Halfguard vs. wrestlers

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OldTimey

Orange Belt
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I have a really hard time getting any type of halfguard to work on wrestlers or people with a really good top game. I play all sorts of halfguards, but I find farhook, deephalf, and z-guard difficult against these types. It's difficult to maintain underhooks, and sweeping seems tricky. I thought about doing more lockdown, and SLX is somewhat useful.

Anyone have any tips (besides trying other guards) ?


Thanks
 
We have a guy who wrestled for 9 years at my gym. My only success so far has been using a 2 on 1 to get him closer to me and get a sweep.
 
Wrestlers typically have very good base and are hard to sweep period. Plus half guard sweeps are often very similar to single legs, which wrestlers have a lot of experience defending. There's really not a shortcut to sweeping people with good base and lots of experience, you just need to get better. That said, if wrestlers do have a weak area it's being conscious of having their backs taken, so you might want to work on that more. Lucas Leite style half provides a lot of chances to take the back, be sure to work on your arm drags to the back too from Z.
 
^ This. I love it when people try to play half guard on me. Play a full guard, makes it harder on us wrestlers, or look for back takes.
 
Ya, I love Lucas' style. I find his is the sister position to deep half; they both start off the same way, but one goes down, and one goes up. With wrestlers, the underhook battle is intense, or when I get to the position, I get my head controlled. I'll try the z-guard suggestions and back takes for sure.
 
OldTimey said:
Ya, I love Lucas' style. I find his is the sister position to deep half; they both start off the same way, but one goes down, and one goes up. With wrestlers, the underhook battle is intense, or when I get to the position, I get my head controlled. I'll try the z-guard suggestions and back takes for sure.
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see above video for tips on keeping your head away. try to work an arm drag to back take if you can't get the underhook, but you should be able to if you time it correctly (for example using knee shield and when they commit weight, remove shield at same time diving for the underhook and doing a crunch with your legs/knees)
 
loop choke forget the sweep
when they defend the choke then sweep (if you cant finish)
 
OldTimey said:
Ya, I love Lucas' style. I find his is the sister position to deep half; they both start off the same way, but one goes down, and one goes up. With wrestlers, the underhook battle is intense, or when I get to the position, I get my head controlled. I'll try the z-guard suggestions and back takes for sure.
Click to expand...

You really need to get your head buried so you can't get crossfaced. Use your frame on the wrist and collarbone to keep him off, shoot the underhook but keep the wrist blocked, only when you have the underhook do you let the wrist go as you glue your forehead to his hip. A big part of using the Leite style successfully is switching your feet to that almost quarter guard style lock fast as well as torquing the hell out of his knee.
 
Most BJJ players have very weak single legs on the mat. It is never going to threaten a decent wrestler. This is why I advocate defending a half guard player who has gotten too deep on you by purposely letting him come up on a single leg, defending against the back take and roll-over sweep (much harder to defend BJJ guys on these).

A weak single leg is not going to threaten anybody. Great players like Leite make up for this by their awesome knee torque single leg position on the mat. Without that torque, the bottom half guard player is rarely going to be able to threaten a good wrestler with a TD. Underhook half guard is like wrestling with the top guy, except your starting position is worse than a normal wrestler's position, more disadvantageous, plus you as a BJJ player don't know how to wrestle well either. Not likely to end up well.

Honestly you are probably better off playing a modern knee shield ... getting tight against a good wrestler is asking to get smashed.
 
Zankou said:
Most BJJ players have very weak single legs on the mat. It is never going to threaten a decent wrestler. This is why I advocate defending a half guard player who has gotten too deep on you by purposely letting him come up on a single leg, defending against the back take and roll-over sweep (much harder to defend BJJ guys on these).

A weak single leg is not going to threaten anybody. Great players like Leite make up for this by their awesome knee torque single leg position on the mat. Without that torque, the bottom half guard player is rarely going to be able to threaten a good wrestler with a TD. Underhook half guard is like wrestling with the top guy, except your starting position is worse than a normal wrestler's position, more disadvantageous, plus you as a BJJ player don't know how to wrestle well either. Not likely to end up well.

