The topic of open guard has the tendency to carry some mystique. It’s advanced. It looks pretty. It’s challenging. Its shape shifting, definition drifting, and always one trend away from a grappling breakthrough. It’s true, open guard is where most of the grappling innovation has taken place over the last few decades. Even with the rise of leg locks, open guard still presents more complexity and room for growth. I would argue that the modern leg lock game was born from open guard innovation. Entering into 4/11 from butterfly guard sparked the leg lock revolution. The modern leg lock game is basically an advanced open guard applied to your opponents legs.
This is no digression, this is an example of open guards complexity. When you start to apply your focus of control to the legs, hips, upper body, sleeve, and lapels, you feel like you are in different worlds, playing different games. As a new student, this can be overwhelming.
Sure enough, this position series can be broken down into dozens of sub-series. De La Riva, Reverse DLR, x-guard, single leg x, lasso guard, worm, squid, cross guard, etc…. it could never end. This of course would defeat the mission. The goal here is to simplify the task and goals of the game. Can this be done without glossing over lots of important stuff?
I accept the challenge.
The Connection
All the various open guards are defined by their connections. By definition, you are not wrapping your legs around your opponent and locking them in. This means you need to find other means of control. Your connection objective in open guard is to seek four points of contact at all times. All four limbs connected to your opponent gives you maximum control. As the passer looks to initiate their sequencing, they will start to address each point of contact to break your control down. They break you down to 2-3 points of contact?
Fight back to 4 points of contact or you will be staring down the barrel of side control soon.
In order to do this effectively, you need to have the hip movement to change your angles. Your opponent moves left. Then right. They are seeking access to your body, and you can’t give it to them. You have to keep them in front of your legs or hips to ensure you can continue maximizing your four points.
Seem to simple? This is it. This is the summary of every open guard. If you put both feet and hands on your opponent in any random fashion you will have magically discovered some advanced guard variation. Good work. Now let’s put that to get use.
The Fight
Putting it to use. You have four points of contact and are ready to fight. Now what? There are four simple ideas you need to understand to have an effective open guard.
Grip fighting. The passer will try to stop your feet and hands from making contact, and will strip them away when they do. You have to fight to get these points of contact in place, and reestablish them when they get stripped. You also have to prevent your opponent from establishing grips. If an opponent walks up to you and establishes a strong pant grip without a fight, you have just given them a pass. Every grip should be fought for from both sides of the equation.
Tension. Because your opponent is not locked within your legs or hands, you need to create some tension with your connections. This is usually created with a push of the legs and a pull with the hands, but could also be a matter of pushing into weight or a post. Those connections need to stick, and the more tension within each connection, the harder it will be to peel off.
Kuzushi. You have done a lot of work getting here. You fought to get into a strong open guard position, now what? You must attack their base. This is the most common mistake of new students. If your opponent can comfortably stand in front of you, you are not playing open guard. You are giving a long distance hug. Your opponent should have to work really hard just to stay up right. If you attempt a sweep or submission without creating kuzushi, you will fail. This is your first step after fighting to establish strong connections.
Offensive and defensive cycles. Against a strong passer, you may have to abandon your offensive strategy just to regain contact points and get yourself back into an offensive position. This is cycling from offense, to defense, back to offense. These transitions are key to playing the open guard game. New students getting comfortable on their backs may fall into a habit of playing a defensive guard retention game, or hyper focusing on their offensive grips so much they get passed the moment they lose a point of contact. Understand the cycle and make a conscious effort to create kuzushi the moment you have reestablished control
The Base Strategy
The complexity of open guard gives you an infinite number of options. Where do you start? How can you define a “base” strategy with so many technique temptations before us? In any position, the base strategy is typically defined by your initial goals in The Fight. If someone is standing before you with a strong base and good grips, you don’t have much strategy to work with. If you can break this down, your opponent will give you the strategy appropriate for the moment.
Your base strategy begins with attacking the base. Base → base. B2B. Remember this how you wish, but remember this you must. If you can force your opponent to post on the mat with their hands or change their footwork, then you will be presented with your attack options. If you can force your opponents hip to the mat, you will be presented with your attack options.
A straightforward example:
In X guard, you push your opponent away. If they post their hands on the mat, its an easy transition to stand up for a sweep. If they spread their legs and try to maintain balance, its an easy sweep to the rear by scissoring your legs.
That’s a basic X guard game in a nutshell. Seems too easy to believe. There is certainly more to the topic, but this is all you need to be effective.
There is a key insight buried in that example. Attacking the base requires creating movement. Once an initial movement is created, it will either create an attack opportunity, or create a push/pull dynamic that will allow you to start attacking in different directions. The most powerful force you can generate from your back is to push with your legs. Start here.
The Transitions
The dynamic nature of open guard lends to lots of transitions, so let’s prioritize: get on top. That is your top priority when playing open guard (see what I did there?). You can submit the upper body, enter into the legs, and set up back takes. You could just stand up and dance. It’s open guard, there are no rules here, but if you want to have a clear path to staying in control, increasing your level of dominance, and minimizing risk, then focus on getting to the top position.
What does it mean to get to the top? If you have grown comfortable with sweeps from closed or half guard, you may have developed the idea that a sweep lands you in a clean position. A sweep from closed guard often lands you in mount, as an example. How convenient. You are on top and in a dominant position. A sweep from open guard often lands you in… open guard. Accept this. Bottom to top is advancing your position. You will see this clearly the moment you feel real pressure from a pin.
You know what doesn’t happen to you from the top position? Pressure from a pin.
That’s The Game
Simplifying the most complex thing we do is no easy task. I’m sure it can be done differently. Different lens, framing, verbiage. What you need as a student is a place to begin. A basic framework to think about the game and start your study. Enough guidance to play the game and learn through discovery. As you watch Jiu Jitsu, think about the key points here and watch them in play. Put them to use and find the mystique of open guard fade away.
Thanks Ben, for lifting up very practical ideas and principles. This is really useful for someone like me who has learned the basics and how to survive and is beginning to explore the next layers. This thing called Jiu Jitsu fans out so quickly - for me the paradox is that it can completely overwhelm but because of that is never boring.