High Guard

5/1 - Downtown

When I was first shown high guard a couple of a weeks ago, I thought it was bizarre and I had the temerity to poke fun at it. Not sure why I was making fun, b/c I should embrace any variation of the closed guard. In fact, I found myself using high guard somewhat instinctively on Monday during a roll. We went over a couple of transition points and attacks from high guard today. I like it quite a bit, especially with the confidence that I have to keep people pinned with my legs.

Technique 

1. Transition to High Guard from Closed Guard: Assuming they are using their R hand to grip midway on your lapel, break the grip by getting a cross grip on their sleeve with your R hand, feed your L hand under their forearm and grip your R wrist. Bump hips up, and as you move hips back down to the ground, pop both arms up. Feed their R arm under your R armpit. Pull them forward with your legs to break their posture. Reach over their back with your L hand and grab their L lat. Bring your R leg up the side of their body as far as you can (preferably up to their L armpit) with your lower leg across their body (foot pointing to their R). Bring your L leg up and in front of their R shoulder. It's important that your leg is in front of their shoulder and not off on the side. Preferably your leg is between their ear and their shoulder.

2. Straight Arm-bar: Bring their free arm (their L) between your ear and shoulder, rotate their arm to your L and arm-bar.

3. Arm-bar (Trapped Arm): If their R arm is trapped firmly under your arm-pit, a simple hip-up should be enough.

4. Arm-bar Hooking the Leg (Trapped Arm): If you can't quite get the leverage you need or if they are defending, hook under their L knee with your R arm to rotate yourself around, then hip-up for the arm-bar.

5. If for some reason you can't break their lapel grip in #1, pull their gi jacket loose, grip the bottom R of their jacket and wrap it over their R arm and hold with your R hand on the inside of their R arm. This should trap their arm in place. You can move their arm even further toward your center-line by pushing their arm to the R with your L hand. Bring both feet up to their hips, slide R leg across their back and bring L leg over their R shoulder.

6. Americana: From #5, push their R wrist to your L with both hands. If they try to run away by moving to your R (thereby eliminating your angle), let go of the gi jacket with your R hand, hook your R hand over the top of your L thigh and hook the inside of their R knee with your L hand. Your R hand will be over the top of their hand, but it their hand will be in the crook of your elbow. Hip up and turn your hips to the R and your  upper body to the L.

7. From the closed guard use your R hand to get a deep lapel grip on their R side. L hand has sleeve control on their R wrist. Bring feet to their hips and R leg across their back. You should be almost perpendicular to them and on your L side. Give some slack on the L hand that has sleeve control so you can bring your L leg up and push your L knee against their R elbow. Once that's in place, you can bring it all the way up and over for a triangle, though you will have to readjust your legs b/c they'll be in the opposite side you'll need for the finish. Or, if they posture up before you can lock on the triangle, bring your L leg across their upper body and hook the back of your knee over the L side of their head. Grab your L shin with your left hand and pull toward you. You should still have the deep lapel grip, which means you'll have a wicked choke from here.

Rolls

Rolled with Nate, Dennis, Julio, Saul and a flow roll with Antone. I was able to get top side with Nate and I was happy with how I was moving my hips to finish the pass and control top side. He was able to escape, but it was good progress for me to actually finish a knee slice pass. Dennis and I both worked from guard a bit, but he was primarily on top side. At one point, I was able to almost sortof escape to the point where I was on my back lying perpendicularly on top of him. Very sad for us time ran out here, as we were both very interested to see if I would be able to complete the pass or not. Julio crushed me for the vast majority of the match, but I tried to hang tough and avoid wrist locks and everything else that came my way. Did fairly well, though he caught me at least a couple of times with chokes. Good roll with Saul, he let me work a bit but said that I was legitimately getting positions and submissions. He let me have an omoplata that I transitioned to triangle and then was able to finish with arm-bar. I worked hard to get top side, but am pretty sure that he let me have that. The flow roll with Antone was a bit of a misnomer b/c while I was staying very mellow throughout, I couldn't help it but to try to defend whatever he was trying to do. We went "light", but I wasn't letting him just have the positions/submissions. I guess everyone has a different idea as to what flow rolling is, and I thought my idea of it was different, but apparently not. Sorry bud, I'll try to be more smooth next time.