Throw By From Closed Guard With Lou Armezzani

By Fanatics Authors, February 26, 2021

The guard is the first position that a person learns during their first BJJ class. It's a fundamental technique, but let’s face it, it’s also not the most interesting one to train out of. For most people, the guard isn’t a place that they want to be in whether it be having someone in your guard or being in someone else's. This leads to the guard not getting trained as much as they probably should.

This leads to a bit of an infinite loop where since you don’t work on your guard, you get bad at it, and since your guard game is weak, you don’t want to train it and it just goes on and on. This is why it’s probably a good idea to get a head start on guard training and learn some good ways to both dominate someone in your guard and make it so that nobody can keep you in theirs (for more check Next Generation Closed Guard by Mica Galvao).

This is where Lou Armezzani comes in and in this video he’s going to show you how you break your opponent’s posture and gain a great level control of someone in your guard. Lou Armezzani is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt and coach who owns his own gym, Armezzani Jiu Jitsu Academy out of Monaca, Pennsylvania. He is a guard specialist and is ready to share some of his knowledge about the position to help you improve as a BJJ practitioner.

The video is about how Coach Armezzani likes to use a particular throw to break his opponent’s posture and gain a position with even more control on his opponent. The video starts with Armenzzani talking about what he does if he can’t get his diagonal grips on his opponent that he likes to work with.

If that is the case Armezzani goes to take whatever grip he can get with the same side and immediately throw it over his own head. This should get your opponent's hand on the mat. From there he brings his knees to his chest. From there he is going to try to look like he is trying to under hook with his other arm. This is just a fake to trick his opponent though and he isn’t actually trying for an underhook.

Once you’ve set up the position and tricked your opponent, you are going to push with the leg that your fake underhook arm is on to swing around. Then you are going to underhook with the arm you just used to grip your opponent and connect your hands. From there you're going to enter the buster guard.

From this position, your opponent is probably going to try to stack on top of you. When your opponent tries to do this to you all you need to do is swing your leg that isn't;’t being underhooked into an omoplata. From there you are able to do a number of different attacks.

If you like this video and want to learn more about the buster guard and the omoplata, then you should check out coach Lou Armezzani’s complete video series “Buster Guard The Omoplata Funnel By Lou Armezzani” available exclusively on BJJ Fanatics!

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