The Best MMA Guard For Non-Flexible Fighters

BJJ for MMA: The Rat Guard

About a year or so ago I was introduced to The Rat Guard and I immediately saw the power of this guard. Keeping an opponent’s posture down is my biggest struggle when working my guard, and Rat Guard totally eliminates that problem. It makes it almost effortless to keep posture broken and it allows you to do that one handed leaving a free had to strike or attack submissions.

What exactly is the Rat Guard? Well, it was developed by Rene Dreifuss of RadicalMMA with MMA specifically in mind. Rene based his guard off of an old Judo position he learned while training in Japan and over the next decade he explored, developed, and expanded his system to be the most extensive offensive system around.

The Rat Guard uses similar concepts to rubber guard and the Shawn Williams Guard. The Williams Guard is also a favorite of those who love to play a tight aggressive game to attack arms for sweeps and submissions.

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A main factor in his development of this system is an injury that severely limits his movement and flexibility, because of this and because of the clinching type nature of this guard, it is often referred to as Rubber Guard for inflexible people. The Rat Guard is incredibly simple and offers a vast amount of options for submission attack and sweeps once your opponent’s posture is broken.

To set up Rat Guard, you need to break your opponent’s posture down and get their head down to the mat. You then bring your arm over the back of their head like you are going for a guillotine, except you get your armpit over the back of their head and you grab the inside of your knee. And that’s really it for the guard itself, told you it was stupid simple.

(Rat Guard 1)

Once your opponent is in your Rat Guard, you have several options for attack, the most apparent is the Kimura, it’s seriously right there looking at you in the face. And there is also a very nasty neck crank when you attack the opposite arm or you can turn that crank into a sweep, Eddie Bravo calls it the 100%.

You also have a very slick triangle from Rat Guard. The triangle off this is seriously my favorite setup for that sub. But in your setup for the triangle you can also attack a Hiji Gatame on the opposite arm. And those are just a few of the options you have from this guard, there are counters when they start defending and you can flow between Rat, Shawn Williams Guard, and Rubber Guard (if you have the flexibility) very easily making a very deadly system. And most importantly, you completely remove your opponent’s ability to hit you, making this guard a must for MMA and Combat Jiu Jitsu.

(Rat Guard 2)

There are many more instructionals you can easily find on guard systems like the rat, including the Shawn Williams Guard. If you have any interest in Combat Jiu-Jitsu or MMA I cannot recommend the Rat Guard and Shawn Williams Guard enough.

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