Guard Passing Footwork Drills?

[theD0N]

Guys, I'm looking for drills that can improve my guard passing footwork. Particularly solo drills I can do on my own. After watching tons of guard passing footage in competition, I'm convinced footwork is one of the keys to success, especially at the lower weights.

For example, after watching, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr2FoVttm7U, I made up a drill that I can do with a stability ball. It's nothing special, all it does is mimics the passing footwork that Rafa shows in the knee slide pass and the forward pressure for a Galvao-style bullfighter pass. Anyway, it works pretty well, and I wanted to see if anyone knew of any other guard passing drills to improve footwork. Let me know. Thanks!

 

[Town Biz]

Curious, what do you do with the stability ball?

 

[ThinkGreen]

I don't know about footwork, but Jeff Glover is the king of the stability ball. He has some stuff on youtube. Galvao has some stability ball stuff in his "drill it to win it" book as well... that book is a good one for solo grappling stuff.

 

[Uchi Mata]

With a stability ball, you can do a few:

1. X pass footwork. Put both hands on the ball and practice shifting your hands in X pass style while kicking back and stepping though, alternating sides.

2. Torreando. Similar to X pass, but instead of kicking back and stepping through you're pushing the ball away while you throw your hips out to turn the corner, and then come back in to finish

3. General hips for passing drill. Stand in front of the ball as if it were a guard player and you were standing to pass. Drop your hips on the ball, and time the bounce so that as it bounces you back up you switch your hips and baseball slide (though you don't need to go all the way to the ground) through, alternating sides. This is a super useful motion to get good at for passing X guard and butterfly, and just general sweep prevention.

Jeff Glover also does have a lot of good stability ball stuff, as others have mentioned.

 

[theD0N]

Biz, well, one of the things I've been working on is creating as much forward and downward pressure on my opponent playing open guard as possible without exposing my legs/ankles to being tied up by hooks or being sucked into half guard. For an example of this, see Galvao at 2:51, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foLU1jzTpvA.

So my drill is using the stability ball, I put both hands on the stability ball, and try to stand as far back as possible without falling face first into the mat while still maintaining a good amount of forward and downward pressure on the ball. Then I start moving from side to side, or I hop from side to side. I've been doing this for a while, and I've been able to increase my stance in bullfighter pass situations, and I'm dealing with less hooks these days. My ultimate goal is to bullfighter pass to north south, which is what Leandro Lo does all the time, while maintaining enough pressure to keep my opponent down on the mat and keep my legs/ankle/feet far back enough to not get tied up with hooks, etc. Seriously, this all is much harder to do than it looks when Leandro Lo and Galvao do it, at least for me (I have short legs).

 

[Title Fight Productions]

I don't know about footwork, but Jeff Glover is the king of the stability ball. He has some stuff on youtube. Galvao has some stability ball stuff in his "drill it to win it" book as well... that book is a good one for solo grappling stuff.

Check into Frank Shamrock for stability drills for grappling. He has been doing it longer than anyone.