Elbow-Knee Connection

One of the most important skills in jiu-jitsu is guard retention. Think of guard retention as a toolbox containing a whole bunch of tools to solve the problem of your opponent passing your guard. Of all the many guard retention tools in that toolbox possibly the most universally useful one is something known as ‘elbow-knee connection. Most guard passes end in side control, and side control involves your opponent forcing himself into the space between your hip and your armpit on one side of your body. Therefore, if your opponent is passing your guard and you reach out with your arms then you create a HUGE space that he can access. Reaching out and breaking elbow-knee connection You can make that space MUCH more difficult to access if you make a shield on that side of body with your forearm and your shin. The way you do that is by keeping your elbow glued to the inside or the outside of your knee. Maintaining elbow-knee connection in guard retention Here’s a short video I filmed to show you the elbow-knee concept and how it applies to guard retention in more detail… Elbow-knee connection allows you to prevent and recover from even late stage guard passes.  It’s an amazing party trick once you get the gist of it! None of this to say is that elbow-knee connection is the be-all-and-end-all.  Not at all! There will DEFINITELY be times when you’ll need to reach into that metaphorical toolbox and pull out other tactics like gripfighting, high-legging, granby rolling, knee-bumping, and so on… But if you’re trying to do guard retention without elbow-knee connection then you’re really selling yourself short. Give it a try! Stephan Kesting. Related Resource: The Guard Retention Formula 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 my learning curve. 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! The post What is Elbow-Knee Connection appeared first on Grapplearts .