Honestly you are probably better off playing a modern knee shield ... getting tight against a good wrestler is asking to get smashed.
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This, if someone gets tight or gives me flattened half, it's done, knee shield gives me the most problems as a wrestler
 
If you want to win early vs wrestlers, the most obvious answer is to put them in a spot they'll be relatively unfamiliar with. Here, that mostly means knee shield or deep half. However, there is something to be said about working against your opponents strengths in order to get better if you aren't as interested in winning in the short term, so I wouldn't abandon coming up completely if you're interested in developing that.
 
1) If they're better at it, use that as an oppurtunity to work on it. Drill those elements with those people during open mat.
2) The harder you threaten with the underhook, the more a well-trained wrestler with a good whizzer will turn to torque the arm and raise their hips to prevent you from moving around, while shifting weight onto their whizzer. this should create the reaction you need to go under for deep half and other attacks
 
Increasingly I play half by using the normal attacks (plus knee bumping his backside and throwing him by with the underhook) to work my grip down so that I come up with a single leg instead of an arm round the body. You still have to be able to wrestle to finish it, but it's a 70/30 position rather than a 50/50 one.
 
I disagree with knee shield. It might help delay things or keep distance, but you most likely arent going to sweep a good wrestler with just a knee shield if both guys have equal skills.

Getting to deep half is your best bet if your wrestling is shit. Its really the only position from half that isnt very familiar to a wrestler and can take away most of his base. Any other kind of half guard doesnt compromise a wrestling base whatsoever; its mostly timing and power. Getting under a wrestler in deep half also adds in positional variance which will make things more difficult for a wrestler.
 
Point of a knee shield is not exactly a sweep per se. It's that you can hit almost every guard attack possible in jiu jitsu from a knee shield. One of the most limitless attacking positions. It does not, by itself, disrupt your opponent's base. That's true. It preserves space that can then be used to transition into a dizzying range of attacking angles .... Transition to a deep half being a possible route, albeit not as common nowadays.

In modern bjj, you are more likely to sweep off a leg lock or back attack combination than a classic pure sweep. Single leg x and inversions are pretty much your premiere sweeping options.
 
Dirty Holt said:
I disagree with knee shield. It might help delay things or keep distance, but you most likely arent going to sweep a good wrestler with just a knee shield if both guys have equal skills.

Getting to deep half is your best bet if your wrestling is shit. Its really the only position from half that isnt very familiar to a wrestler and can take away most of his base. Any other kind of half guard doesnt compromise a wrestling base whatsoever; its mostly timing and power. Getting under a wrestler in deep half also adds in positional variance which will make things more difficult for a wrestler.
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Fair. I don't get many sweeps directly from kneeshield against people in good base. Mainly just distance management and recovery (no weight on my chest for at least a second) until i can collapse the distance to try to attack.
 
My logic is to get rid of the strongest points of their base. That would be the legs and core. How do get rid of it? Get underneath their base. So for me it's deep half, single X, full X, Leites style half, Popovitch style deep half, and leg entanglements. The 10th planet electric chair series is good too, but it takes a lot of practice to get good with it. You get smashed a lot in the beginning.
 
Man, you guys don't give the BJJ guys much credit. Wrestling isn't magic. I've swept plenty of wrestlers coming up from Leite style half, the whizzer isn't much to be scared of there because if you're doing it right you're already so deep towards the back that it's not a super strong whizzer (plus you can always far side truck like Leite does). Frankly if you're doing it right you should be going towards the back as often as you take a true single, though the top guy usually has the option of bailing to bottom side to save his back and will usually do so. It's true that you don't want to get into a normal single leg position against someone who is good at defending singles, but if you've knee torqued correctly you'll be in a much better position than you would be had you just shot from standing because you'll be almost parallel with the top guy where the sweep is hard to defend.
 
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