Shawn Williams Guard

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Anyone ever use this? There's a photo in the newest Grappling magazine, an article by Kesting. It looks similar to rubber guard, except that you reach *behind* your knee to your other hand, rather than both arms latching under the leg. This allows your shin to basically stay parallel to the guy -- much less stress on the knee, I would think. Basically it's like the standard over/under no-gi clasp, except that you go under one of your legs, in addition to the guy's arm.

Sets up the omoplata and triangle.

Looks to me like a nice way to play a rubber guard type game without blowing up your knees and back.
 
one day when i can do the splits i will be master rubber guard.

im not into the rubber guard because my gym doesnt really tach it too much because they only give us like 6 minute stretches. but i dont think ive heard of it. its prob a variation of eddies
 
Yeah...sounds kinda like a lazy-man's-london for no-gi. I've used it...but against guys like my coach, only minimal success. Other guys, have gotten triangle and omo, similar to rubber guard stuff.
 
sounds like the sort of game i have seen dean lister use

Yeah, that's the way the article describes it. It's the same as Dean Lister uses, except that your second arm is moved to the "leg" side of the neck, rather than clasped behind his head. So you are basically closer to the omoplata.
 
Shawn taught it to my school one day, he randomely dropped by since hes a friends with my teachers and it was a nice surprise.

anyway, the guard is SICK, its basically (imo) a better version of the rubberguard.

shawn taught us the armbar off of it when your opponent stacks you, and then an inverted triangle and showed us how we can get omoplatas, normal triangles.

anyway, right after his class, we were doing positional training. I was paired up with a white belt(i am a blue), and generally I would say I am better then he is since ive been training longer. anyway, i was in his guard and he sets up the williams guard into a triangle, i knew it was coming and i didnt know how/couldnt stop it. Althought I got out of the triangle, I felt he didnt finish me just out of the exeprience factor. He kept saying thank you to me after the roll, and i was confused. Then I figured out that he must have thought i let him get the setup on me, but i didnt. Thats when I realized how powerful it was.
 
Cameron Earle taught me that guard. In fact he used this set up on Jake Shields in Abu Dhabi 2005
 
Is this it?

9800_1024.jpg
 
That's it. Exactly.

I've never seen any resources on how to play it, except that the Braulio set shows how to do it to setup the omoplata with the gi.

You can see how it gives you much of the advantage of rubber guard, with less knee and back strain.
 
Our gym just started using this. I wouldn't call it a replacment for rubber guard (or mission control), but as maybe a substitution for new York/chill dog. It is very painful on the neck where the forearm is at. If you try to break out it is easy to roll to omoplata. If they come back up it's easy for a triangle. Very dangerous guard.
 
not criticising the guard at all because i think it looks pretty damn cool and effective

but the idea behind rubber guard is to free up a hand for attacking/striking in mma
 
i saw the same article, the pic above makes it seem even better. looks like you could close your guard if you had to.

i only use rubber guard to get to pyramid and then triangle, which uses one hand to push or pull an arm out. can't really do that with this guard unless maybe i meat hook the same side shoulder i have my leg hooked
 
Yeah that seems like a chill dawg/new york substitute.

Mission control would still be the same. Plus it looks like you'd have to pull your arm out before going for the omoplata.
 
Shawn taught it to my school one day, he randomely dropped by since hes a friends with my teachers and it was a nice surprise.

anyway, the guard is SICK, its basically (imo) a better version of the rubberguard.

shawn taught us the armbar off of it when your opponent stacks you, and then an inverted triangle and showed us how we can get omoplatas, normal triangles.

anyway, right after his class, we were doing positional training. I was paired up with a white belt(i am a blue), and generally I would say I am better then he is since ive been training longer. anyway, i was in his guard and he sets up the williams guard into a triangle, i knew it was coming and i didnt know how/couldnt stop it. Althought I got out of the triangle, I felt he didnt finish me just out of the exeprience factor. He kept saying thank you to me after the roll, and i was confused. Then I figured out that he must have thought i let him get the setup on me, but i didnt. Thats when I realized how powerful it was.

Yeah it was pretty sick, what an awesome surprise. He stopped in for an hour and showed us the Williams Guard, and like Kimuralex said there are a bunch of things you can do with it depending on what the person you have in it does.

I also just realized I haven't used this since the night he's shown it to us... I'll have to use it the next time I train.

BTW, Sean Williams said he developed it accidentally while rolling with Rodrigo one day because Rodrigo kept slipping out of his omoplatas ;)
 
I am going to try and play with this tomorrow night at class and will report any initial thoughts, successes and failures...
 
Also, I remember seeing Matt Serra do this in the TUF finale of whatever season he was on. Almost got an omoplata out of it when the guy (can't remember now who he was facing) tried to pull his arm out.
 
i play this type of guard. you are pretty limited in whaty ou can do, but i like it.
i usually start with my hand behind their head and look for triangles. then i will move my arm to the traped arm side and look ofr omoplatas.
 
The main goal of the Williams guard is to set up reverse triangle position. what makes this guard so cool is that against a guy that can play it well, the only effective escape is to give up the omoplata and try to get out of that. I didn't read what he said in the article, but it's a great guard. It's not too difficult to get into and unlike the rubber guard, their is no knee flexibility required.
 
just got done trying it.

at first my hands were in an s grip but it felt like my guy had too much room so i got a good gable grip and i was able to control him better. it felt like it really limited my hips but i think i could have swung my leg around on either side of his head and gotten a triangle or armbar set up. i managed to hook my legs up like a traditional guard too and it felt strong but i soon found myself getting stacked

being that it was the first and only time trying it i think if anything he was just in there too long and decided to stack it out. with more speed and experience this shit can take me somewhere. thanks for bringing it up
 
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