Caught In Closed Guard? Try Some Power Passing!

By Fanatics Authors, December 24, 2019

Matheus Diniz knows what it takes to combat the closed guard

Eventually you’ll hear the statement “closed guard is coming back!”, but just know that it never left. Today’s top athletes Gi and No-gi are using the closed guard at the highest levels. Athletes like Xande Ribeiro, Gordon Ryan, and Jake Mackenzie are all using the closed guard to great effect!

So if your strategy is to just avoid closed guard, you might want to start your plan now on how to pass the closed guard. With all of the top tier instructionals out there, you will be finding yourself locked in to the closed guard. Thankfully for you Matheus Diniz has you covered with No Gi Power Passing his newest instructional. Check out a clip of the instructional below where Diniz demonstrates how to open the closed guard.

Closed Guard offers so many traps and tricks that getting it open and beginning to pass is essential. Being trapped in an effective closed guard is like being stuck in quicksand. Diniz recommends starting from a good position initially, to provide a safe hub to begin to unlock the guard.

This position involves not having to narrow or wide of a base and some form of control with your arms on their upper body, this could be their hips or biceps. However the days of stalling from closed guard are over, and now you must get busy trying to pass otherwise it won’t be long until you are only defending.

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From this hub position Diniz is able to secure his partner’s biceps and offers two ways to stand up. One involves a big step that allows you to lean into it. Leaning into this foot will make your trailing foot light which is essential if you want to be able to step up into a strong base. The other options involves getting to the balls of your feet and springing up to your base.

To open his partner’s legs Diniz uses both arms to wedge inside of the legs and eventually bust them loose. Matheus is a master of this position as he demonstrated at ADCC 2019 where he took home the gold! You might think that you will be vulnerable to open guard sweeps, and which case you would be right. However Diniz is always controlling the action with non-stop power passing. This makes getting swept a difficult proposition especially if you are Matheus!

Once the legs are open Matheus immediately shifts to the side to slide their leg past his knee line. As soon as this happen Diniz is immediately shoots into his pass. To help secure his pass, Diniz is looking for head control and an underhook while sliding through with his legs. This may take a lot of dedication to get smoothed out as good as Matheus shows, but it’s well worth the effort!

No Gi Power Passing gives you the strategies to avoid the sweep and secure the pass. Learn how to be a Passing Powerhouse like Matheus by using his Power Passing System!

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