Closed guard: What concepts changed your game?

yetanother said:
I try to but with stalling being tolerated it's not always easy. In the gi if you don't have awesome some it's a slow battle of breaking his grips, forcing the ankle. Often they guy will hinder be all the way and then explode out while the attack is near completion. In no gi I would just let the guys stand up as it's the only high percentage way of attacking unless you are Braulio Estima himself. If the guys on top refuses to open the guard standing he should be DQ'ed.
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No. The bottom guy is hold the guard closed, which is causing the lack of action. Top man is actively trying to get out of a position of stalling, bottom man is keeping him there. Who is stalling?
 
Dirty Holt said:
No. The bottom guy is hold the guard closed, which is causing the lack of action. Top man is actively trying to get out of a position of stalling, bottom man is keeping him there. Who is stalling?
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Guard bottom is a dominant position. It may not be a points position, but from a control perspective it is dominant. That's like saying if you have mount that maintaining mount while your opponent is bucking, shrimping, or spazzing is stalling.
 
Roger Gracie's use of closed guard is what I try to emulate. He was exceptional at back takes, mostly because of how he used the foot on the hip/hip up movement to both drag the arm across and threaten the back.
 
smart.feller said:
Guard bottom is a dominant position. It may not be a points position, but from a control perspective it is dominant. That's like saying if you have mount that maintaining mount while your opponent is bucking, shrimping, or spazzing is stalling.
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Exactly. If you want action to occur when both men are stalling, the onus is on the person who is forcing the position to relinquish it. The onus is certainly not on the person who wants out of the stalled position.
 
Dirty Holt said:
Exactly. If you want action to occur when both men are stalling, the onus is on the person who is forcing the position to relinquish it. The onus is certainly not on the person who wants out of the stalled position.
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That doesn't make sense to me, but I am a very aggressive guard player and stalling isn't part of my thought process when I'm on bottom. I don't think the onus is on the person who is "forcing" the position...that's called positional dominance. They achieved said position, it's the job of the person in the disadvantageous place to better themselves...now if the bottom guy is simply grabbing tight to the top man and has broken his posture and has double overhooked him and the top man just can't move, then that is a different scenario than what I generally imagine to be a stalled out, grip fighting, move/counter move situation that happens to take a few minutes in guard.
 
smart.feller said:
That doesn't make sense to me, but I am a very aggressive guard player and stalling isn't part of my thought process when I'm on bottom. I don't think the onus is on the person who is "forcing" the position...that's called positional dominance. They achieved said position, it's the job of the person in the disadvantageous place to better themselves...now if the bottom guy is simply grabbing tight to the top man and has broken his posture and has double overhooked him and the top man just can't move, then that is a different scenario than what I generally imagine to be a stalled out, grip fighting, move/counter move situation that happens to take a few minutes in guard.
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Bottom guard is not a position of dominance. Either you got taken down and lost points, both pulled and you came out bottom and lost an advantage, or you pulled and you were awarded nothing. Since BJJ awards points to dominant positions, by definition, bottom guard is the exact opposite of a dominant position. People simply go there because it is easier to dictate positional changes because stalling is not enforced equally for the bottom man.
 


This is one of my favourite attacks to hit if the guy is heavy and pushing his weight into you. Love the series of the brabo grip, and generally gives me lots and lots of options.
 
Dirty Holt said:
Bottom guard is not a position of dominance. Either you got taken down and lost points, both pulled and you came out bottom and lost an advantage, or you pulled and you were awarded nothing. Since BJJ awards points to dominant positions, by definition, bottom guard is the exact opposite of a dominant position. People simply go there because it is easier to dictate positional changes because stalling is not enforced equally for the bottom man.
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Under IBJJF rules stalling is not enforced almost at all.
 
My closed guard became an integral part of my game after I got good at multiple attacks with the same set up. This way, I could chain attacks and keep opponents guessing.

My crosschoke and scissor sweep are equally threatening from a cross collar grip.

My guillotine, kimura and hip bump sweep are equally threatening from sitting up and reaching over my opponent's back.

Having multiple options keeps my opponent from doing all the things that are required to successfully open and pass closed guard. I simply have fewer steps to properly execute in order to attack than my opponent does to pass. This makes it difficult for him to get ahead of me.

For this reason, as a purple belt, I still use closed guard as my best guard.

Of course, like any other position, a superior player will still open and pass. That doesn't mean closed guard isn't any good.
 
Dirty Holt said:
Bottom guard is not a position of dominance. Either you got taken down and lost points, both pulled and you came out bottom and lost an advantage, or you pulled and you were awarded nothing. Since BJJ awards points to dominant positions, by definition, bottom guard is the exact opposite of a dominant position. People simply go there because it is easier to dictate positional changes because stalling is not enforced equally for the bottom man.
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That last point is soooooo true. At last year's NY open I took my opponent down for 2 points right away and landed in his closed guard. Literally, nothing happened for the rest of the match. I would lose the fight because I was penalized 3 times for stalling. It's not like I wasn't trying to move...
 
Were you trying to stand up to break the guard? If not you were stalling.
 
