February 22nd 2010

Technique

Passing the guard, 'knee through pass'

So, another Monday and the gym was still freezing cold, it actually felt colder inside the gym than outside, when you can see your breath frozen on the cold air you know it's a bad sign.  Anyway, due to the sub-zero temperature the warm-up was slightly more vigorous than normal.  Incorporated into the warm up were some standing guard pass drills and standing guard break drills.  Nothing new to add here other than drilling these techniques over and over again will really ingrain them in your muscle memory allowing you to pull them off when sparring without having to think about it.  This can be tiring, but it really is a fundamental way to learn.

The technique focus today was the same as last week, passing the guard, but today we gave a different option. Rather than going 'around' the legs as you would do with a standing guard pass the idea is to stay as tight as possible and pass 'through' the legs.  After the guard is broken and you have established your posture, you exert pressure on your opponents leg by pinning it to the floor with the shin of your leg.  This allows you to establish neck control by grapping the collar with the same hand as your through knee whilst the other hand establishes an underhook on the far shoulder.  You can cross the ankles to prevent your opponent establishing half guard, but this should only be a transitional position.  The pass is then executed by swinging the rear leg, i.e. not the knee through leg, behind you whilst your hip hits the floor.  The pass is completed once you have taken side control.

There are a myriad of ways to pass the guard, the 'knee through' technique is just one and we shall be looking at some variations of this during the next few lessons.

We finished the session with five five minute rounds of sparring, despite the cold weather there was a good energy tonight, well done all.