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Brand new White Belt Josh Lu calls on Jake Luigi, BJJ Youtuber from "Less Impressed More Involved BJJ", and other guests for help on the path to improvement, performance, and enjoyment in the sport of Jiu Jitsu. Follow the journey!
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#199 Transitioning Between Guards
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In this episode we talk about outside vs inside guards and I get some quick tips on how transition between them. Hope you enjoy!
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Hello.
SPEAKER_01What's up, Jake? What's up, Josh? Today's topic is what I shouldn't be doing lately, which is uh about guard. So it's be wrestling. But uh sometimes you get most of the time, you know, I get taken down. But um so I've been like obsessed with K guard and like outside guard and using it to mostly retain every now and then I get lucky, good K guard entry, go to the back, uh, and then go from there. But um man, I keep like I haven't played Daily Human much, maybe a little bit. I but I haven't played single leg X, X-Guard, Butterfly Guard, like any of the inside guards, I just completely forgot about. So I was just curious about mixing it up a bit and what are your what your thoughts are there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's uh I I have gravitated more towards outside guards too recently.
SPEAKER_01Um is it fine to just stay outside and like not really play inside?
SPEAKER_00I feel like there's a there's a time and a place to the the inside. I the way I've been thinking about it, um, just you know, like off the top of my head, answering this question, the way I've been thinking about it is it's harder to pass outside-based guards. So if you're entering into inside-based guards and you don't have like the best control or you're not able to off-balance them right away, it can be easier for them to counter. So the way I've kind of structured it in my head is like the outside is good for like having layers to your guard and retention, things like this. And then once you're able to make like connection, you can use inside position to help you off balance them. Or once you off-balance them, you can use the off-balance to pummel towards inside position. So I think like one example would be like from K-Guard, if you're not able to get their hands to the mat and like make them face away from you to open up those backside entries, you can bring your other leg like to hook their far leg, and then now you've entered X-guard. And then you can use X-guard to help get their hands down to the mat, and you can go back to K Guard if you want. Um, and then like another, I think, pretty popular example is the idea of like using De Laheba to get to like a waiter type guard. And then you weave your De La Heba foot on the outside, but you pummel your knee to the inside to enter X guard. But this I think is kind of the opposite where like from the K guard to X guard example, we were using X-guard to off-balance them. And then for the like De La Heba to X-guard, you're using De La Heba to off-balance them and then using the off-balance to pummel your knee to the inside to enter X-guard. So um, yeah, I would consider like K guard and Dale Heba um are you know relatively close. They're both like outside position base guards. Um, and then yeah, you're either using inside position to help off balance them or you're off balancing them and then pummeling towards inside position. But just going straight for inside position, I think can be like obviously if you have like grips on both their ankles and both your feet in to the inside, like you have a pretty good ability to offbalance them, you know. Um, but if you don't have like that ideal position, it's gonna be easier for them to uh I think counter your your inside position. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, so yeah, K Gar and Daily Heva kind of naturally I I can see that a lot. I think that's probably where I'm somewhat spending my time. And then X is just like gone from my mind. Like I don't know why. It's just and then single leg X is like even farther. Like I just have barely even touched that. That's funny. Uh, where does single leg X start to fit into this picture or other inside guards like butterfly?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I mean, um, I guess like it just kind of depends on what you do with the like what would be your K-guard leg, I would say. Like um, sometimes your K guard leg will like stay on their like near hip, the one that's closest to you. And then when you pummel to the inside, you'll be in like what's called like a shallow X-guard, um, where your foot is on like their near hip as opposed to like their far hip. And then you could always bring your other leg like over their hip, and now you're in butterfly Ashi. Or you could bring your foot, um, like your K-guard foot like all the way through and shoot it up to their hip. And then now you'd be in more of like a single leg X type position. But yeah, I don't I don't know if it's like too worth like diving into like the the weeds on like how these positions like connect to one another. But I would say like once you get especially into X-Guard, like you can go basically like wherever you you want to go from there. Um, I think X-Card is like a very good path that opens up a lot of options for you.
SPEAKER_01Okay, cool. So X-Card could be a good bridge. Yes, for sure. Got it. Um, yeah, yeah. Maybe instead of like all the specific. So outside guard you mentioned is good for retain like not getting past. Um inside guard is that good for like more pulling them in?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like I mean you're you're underneath their center of gravity, I would say.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know. Um, so like outside tends to involve like more rotation to attack, and then insides tends to be more like linear, you know, like pulling backwards. Um so yeah, like if you can pull them and get really underneath them, this is gonna be you know very good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay, I think that that's maybe uh what can help me think about it is like the rotation aspect versus pulling them in. And when you do pull them in, a lot of times I pull them into a reverse tailheva, and then I'm gonna get smashed and then get a smashed half guard and all that. But I think maybe I need to think about if I am gonna pull them in, I gotta get their head like way above mine. Right.
