Closed Guard Attacks

Posted by Fanatics Authors on September 10, 2017

Closed guard is one of the most popular positions in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and in MMA. Closed guard is one of the first guards that many people who try bjj are exposed to, and it is one of the positions that the casual MMA fan is typically familiar with. Therefore, it is essential to have a good and aggressive closed guard.

From the closed guard, you can do many things, including sweep and submit. In order to generate an effective closed guard, you have to have chain attacks where one move leads to another. Closed guard is imperative to learn because when going against a beginner, it is very easy to manipulate them in closed guard and it is an excellent guard for self-defense.

Closed guard is also an excellent guard to play against larger and stronger opponents. This is because the position is very safe. Theoretically, it is almost impossible to get submitted by somebody who is in your closed guard. Check out this article if you’re a gi guy on “How the Gi Helps Closed Guard.”

Closed Guard for Sweeps

One of the best places to sweep an opponent whether it is in MMA or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is easily the closed guard. You have so much leverage over your opponent and you have so many possible attacks. There are hundreds of ways to set up various sweeps from the closed guard.

A lot of the attacks that you are going to do from the closed guard involve many of the same principles. If you want to sweep your opponent you want to be able to break their posture down and block a post. Once you accomplish this you can start attacking various sweeps. Some popular sweeps include the flower sweep, the elevator sweep and the scissor sweep. Check out this variation below with Claudio Calassans on a popular closed guard sweep.

Closed Guard for Submissions

Closed guard may just be the best guard for submitting your opponent. You can do almost any submission from the closed guard. You can use the arm bar, knee bar, triangle choke, cross choke, kimura, Americana, arm triangle, Ezekiel, and we could go on and on.

The difficult part about submitting your opponent from the closed guard is very easily knowing how to set up your submission attacks. One of the best ways to set up a submission attack is going to be by faking one submission to ultimately get another.

What we mean by this is set up a triangle so you can get an arm bar or vice versa. Maybe you can set up an omoplata so that you can get a kimura. Many people are familiar with basic closed guard submissions so you may have to string some together to catch someone. Check out this cross choke below from the closed guard.