The open guard is one of the three fundamental guard positions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, along with the closed and half guard. Mastering these techniques is essential for becoming a skilled and effective BJJ Competitor. With well-rounded guard skills, you can juggle a variety of techniques, alternating between sweeps, submissions, and transitions.
Becoming effective at open guard requires a solid understanding of the techniques. One must go between grappling methods and positions and take every opportunity to outsmart one’s opponent.
In this article, you’ll learn the details of open guard techniques, how to maintain control, engage your opponent, and transition to other positions—even in challenging situations.
Proper execution of the Open Guard
When you understand the open guard in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, you will become an agile BJJ competitor. Your response to counter and defend attacks will be quicker, especially when your opponent tries to pass or defend your guard.
Being flexible and transitioning smoothly between positions makes you a versatile grappler who can set up effective submissions. And to mix it with other techniques signals your BJJ technique mastery. To maximize the open guard position, you must execute proper posture, control, manage space, and engage your opponent with the right timing.
Focus on these elements to outsmart a more experienced competitor, even when maneuvering is challenging.
Importance of posture.
Coming from a closed guard, your attacker devises a way to open your guard. That exposes you, putting you in a vulnerable position where you can be punched or hit. Your job is to maintain a stable stance to control and keep them engaged while they find a higher possibility of dominating you. Your opponent might attempt to pass your guard or lock your legs and sweep around your arms and hips to trap you.
However, you have the same advantage and can use proper posture to formulate various defenses and experiment with possible methods. As you do this, you will find your opponent’s vulnerable spots and weaknesses.
Maintain distance and manage space.
Proper distance is vital to maintaining an open guard that’s hard to pass or maneuver. A weakness of the open position in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and martial arts in general, is that when you’re opening and exposing your vulnerable spots for your opponent to attack. If you’re up against an expert grappler, they can target vulnerable joints like fingers, elbows, knees, and toes to distract you and control the match.
To maintain and manage space and distance, do the following:
- Avoid leaving gaps. Your opponent can exploit for a pass, sweep, choke, or lock.
- Use grips effectively. Instead of blocking, actively grip your opponent’s arms as they extend, or secure their feet in No-Gi situations. In Gi, aim to control by gripping their sleeves, collar, or pant legs to establish a stronger connection.
- Anticipate the next move and intercept. By anticipating your opponent’s moves, you open up more options. This allows you to transition fluidly from point A to point C, using their actions to set up counters and attacks. Stay a step ahead by reading their movements and reacting unpredictably, intercepting their range by gripping the closest available parts of their body.
Importance of Engaging Your Opponent & Control
When combined creatively, the elements of open guard can lead to dynamic exchanges, forcing your opponent to respond in diverse ways. This highlights a crucial concept in open guard: engagement, as explained by Stephan Kesting.
Keeping your opponent actively engaged while maintaining an open guard gives you the advantage, opening up opportunities for passes and control. This approach allows you to set up effective moves like sweeps or triangles or to secure control by trapping their waist, targeting the neck, or transitioning into submissions or locks.
Different Applications of Open Guard
Now that you understand the technique in detail, you can broaden your perspective by transitioning from the guard position to moves such as hooks, sweeps, submissions, or other transitions or by shifting to a different type of guard. The open-guard technique in BJJ focuses on control and grip, which applies to both Gi and No-Gi variations.
In Gi, the open guard involves more intricacies, utilizing the fabric to secure grips and control the opponent, preventing guard passes. It also includes setups that make slipping and weaving under grips easier to create openings. In No-Gi BJJ, mobility, grip control, and leg entanglements are the key mechanics.
Basic sweeps: You can initiate a scissor sweep or hook sweep by grabbing your opponent’s collar or sleeves (if in Gi), gripping their ankles, or locking around their hips (if No-Gi). These beginner-friendly techniques are beneficial if you are new and still working on reacting after an opponent passes your closed guard and exposes your weak points.
Submissions: The possible submissions from an open guard include the triangle choke and armbar. While waiting for your opponent to strike, you can see their neck nearing and target it for a triangle choke. Or when they extend an arm, you can lock their legs and hips and, using proper timing, smoothly transition to a mount, fully committing to the armbar.
Transitions and other types of guard. As you engage your opponent, you create an expectation for sweeps, which opens up opportunities for transitions. By faking a sweep, you can shift to other guards, such as half-guard, butterfly guard, x-guard, or closed guard.
Half Guard Transition
You can deceive your opponent as they attempt to pass your guard by transitioning to half-guard instead of committing to a counterattack. When you feel them pushing forward, move to your side and hook one of their legs with yours.
With this, you can transition from half-guard to a De la Riva Guard, preparing for a sweep or another transition while keeping your opponent at bay.
Closed Guard Transition
Another effective transition is a closed guard position. Bring your knees together and pull them close to your chest. Your opponent’s natural response is to grip your pants to control you; hence, you plan to kick or hook. Grab the opponent’s sleeves or the hem of the pants to buy time to wrap or hook your legs around their thighs and transition to a Butterfly Gaurd.
Finishing
Collar chokes (Gi) are highly effective finishes from the open guard. Successful open guard finishes in No-Gi depend on precise timing for sweeps and submissions. Leg control is crucial, as entangling your opponent’s legs creates opportunities for sweeps and leg attacks like heel hooks and kneebars.
Passing a Strong Guard in BJJ
Passing the guard can be used to break through your most solid and stable guard, even if you are a top guard player. What if you face a black belt who’s mastered guard passing? As the guard player, you’ll want your execution to be precise and foolproof, minimizing gaps to make it harder to get dominated.
It would also be helpful to view this technique from another angle. So here is a quick look at various guard-passing techniques to outmaneuver and reverse your opponent’s attempts to pass your guard.
Knee Slice Pass
An opponent may try to pass your guard with the Knee Slice Pass by driving their knee through your position. Stay focused and defend by gripping your gi pants, and watch for any attempts to grip your sleeves to limit your movement. A simple defense is to bring your knees together, creating weak frames for your opponent and restricting their options to bypass your guard.
Toreando (Bullfighter) Pass
If your opponent wants to control your legs by gripping your pants or sleeves to commit a sidestep as they manipulate points of contact, a Bullfighter pass is used against you.
You can counter this by locking your knees.
Once they have no other points to grip, they will try to put pressure on or flatten your back on the ground. Use proper framing, engaging them as you trick them with a false move and end up in a half-guard.
Over-Under Pass
An Over-Under Pass is their last resort if an opponent finds a strong guard difficult to bring to a close.
From the opponent’s perspective, they will control one of your legs by passing it over the other leg while it is being controlled. Now, you are trapped in an uncomfortable position. You need to watch out for that weight, which will prevent you from re-establishing the guard.
Conclusion
The open guard brings fluidity and adaptability to your ground game, enabling quick responses to your opponent’s actions, even in challenging situations. Many Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners have developed effective strategies to counter or pass this widely-used technique.
However, regardless of complexity, maintaining focus and refining your technique will keep you a step ahead, helping you gain control and outmaneuver your opponent.
For further exploration of guard strategies in both No-Gi and Gi, along with advanced transitions from guard to submissions, check out our Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu resources and learn how to enter tournaments.
