Improve Your Open Guard Game Tonight
You’re officially in the open guard once your closed guard has been broken. There are a couple of strategies at your disposal once your opponent begins passing.
- Maintain Distance
- Setup sweeps
- Setup Submissions
To keep the person from passing, you’ll need to create distance with your legs, since your opponent is attempting to get close. Then you’ll need to set up sweeps as your opponent begins to pass.
There will be countless opportunities to take your opponent off balance by trapping limbs and taking away their base.
If done correctly, then you’ll be able to reverse the position and come on top. This will now provide you submission setup opportunities.
Distance is critical
Understanding and managing distance is critical because it’s usually the first thing to fail in an open guard situation that allows your opponent to pass.
You must master the skill of keeping and controlling the distance between you and your opponent. You do this through timely and efficient hip and shoulder movements.
Consider Looking at Module 19 – Open Guard Defense Maintaining Distance in Henry’s Open Guard Defense Course for a thorough video explanation.
Mastering Open Guard Sweeps
Always Look for Opportunities to Sweep Your Opponent
Figuring out sweeps is an integral part of developing your open guard game, and, for many students, it’s one of the more confusing things to learn in Jiu-Jitsu.
You land what should be a perfect sweep and your leg goes sliding right under their foot with no resistance, your opponent is totally unfazed by your attack, like it never even happened.
Or you think you’ve got them right where you want them, but then it feels like you’re trying to sweep a redwood tree.
There’s a science to it, and it’s a science that makes a lot of us feel kind of clueless.
Mastering Open Guard Submissions
The Impassable Guard…Its So Much Easier Than You Think. Discover how to turn your open guard defense into Top Game Offense!
The “Tip of the Spear”
If you’re a student who has trouble landing successful sweeps from open guard, or your having trouble controlling the distance with your legs, then learning Henry Akins’ Tip of the Spear approach is one of those “Oh right, of course!” moments, taking something that seems impenetrable and showing you that the answer was right in front of you the whole time.
The system is rooted in mixed martial arts matches from the nineties when Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighters were getting dominated by big guys with wrestling backgrounds.
Jiu-Jitsu has always been a form that allows for smaller fighters to defeat larger opponents through the use of an intelligent, strategic approach over sheer force, but putting Jiu-Jitsu fighters up against bigger fighters who were focused almost exclusively on ground-and-pound, newer techniques were needed in order to overcome the gap.
These are methods that work in the octagon, they work on the mat, and they work on the street.
Effective Teaching
When people talk about “hidden methods” in jiujitsu, the assumption we tend to make is that this must be some high-level stuff, tricks and moves and holds that we’re not nearly ready to attempt on the mat.
The truth is that jiujitsu is one of those things that feels a lot more complicated than it is, thanks, in part, to people who make it more complicated than it needs to be.
You have to be a devoted student if you want to explore your potential as a fighter, but the basic nuts and bolts of BJJ are deceptively simple.
The best thing about Henry Akins’ approach to teaching open guard is that it’s not just learning the moves and then drilling the hell out of them. No, Akins teaches you how these techniques were developed, and why they work. The technique becomes a concept that you can remember.
Whether you’re six foot six and three hundred pounds or five four and one-eighty, we’re all built-in more or less the same way, same body parts, a similar distribution of weight, and we’re all beholden to the same laws of physics.
Akin teaches how you can use those factors to your advantage with training that works at a foundational level. It’s not just techniques, it’s systems, it’s science. How can you take a big opponent’s size and use it to your benefit? That’s the question Akins answers with this system.
Solutions to your Open Guard Problems
- Discover how to “stab” guard passers in their tracks and utilize their own passing movements to systematically drive them directly into your highest percentage sweeps and submissions
- Want to know why you get passed so often? It’s because your THINKING about defending your open guard is BACKWARD!
- Ever wonder why you don’t hit more sweeps successfully? It’s because what you think you know about playing open guard is FLAWED…
- Want To Know How To Sweep Even The BIGGEST, STRONGEST, MOST AGGRESSIVE pressure passer with ease?
The Open Guard Course consists of these modules:
Unit 1 | Concept of Control & Grip Breaking Open Guard | |
Unit 2 | No-Gi Ankle Grip Breaks | |
Unit 3 | Ankle Grip Breaks with Gi | |
Unit 4 | Breaking Grips on the Knees | |
Unit 5 | Biting w Leg to Avoid Stack Pass | |
Unit 6 | Creating Distance & Staying Clear of the Arms | |
Unit 7 | Hip Movement Shoulder Movement | |
Unit 8 | Triangle Setup from the Double Under Pass | |
Unit 9 | Recovery from Knee Shield Smash | |
Unit 10 | Ping Ponging the Opponent Between the Legs | |
Unit 11 | Killing the Double Under Pass | |
Unit 12 | Arm Bar from the arm on Top of the Leg | |
Unit 13 | Arm Bar from Over-hand Punch | |
Unit 14 | Using Kicks and Being Offensive from the Open Guard | |
Unit 15 | Concept of Sweeping | |
Unit 16 | Standing in Base | |
Unit 17 | Coming up and Coming Forward | |
Unit 18 | Open Guard Defense Circling w Ankles to Break Grips | |
Unit 19 | Open Guard Defense Maintaining Distance | |
Unit 20 | 1 BONUS – Dealing with punches from the open guard | |
Unit 21 | 1 BONUS Q&A – Dealing with punches from the open guard Q&A | |
Unit 22 | 2 BONUS – Controlling Your Opponent by Switching Sides | |
Unit 23 | 2 BONUS Q&A – Controlling Your Opponent by Switching Sides | |
Unit 24 | 3 BONUS – Striking from the open guard | |
Unit 25 | 3 BONUS Q&A – Striking from the open guard | |
Unit 26 | 4 BONUS – Wrist control armbar | |
Unit 27 | 4 BONUS Q&A – Wrist control armbar | |
Unit 28 | BONUS – Counter to Bull Fighter Pass | |
Unit 29 | BONUS – Counter to Bull Fighter Pass with Pressure | |
Unit 30 | BONUS – Counter to Double Leg Pass | |
Unit 31 | BONUS – Reversal from Double Leg | |
Unit 32 | Defense for the over-under pass | |
Unit 33 | Kimura when they push the knee | |
Unit 34 | Pulling the foot out from straight ankle lock grab | |
Unit 35 | Open Straight foot lock defense sitting | |
Unit 36 | Using the leg to open the knees | |
Unit 37 | Heel hook Escape |