This week we are taking another look at guard passing with a few new scenarios to play out.

Monday: On Monday our focus was on a very simple concept. Pinning the chest with our chest and out pummeling the legs. To drive in this concept we worked with the knee cut pass. Our class began with micro sparring rounds and drilling, with a focus on maintaining a chest to chest connection while attempting to free our trapped leg.

Technique: The goal here is pretty simple. I have to use my head and arms to keep the guard players upper body away from their legs. To retain their guard they absolutely have to connect their arms to their legs. So as the guard passer we have to keep this in mind. I want my opponents arms as far away from their legs as possible. So when we look at this from a knee cut pass it really helps to define this. I start with a strong underhook from the headquarters position. From here my focus was on head control. I want my head on the inside position so that I can force my opponents head away from their bottom leg. Ultimately making them into a crescent shape. I really want to make my opponent uncomfortable here, the more angle I create, the more pressure I can create and both of these are going to help me win the leg pummel.

Drilling: Let’s get really comfortable being uncomfortable. Use your head to disconnect the guard player’s upper body from their legs. Increase the resistance until it is under full pressure and full resistance.

Discussion: Lots of great questions and feedback here, but ultimately everyone struggled with freeing their trapped foot. As much as I would love to tell everyone there is a trick to freeing the foot, there really isn’t. It’s just hard. That often becomes the battle from the knee cut pass. We will eventually learn options for solving this problem but for now I want the students to struggle with it and ultimately learn how to free their foot, but this takes time.

Conclusion: We really need to keep guard passing simple, and we need to look at it as problem solving. If we get too fixed on following techniques we will end up frustrated and stuck in the guard. Guard passing is simple. I need to put my body between my opponents thighs and their chest. That’s it. If they can put their thigh on their chest then we haven’t passed. Every guard pass we learn is a tool to complete this task. To get that separation we have two main options. Pin the hips and force the upper body away, or pin the upper body and force the legs away. The knee cut pass is exactly that. We pin the shoulders to the mat, then force the legs away from the chest.

Take a step back and see the problem, then dig in your toolbox until you find the right tool for the job. Don’t try to force your way through a problem with the wrong tool.