Critical Think in Jiu Jitsu: The Guard

(Writer’s note: No, I didn’t abandon this series, This work, and ideas conveyed have very much been a work in progress as I’ve sought more information through learning, teaching, observation, conversation and practice. “Critical Thinking” may always be a work in progress, as my personal understanding of Jiu Jitsu continues to progress. The core idea I’m planning to present later on in this series has become further refined and clarified, and I’ve had the opportunity to converse with many of the top minds in the art about this to help shape this view. This current article on “the Guard”, the first in a series covering the basic positions within Jiu Jitsu, may well have been the most difficult and potentially controversial chapter in the entire series, which also has contributed to the delay. I should end this preface by stating I don’t want to claim to be any kind of authority on the guard, but I have uncovered a few things I have found to be useful.)


THE IMPORTANCE OF THE GUARD

The Guard is at once the most basic and complicated of the positions in Jiu Jitsu. Basic in the sense that many see the use of the guard as the main differentiation point in Brazilian/Gracie style Jiu Jitsu as opposed to any other grappling art. No less an authority than Rickson Gracie himself has been attributed to the statement that your Jiu Jitsu is only as good as guard is. I’ve heard many sell Jiu Jitsu as unique in that is is the art which will allow you to continue the fight when you happen to be on your back,

I’d first like to tackle the above mentality without diminishing the importance of the guard. The guard was introduced to the world at large (meaning outside of Brazil) when Royce Gracie in the early 1990s won his first Ultimate Fighting Championship. Along his amazing run, Royce managed to win some of his fights from his back (he also managed to a win a few from the top, side, and back as well). But you would expect someone who was on the top to be able from those other positions; winning from your back at that time was unheard of and spectators were amazed. The announcers and press would tout the mysteries of Royce’s guard and wonder if anyone would be able to solve that riddle within the confines of the Octagon. Being on your back was no longer seen as a weak point, but now with the guard it was considered to be one of the strongest and most favored positions.

Perhaps I can spare you some pain frustration in your own career and simply state a major revelation I’ve come to about the guard: Just because you can win a fight from your back doesn’t mean you should start from there. Someone who believes that their guard should be their first offense is in danger of missing one of the more important points of Jiu Jitsu, the ability to fight off your back is secondary to the ability to be offensive in any situation.

What do I mean by that? Let’s take into account a statistic that came from somewhere that 90% of street fights (or unsanctioned fights) will go to the ground. Through observation I can state with some confidence that when a fight goes to the ground, someone will wind up on the top and someone will wind up on the bottom. Before Gracie Jiu Jitsu was introduced to the masses, you could pretty much assume that the person on top was going to win the fight. After Gracie Jiu Jitsu, the person on the bottom now has the ability to win the fight as well. In terms of fight psychology, self defense, and general science, this has huge implications. Before, if the person on top won 100% of the time (let’s say 99.44/% because I hate dealing in absolutes outside of hard sciences), the fight was essentially a moot point as soon as hit the ground. Now, as I’m sure everyone who is reading this article on this website is aware of, the ground is where the real fight begins.

So the fact that the use of the guard gave the person on the bottom ANY chance of winning the fight was revolutionary. Still, out of a Jiu Jitsu fighters arsenal of moves and tricks, the guard is usually no better than a 50-50 or 60-40 proposition depending on the situation (assuming an opponent of roughly equal skill), which is considerably better odds than you had on the bottom before you knew Jiu Jitsu, but victory is by no means assured.

DEFINING THE GUARD

Let’s see how much clearer of a definition we can give for the guard. Fast forward to present day, and not only is the general public more aware of the guard, but there are many different varieties or flavors of the guard. Closed Guard. Open Guard. Half Guard. Spider Guard. Hook Guard. De la Riva Guard. Butterfly Guard. X Guard. Turtle Guard. Rubber Guard. Cross Guard. Turtle Guard. Octopus Guard. The list goes on and on and on! Even a self confessed Jiu Jitsu nerd like myself finds it hard to keep up with all of the different names and terms that are being thrown around.

The first task and challenge to understand the guard is to fins some kind of commonality between all the variations of the guard. We’ve established that the guard is the position on the bottom in a ground fight. I’ll further throw out that the guard involves the bottom fighter using his or her legs in a manner to establish control of their opponent. This differentiates being in the guard from being underneath a mount, where the top fighter is clear of the bottom fighter controlling them with their legs. This would hold true no matter what type of “guard” the person on the bottom would be trying to utilize (with some debate as to the nature of the turtle guard).

Aside from the use of the legs by the bottom combatant, the cause for variance in the types of guards is exactly how the legs are used to establish control of your opponent. I would say in this sense “opponent” is a broad term, because the variations of the guard usually focus on different and specific areas of the opponent. For example, a classical closed guard would involve the bottom fighter aiming their control at the hips of their opponent by virtue of locking their legs together. A rubber guard would use a variation of the locked leg position and focus more on the upper body and shoulders of their opponent. Spider guard would actually open the legs and move the control point further along to the arms of their opponent. There are many different combinations of grips, locks and control points and to come up with a meaningful definition of the guard we would need to delve further to discover a commonality between these variations of the guard.

Recall the original purpose of the guard, which is to give the person on the bottom a chance in the fight, where as before the guard the person on the bottom was certainly doomed. If we go back to one of the earlier articles, recall, the Jiu Jitsu mindset concentrates on (in order): Safety, Position, Submission. The first goal of the guard then is safety, and that said being able to just stay in the fight when on the bottom is