Dirty Holt said:
Bottom guard is not a position of dominance. Either you got taken down and lost points, both pulled and you came out bottom and lost an advantage, or you pulled and you were awarded nothing. Since BJJ awards points to dominant positions, by definition, bottom guard is the exact opposite of a dominant position. People simply go there because it is easier to dictate positional changes because stalling is not enforced equally for the bottom man.
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Just can't get behind this, within a sport BJJ context. Closed guard bottom has many options, being in the closed guard has but one. It is the superior position.

However, you're dead on with the referee-ing point. You gotta work. Guy on top has to keep trying to break and pass, on bottom has to keep attacking or sweeping. If neither of those isn't happening, they should get stood up with a warning to both. If the guy on top is "trying to pass" and the guy on bottom is doing nothing, but somehow retaining his guard, i'd posit that he isn't really doing nothing. If the guy on bottom is trying to attack and the guy on top has just locked down and shelled up, the guy on the bottom is going to get the win. But i could see a useful change in the rules being made that top guy, in that last scenario, should get a stalling point deduction.
 
Yeah, break posture and constantly attack. Collar choke, armbar, flower sweep, triangle. If no gi, more kimura, hip bump sweep, guillotine.
 
tenktriangles said:
Just can't get behind this, within a sport BJJ context. Closed guard bottom has many options, being in the closed guard has but one. It is the superior position.
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I disagree. It's not about the number of options, it's about the viability of those options (and calling 'pass guard' one option is a little silly, since there are innumerable ways to pass guard). It's much easier for the passer to shut down the guarder's offense than vice versa, and it's also easier for the passer to initiate serious attacks. Closed guard is more balanced than a lot of positions, but I still think it favors the top man slightly.

Closed guard is like any other guard: it's worse to be on bottom than on top, but not much. And since you can practice any one guard a lot more than any passer works on passing your particular guard, you generally should have an experience/skill edge in your favorite guard. Pulling guard is basically trading a mechanically neutral position for a slightly inferior one because you believe (often with good reason) that you have greater skill in the resulting position, enough to make up for the slight disadvantage you incur by pulling in the first place.
 
It's worse in terms of what?
You can't really pass closed guard (with the exception of high risk crazy stuff).
The top guy mostly has one option: open the closed guard.
In the gi there are a lot of really strong attacks from the bottom of closed and once the top stands up to open you can still most often transition to a strong open guard position.
 
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yetanother said:
It's worse in terms of what?
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It's worse in terms of ability to achieve your goals. For the passer that's to stay on top and eventually pass, for the guarder it's to not get passed and eventually sweep or submit. In general (there are exceptions, but not many), the passer has the mechanical advantage due to gravity, greater agility (since he's on his feet vs. the guarder on his back or butt), and greater ability to exert force (again, because he's on his feet). The guarder certainly can minimize these advantage by disturbing the passer's balance, breaking his posture, etc, but notice how all those goals presume that the passer has those good positional facets naturally. You rarely hear about breaking posture in guard because guard players have no postural advantage. You don't have to break balance because the guarder has no balance to speak of already being on his back. This disadvantage is exacerbated as you go higher up in weight due to declining strength/weight ratios, but it's there even among the little guys.

Oddly enough if you look at which divisions have multiple time champs who spent the most time on bottom and still won titles, it's actually middle heavy. This is mostly because of Braulio and Romulo's dominance and the fact that both have exceptional guards. But at the lower weights, typically thought of as double guard pull city, most of the really dominant champs won their semi- and finals matches on top. Celsinho, the Mendes bros (especially Gui), Bruno Malfacine, Robson Moura, Marcelo Garcia, Leandro Lo, all those guys played a ton of guard until the later stages where they seemed to switch mostly to the top game to win. My guess is that 's because they recognize that when dealing with inferior opponents it's most efficient to take them out of their games by pulling guard but when faced with opponents as good as they were (or nearly) it's too dangerous to pull and risk the pass.

Even though I don't really like chess analogies applied to BJJ, I'll use one here. In chess how you open the game is very important in determining the course of the action, and if you can force the game into a position you like you have a much better chance of winning. Many players, especially when playing black, will play tricky openings that aren't necessarily the best but take their opponents out of their comfort zones, and they pick up a lot of early wins this way. But once you start getting to master level, you basically have to play mainstream openings because you opponents will be good enough to refute your inferior strategy even if they don't see it that often. I think there's less of a line between top and bottom in BJJ than there may be between good and bad openings in chess, but you get the idea.
 
you know there is a very simple question thats always good for reifying these sorts of debates.

why is sweeping awarded points?
 
rmongler said:
you know there is a very simple question thats always good for reifying these sorts of debates.

why is sweeping awarded points?
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Because it takes you from an inferior position to a superior one :icon_chee

That and BJJ's love of guard play. Really any reversal should be points.
 
Uchi Mata said:
Because it takes you from an inferior position to a superior one :icon_chee

That and BJJ's love of guard play. Really any reversal should be points.
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natch.

once thats acknowledged it calls into question the whole rest of the scoring criteria; pulling guard, takedowns, reversals, and et cetera.
 
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