Holding on to grips too long is one of the biggest mistakes in Guard Retention I see people make when playing guard at all levels. To control someone you need grips but at the same time when someone is passing you, you need to know when yo let go of the grips and focus on framing and protecting your elbow knee space. This skill set of finding the time to defend and then re entangle your opponent is a critical transition skill set that is often overlooked.

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This video I discuss Guard Retention and Proper Body Positioning. When you have no grips and defend off of your back I prefer to have a tight crunch position as it reduces the elbow knee space gap for your opponent to pass into, but one common problem people have is this leads to being exposed to stacks so it’s important to learn to defend both of these passes which for me usually turns into alternating how I position my body based off of what kind of pressure my opponent is putting on me.

Stack Defense Video Mentioned

Vital Gi
http://m.vitalkimonos.com/category/kimonos/42/

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A x-guard entry and guard recomposing against x-pass and leg-drag attempts.

I made this to possibly create discussion about how some great guard players address specific positions in their game. I have found competition footage to be a very beneficial learning tool so just want to share my thoughts here. Please comment if you find some nice details on the techniques or any corrections to my commentary!