15/03/2012 - Teaching (Passing Spider Guard)

Teaching #046
Gracie Barra Bristol, (BJJ), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 15/03/2012

[Strange: I must have forgotten to publish this post before I left for Scotland. Anyway, here it is, on the off-chance any of the students were waiting for this one to pop up]

There are several ways to clear off spider guard grips. If they are in an orthodox spider guard, then there are four handy techniques you can use, all of which are covered in Beneville and Cartmell's excellent Passing the Guard. The first two relate to spider guard when they have one foot pressed into your bicep, the other on your hip. On the bicep-foot side, step up your knee. Still on that same slide, bring your trapped arm down.

You want to angle your knee and your arm so that you bring their ankle across your knee. Continue to bring your arm down, leaving their foot behind stuck on your knee. Dip in low with your shoulder, under their leg, in order to underhook with the same side arm you just freed from their control. You can then immediately move into a single stack pass, gripping their opposite collar and driving your weight through their leg.

A similar option is to again step up your same side knee, but this time, press it into the back of their knee. Thrust your hips forward to really push that knee in, in order to pop their leg off your arm. Then as before, dip and underhook the leg, moving around for the stacking pass on that leg.

Another common version of spider guard is to control both of your arms with their legs, one extended, the other bent. This requires a different but still related pass. As before, you're going to drive your knee into the back of their knee, focusing on the leg they have bent. Pop that off your arm: Beneville recommends underhooking, or you can simply free the grip.

Either way, you then want to turn to face that leg, bringing your hips towards the other leg. That also means you can bring your knee on the other side into their other leg, where again you can use that pressure to remove their grip. From here, you could maintain your grips on their trousers, pushing them over to the side to pin their legs to the mat, then pass.

If they are being a bit lazy with their spider guard grips, so both legs are relatively square on and both either extended or bent, there is another option. Circle your hands inside their legs, palms facing towards you. Squat, then simultaneously drive your hips and arms forwards. This should knock both of their feet off your biceps. You can then keep driving forwards until you can sit on their legs. That puts you in a good position to pass.

Before I finished, I wanted to make sure I quickly covered removing a deep spider guard lasso. The main problem is that your hand is pulled past their leg. Therefore, you need to pull it back, until you can walk your hand around the outside of their leg and break the grip: you may find it useful to bring your knee to bear, as in the grip breaks above. Make sure you immediately bring your elbow back inside, sufficiently tight that they can't re-establish the grip you've just broken.