20/12/2016 - Open Mat (Tuesday) | Neil Owen Open Guard Sequence

Class #790
Artemis BJJ (MYGYM Bristol), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 20/12/2016

Today, Heidi and I ran through what we learned at the Neil Owen seminar last Sunday (I'll get a full write-up done of that in a while, plus I have a cool interview with Neil to upload for the Artemis BJJ Podcast). The sequence we practiced begins with them opening your closed guard. Put your foot on their hip to manage the distance, bringing your head back, then coming up on the elbow and hand. Grab their collar with your other hand, using your posting hand to adjust your position into butterfly guard. That will make it difficult for them to complete the pass they wanted to do (e.g., knee cut, underhook, over-under, bullfighter).

As a result, they stand up. Your foot is on their hip, you also grab their same side sleeve. Kick your other leg out wide. In order to pass, they can't go around the foot towards your other leg, as that puts them inside your guard. They will normally therefore attempt to move around the other way. This enables you to use a Ryan Hall/Jeff Rockwell style defence, stiff arming the sleeve you're still gripping away from you. Again, use that base to square back up to them, re-establishing your guard.

They stand up once more, whereupon you move into spider guard. They attempt to pop that off, so you move into de la Riva guard. They will then often try to shift into a knee cut, moving across from the de la Riva hook. Bring the knee/shin that was de la Riva-ing into their hip instead, using that to bring your head back and pop up on your elbow. You are looking to establish base in order to bring your bottom knee back out, in order to get back to guard.

Now they go for a double underhook pass. Grab their sleeves and shoulder walk back, kicking off their arms with your thighs to make some space. If they try to swing you over with an arm, you can push off hard, yet again returning to guard. If they manage to lock their arms, stiff arm into their elbow to free yourself and get back to guard, like the previous stiff arm (admittedly trickier when the hands are locked, but possible).

The final part of the sequence is when they try for an under over. This is also the harder one. Block them getting their head to your hip by creating a barrier with your arm. Your other hand grabs their armpit. Jerk your knee sideways (if you have long legs, you can put your foot on the ground to do this, much easier), dislodging their base. You guessed it, you use your base to get back into guard.