If you have not heard about it yet I'm sure you will soon. *Mr. Keenan Cornelius has blessed the Jiu Jitsu world with a brand new guard to play around with and not only that he has used it to beat 3...YES I SAID 3 Black Belt World Champions. This is my inexperienced (with the worm guard) brainstorm video on things I have found and my opinions on the guard as well. *I'm extremely new to this guard but not new at all to Jiu Jitsu, so I put my brainstorming strategies in place and used them to analyze Keenan's new innovations...The Worm Guard! Quick Table Of Contents - 0:00 - My Initial Thoughts - 1:34 - Worm Guard Positional Brainstorm - 5:18 - Worm Guard Sweeps Brainstorm - 8:07 - Worm Guard Submissions Brainstorm - 10:05 - Defending The Worm Guard Brainstorm - 15:05 - My Final Thoughts Total Running Time - 17 min 10 sec Right now I think this can actually turn into a position we see a lot and will actually start changing people's passing styles as well. *Already at the World Championships I saw a lot more players passing with lower level passing and stack passes instead of standing passed. * They are brining it back old school to work to defeat the new school http://youtu.be/XDgbxOtVz7w [YT]XDgbxOtVz7w[/YT] Hope You Like It, Jason Scully
I just watched a 17-min video about something called "the worm guard". I need to get a life… (The video itself was great though! Now I want to see the same thing for guards I might actually use!)
One thing I didn't add is that there seems there could be a possible kneebar counter to the worm guard position as well. It actually seemed pretty easy to attack.
Keenan actually uses a no gi version of it in one of the ADCC sparring videos with Rafa. I don't know if he's done it much in competition, but he gable grips his hands behind the knee, as if going for a kneebar, while pummeling the outside foot in front of Rafa's hips in sort of a half butterfly/RDLR hybrid. From there he would invert for a kind of Kiss of the Dragon with both legs on the inside, but rarely get anything going except the occasional kneebar attempt. It didn't really seem superior to RDLR, IMO.
Thank you for the breakdown, it was really helpful. I've played with the position a little bit the last 2 sessions and I had much the same experience. Against combat base and stand up passers if I could get to the position, I swept them. Especially guys who are longer than me and would give me fits with the X Pass and the knee slice. Against more compact guys I had a ton of trouble getting to the worm guard even if they were standing cause there was a lot less space to work. One of my partners is a fire hydrant, a bit shorter than me and 75 lbs heavier, and he crushed me every time I tried to get there, he would go double unders and stack me up hard. Any ideas on using this against someone who passes like this? It might just be time to go to something else in that case.
is that the one where Rafa kept countering with the darce when Keenan would invert? I was trying to figure our what Keenan was doing. Would you call that a Worm Guard? I couldn't tell if it was just to set up the kneebar or if Keenan was trying to get out to the back. I did think that the grip looked kind of strong.
Yeah, that's the one. I guess it's not necessarily the worm guard, but the grip seemed to accomplish some semblance of the same control, just with a lot fewer options. It seemed that he was going for the kneebar some of the time, but he kept both legs inside when pursuing the back. I don't find that type of 'Kiss of the Dragon' very effective, however
My initial assessment if someone is a low passer and you can't get the lapel fed at all would be to move on to something else. I feel this guard is effective BUT I believe if someone knows it's your game, then it'll be easily stopped because they won't play into it.
I thought the DQ on Keenan was a travesty, but it did set up Murilo quite nicely to make his way to the semis and earn another bronze. Still, would have been fun to see that rematch.
So I had someone try for about 2 minutes to get a foot lock on me while I had them in worm guard. It was pretty easy to defend since I had control of their lapel, and fun to watch them get frustrated at not being able to get it when it looked like it was right there to them. I also hit the triangle shown in the video, I wasn't trying for it, just rolling and my partner tried to turn in and scramble out of the worm guard and fell right into it. My teacher is old school been doing BJJ since the mid 90s and favors the pressure and smash top game stuff, so when he came over to me after a roll where I'd been playing worm guard I thought "oh shit" he's going to give me a hard time about it. Instead he was like "when you have this lapel grip, feed it through this way it's easier" I was shocked, I said "I thought you didn't do the sport BJJ thing" His response was "I gotta know about everything to stay ahead of the young guys" Everybody loves worms!
