De La Riva as an Entry to Other Guard

By Fanatics Authors, September 30, 2017

De La Riva guard has exploded with popularity in the last decade. Many of the best Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competitors in the world have innovated the infamous De La Riva Guard. Some of the competitors famous for using this guard are Caio Terra, The Mendes Brothers, The Miyao Brothers, Andre Galvao and many more. Why is the guard so popular among top tier competitors? De La Riva presents itself very often and is easy to get into; you can also use De La Riva as a gateway to other great guard.

Check out our article “Why is De La Riva so Common” to learn more on why it is so popular, today, we discuss how it is a great way to enter other positions that people also love to use. People use De La Riva to get into so many popular guards including the closed guard, half guard, spider guard, lasso guard, single leg X guard, and many other great guards.

What Makes De La Riva So Good For Getting Into Other Guards?

The same things that make DLR extremely popular are what make it such a good guard to transition into other positions. DLR is one of the easiest guards to find and it presents itself extremely often. What do we mean by “presents itself?” This means that your opponents may do many things that allow you to find DLR, for instance if you are playing butterfly guard, they may push you to the mat so your back is on the mat at which point you can get into DLR.

Your opponent may also pass in a one in and one out positions where one of your legs is in between their legs and the other is on the outside, this is an ideal scenario to put a DLR hook in. DLR is also a good position because you can slow your opponent down and you don’t need many grips to initially set up DLR. For instance if someone pushes you to the mat all you have to do is put one foot on the hip and the other as a DLR hook and grab their ankle. This will slow your opponent’s passes down at which point you can get grips.

De La Riva To Transition

Once you have slowed your opponent down and got into De La Riva, you can now start to transition into other guards that may be more favorable to you. For instance, maybe you like spider guard, but couldn’t get your sleeve grips initially, now you have found DLR and can transition into spider.

De La Riva is one of the easiest guards to get into and it is a great way to get into other positions. Check out this video below of a transition from De La Riva to Spider.