Passing The Lasso Guard with World Champ Andressa Cintra

We all know if someone is good with Lasso guard it can be really challenging to pass their guard. Even at the highest levels of competition Lasso guard can shut down someone’s movement for really long stretches of time. 

In this video Bernardo goes through passing the Lasso guard with Andressa Cintra, who has a similar style to Bernardo that employs a lot of pressure passing and a dangerous half guard game.

Andressa won Worlds at purple, brown and now Worlds 2019 at black belt so is a really tough competitor, and notes that a lot of female competitors like to use the Lasso guard so she gets a ton of exposure to Lasso guard in the highest levels of competition. If anyone can help us get those technical details right to shut this guard game down, it’s Andressa!

 

We can see to begin with Andressa’s mobility is really shut down. Bernardo can control both Andressa’s forward and backward movement and her arm with the Lasso on the right hand side, and her hip and right arm with his sleeve grip. 

Trying to break the grips in this position is really tough and your opponent has a lot of control and offensive options as well. The first thing Andressa thinks about is keeping a solid base so we can see her dropping her center of gravity down by squatting down and slightly away from Bernardo. 

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As Andressa drops her weight down she takes this opportunity to also sink her knee down into the back of Bernardo’s thigh on the side of his lasso and grab his collar at the same time. This motion uses her own body weight to break down the posture and power in Bernardos lasso leg.

Having broken the lasso leg down Andressa can now begin to reclaim some control, and can now start to move Bernardo towards her and exert some influence on the lasso leg. What was an active and controlling leg is now collapsed and difficult for Bernardo to activate. 

At the same time as breaking down the lasso leg Andressa is taking a grip at the inside of the knee on the pants of the other leg. If she just takes a grip and stays where she is however it’s easy for this grip to get broken. To reinforce the grip Andressa stiff arms the leg down towards the floor to pin it, and gains better control with less energy spent.

Going back to the lasso grip it is sometimes possible to rotate our own wrist out of the sleeve grip our opponent has on this side. Often however if our opponent has a good grip, and many do, we just can’t rotate out of it. They have our sleeve, and they’re not letting go!

Andressa uses this to her advantage however by locking down this situation, which allows her to begin movement safe in the knowledge that her opponent is staying relatively stationary. 

Sprawling backwards Andressa transitions her pressuring knee from the back of Bernardo’s thigh away and comes in with her shoulder for heavy pressure down into the base of Bernardo’s shin. This gives Andressa room to begin getting an angle on her opponent, moving off their centre line and passing to the side. 

Stepping out left with her left leg and driving her right leg into the inside of Bernardo’s knee so he doesn’t have any space to get underneath her, Andressa is really beginning to shut down her opponents movement and gain control of the exchange.

Switching her shoulder pressure Andressa can now reach around the knee of the leg that was imposing a lasso and begin to pull it past her, opening up options for an outside grip on the centre of her opponents mass, the hips.

Gripping the belt is a good connection to our opponents center of gravity, and this is important because whoever controls their opponents hips in grappling is at a large advantage, but the problem is the belt can move or even sometimes come undone. For this reason Andress prefers gripping the gi pants in a similar fashion to an inside sleeve grip. 

From here Andressa closes her elbow in and down to finally begin to break Bernardo’s lasso grip, which frees her up move and deepens the pressure from her top game. 

An important note here is Andressa is much lighter than Bernardo but she’s using her whole body to drive from her leg into her elbow and down into Bernardo. From here Bernardo is feeling the pressure and his mobility is really shut down. 

Keeping her center of gravity nice and low but still driving her pressure into her opponent Andressa has put herself in the perfect position to pass. Reaching under Bernardo’s top arm and taking a lapel grip by the back of the neck Andressa switches her knees and keeps that pressure driving around into side control. 

The collar grip here switches really nicely into cross face pressure from side control and Andressa has the freedom with her other arm to further reinforce the pin. As Bernardo attests, there’s a lot of pressure there!

We’re really pleased to have filmed an entire instructional with World’s 2019 black belt winner Andressa Cintra so keep an eye open in your inbox and social media for when the full tutorial comes out soon!

Pressure Passing is for EVERYONE! Take the guesswork out of passing and start to completely CONTROL your opponent. BATTLE TESTED PRESSURE PASSING By Bernardo Faria is a masterclass on Pressure! Shut-down your opponent’s guard and leave them feeling HELPLESS!

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