Open Guard Transitions Are Vital

One of the most fundamental skills in becoming a skilled Jiu Jitsu practitioner is being able to transition between positions and attacks. Most white belts and blue belts are too adamant about attacking one technique, trying to force it against a wary opponent that is already defending it. This is a horrible habit to carry with you throughout your Jiu Jitsu career, and if taken to purple, brown, or black belt, you will fail miserably.

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The reason newer grapplers gravitate to forcing techniques is because their knowledge is limited, naturally. If you don’t know many techniques from de la riva guard, you will only attack the few ones you do know. Hence, the more techniques you have in your playbook, the less likely you’ll need to force the few ones you can do.

The next level of being a Jiu Jitsu grappler is transition between various attacks from a position. For example, if you try a triangle choke from closed guard and the defender wraps their arm around their your leg, you would transition to the omoplata. What if the defender is good at defending every attack from closed guard, though?

If you are dealing with a grappler that can defend from one guard, it would be reasonable to transition to a different, preferably more effective guard. This is a difficult task for new students, but as you begin improving, your ability to transition between guards will too.

In the following video, you will see how you can transition between different guards to get a quick sweep. See below:

This transition from spider guard to X-guard is a great example of transitioning from one guard to a more effective one. Spider guard can be difficult to sweep and submit from. X-guard, on the other hand, is a great position to sweep from as it is very difficult to defend.

When transitioning from one guard to the next, you should have an idea about what technique you want to attack. In the video, the guard player attacked their sweep immediately after establishing X-guard. This is a good idea because it gives the top player less time to defend.

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