SPEAKER_00And reverse stale Heba is like a hybrid. You have like one foot in and one foot out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I mean, it it could be, I mean, obviously, there's good things you can do from like half guard and reverse stale Hebe. Um, but I think in general, like if you're planning on playing guard, it tends to be, I think, better to have like uh either both out or both in type of approach. Um, especially if you have some sort of off balance. Like obviously if you're on both feet inside and you know you haven't off-balance them, they can they can counter you, or vice versa, both feet outside. But um yeah, like the way I would probably think about it is like when you have like reverse phalaheba, I would say the benefit of this is you can like if you do off-balance them, you can like wrestle up easier than you can when you have both your feet on the outside, because now you know both your feet are are off the ground, making it harder for you to to heist. So um, yeah, there's a lot more like wrestle ups or things like that you can do from these like hybrid type guards where you have one inside, one outside. Um, but as far as like guard play, um, yeah, I would try and get both inside or or both outside.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, interesting. Um wait, is X-Card both inside? No, yeah, it is yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I think this is good. I think uh I need to like I think I need to just play more X-Card and just see where they where they those take me.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, X guard is um I don't know if you know who Jeremy Skinner is, or Jeremy Skinner.
SPEAKER_01Uh I think I saw uh that video you mentioned about him because he's talking about wrestling jujitsu versus wrestling fridge. Yes, yeah, yeah. I think okay. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he talked about X-Guard. I think he attributed it to someone else, but um, I heard it from him. So um I heard him say that X-Guard is like controlling the center of the board in chess, where it's like you're not necessarily winning, but you it opens up a lot of different paths that you can go, you know. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it's like a good strategic play to give yourself a lot of options.
SPEAKER_01Um, cool. I think I might mess with oh man, too many things to work on. Wrestling is like supposed to be the top of mine, but uh I am forgetting how to play guard. Dude, it's hard to it's hard to admit like have all these plates spinning, you know, it's uh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like if you if you pull to guard like that playing the whole space type idea, if you pull to one of those like hybrids of like half guard or reverse tailheba, I would say you're pulling with the hope that you get their hands like over your head and you're like immediately trying to wrestle up from there. Whereas if you're pulling to like a butterfly guard or like a key master type guard, then you're probably pulling with the intention to play guard.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um so yeah, like it couldn't it's not wrong to obviously like pull to half guard or whatever, but like um I would say when you do that, try not to like pull and then like settle and half guard and then try and do something, you know, like you're pulling, trying to use the pull to off balance them so you can like wrestle up quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Totally. Yeah. I think um with like the focus on wrestling and hoping to be more of a top player um and like enjoy passing and spending more time passing. Uh, I do want to figure out how to make the guard funnel into wrestle or maybe leg entangle it back to wrestle or something like that. So yeah. We'll be we'll be fun. Yeah, maybe I'll like start an X card and then positional spark from there. Passer sweep or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, I even forget X-Card versus reverse X, but I'll mess with it and see how it goes, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. X guard. Um yeah, X guard is like uh your top leg is the one that's like hooking in front.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And then the bottom leg is the one that's hooking behind, and then reverse X is the opposite.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And uh yeah, it's interesting because like for X-guard, you are often taught that your like top knee should be like pushing their hands down towards the mat. But then for reverse X-guard, it's very hard to do that because your your knee isn't like close to them to help you offbalance them towards the interesting. Um yeah, like uh it's just something to keep in mind. Like generally, people will play X-guard to off-balance them and then switch to reverse X. Um, but when you are just like straight into reverse X guard, you just need different ways than the traditional way of like trying to drive your top knee into their like butt area to offbalance them towards the mat, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, okay. Okay, so yeah, I'll think about then how how to use the knees better in in X-Card as well. And reverse X. I'm pretty sure at some point Andres was like starting X-Card and I've been doing reverse or the other one. I I don't even know which one it's which. That's funny. Yeah, yeah. So is jujitsu at times. Yeah, yeah. Cool, cool, cool. Um, yeah. Other than that, we have Greg's seminar tomorrow, so I'll report back on how that goes. We're gonna have him on the podcast uh in person. So too bad you can't be there. I wish you could make a jujitsu trip to San Diego one day again. But uh yeah, yeah. So that's look looking forward to that for the pod. And yeah, other than that, we'll uh catch you guys next week.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'll be interested to hear what what he teaches. I imagine it'll be like ADCC type tight focus stuff.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, that's been on his mind a lot lately, so it could be interesting. Yeah. He usually just like picks somebody and then like, what do you want to work on?
SPEAKER_00And oh, I see.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but I think I'm gonna try to show up early and be like, hey Andres, maybe you should pick something so like we don't go like down some random rabbit hole. Right. I don't know, but we'll see. Cool. Cool.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, see you, Jake.
SPEAKER_00See you, Josh.
