Solo drills/exercises to develop a tight guard?

find something you can pull guard on (a tree i guess...ermmm, ive never done this without a partner), close your guard around it and do situps. its tough as hell, better with a partner tho.
 
colinm said:
find something you can pull guard on (a tree i guess...ermmm, ive never done this without a partner), close your guard around it and do situps. its tough as hell, better with a partner tho.
A heavy bag works great for that.
 
sit ups on the heavy bag, or just sit and hang.

Also with a partner have them sit in your guard and try pushing out of the guard by pushing back.. His goal is to push as hard as he can just to break your guard... your goal to hold it tight.. dont try to pass or submit just try to keep your guard closed.... will build leg strength and ankles to hold up a good tight closed guard.
 
Go to garage sales and find a thigh master . Use it like crazy ,No B.S. one of the guys I train with swears by it . For the record I have not tried it ( Yet ) . But I keep a eye open for one every time I go to a garage sale ....
 
Will a heavybag that is hanging take the extra weight or do you have too unhook it?
 
Honestly, the best way to get a strong guard is to just practice wehen you spar. Hold the guard as tight as you can. Hell, to be honest, I never really did grappling solo drills and my grappling is at least decent for the time I've been training.
 
You know, it might just be me, but even though it's the hip adductors (or abductors? I'm not sure of the name) that keeps the guard closed, I swear it seems like the bigger the guy's legs are, the harder it is to not only pass his guard, but just to be in it.

When I'm with guys with really strong legs, when I go to pass, I feel really off-balanced. And I wrestle; my balance is pretty good. I'm not one to get swept.

To be honest though, my best advice would be to focus more on your guard game and less on how strong your guard is. Guard passes rarely rely on brute force. They either use trickery (like baiting) or simple mechanical leverage. After all, Jiu-Jitsu is about the smaller guy overcoming the bigger one.

Just do situational sparring. Have a guy start off in your guard. If you can sweep or submit him, you start over with him in your guard again. If he passes your guard, then you start over.

It's more about the skills than the strength, IMO. Just develop your leg muscles and spar more. But if you really want, the situps on a heavybag do work well.

Edit: sorry, I didn't realize you said solo drills. Kind of having an off day today.

Umm... I'd say what I've learned about Jiu-Jitsu (and all effective martial arts for that matter) is that the most important part is your hips. Think about it. Your hips are your center of gravity (the Tan T'ien; the point in some Asian philosophies that your Chi or Ki center is located); your hips and core generate all athletic movement. All effective martial arts, like boxing (twist your hips for punching power), Muay Thai (kicks and knees are driven by the hips; not the legs), Judo (hips must be under your opponents' for a throw to have leverage), wrestling (sprawl by arching your hips), and BJJ (HIP MOVEMENT) realize the necessity of your hips.

Dumbbell swings are an exercise you can do that works your hip muscles. Work your core and hip movement a lot.

Also, by nature, humans move pretty inefficiently on the ground. We're used to standing up. Get good at moving around on the ground. Do lots of shrimps, reverse shrimps, neck bridges, arm bars and triangles in the air or on a grappling dummy (you can make one for 60 dollars), bridges, kip-ups, army crawls; just all sorts of weird things that would appear to the common person as an epileptic seizure. Get your movement on the ground to be explosive, quick, and energy-efficient. Most offensive moves from the guard rely on speed and trickery; you need to focus more on how quickly and easily you can move while on your back.

Also, do lots of flexibility exercises. Yoga is always a good fallback. Some of the best guard players who I roll with are really flexible. This one guy I roll with, always seems to get the grip for an armbar from the guard, no matter how he gets stacked or twisted around.
 
Good post, iceman.

I guess the heavy bag sit ups might work pretty well.
 
All of the above exercises are great ways to tighten your guard.

I just wanted to add a bit of advice though about tight guards in general. Remember that a tight guard does not necessarily equal a good guard.

Although it is good to be able to clamp down in closed guard when necessary, holding people in a tight guard for long periods of time will not improve your guard work. It is more important in MMA since you can defend strikes better, but it has little use in grappling other than stalling and tiring the opponent. You cannot really do too much from a closed guard. The guillotine is available (probably gi chokes too but I train no-gi). But you can't armbar, triangle, sweep, etc.

I'm saying this because the number one thing that improved my guard game was learning to open my guard voluntarily. One of my training partners who knows a lot more about BJJ than me told me one day that instead of just holding people down in guard, I should attack more and try to create opportunities instead of stalling. From then on I began to work open guard a lot more and really improved my guard game.

The exercises above will definitely improve your BJJ. I just wanted to say that a tight guard is not necessarily the best type of guard around.
 
use that one excerise that you can squese your legs together.... its a pully machine at my gym... seems to help my inner thigh muscles..... same mucsles you use when skiing!
 
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