Tips To Make Your Closed Guard STRONG

By Corey Kuropas, February 03, 2017

The closed guard will forever be one of the most noticeable aspects of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Royce Gracie made the position famous in the early days of the UFC, and it is used by everyone from white belts to black belts in competition all over the world. In fact, most people learn to fight from the closed guard before any other position in Jiu Jitsu. It is because it is immediately applicable. You have a variety of finishing techniques from the closed guard and have plenty of sweeps as well. There are certain ways that you can make your closed guard incredibly strong. But how can you do that? Here are some basic, but important tips.

– Closed legs and placement

The first aspect of closed guard is right in its name. Close your legs! Too many white belts try to play from the position, but simply open their legs too much. Every time you open your guard without having any open guards to play, you will usually have your guard passed and dominated from one of the top positions. Don’t open your legs unless you are attacking. The only time you should open is if you are going for a submission, a choke, or a sweep. Otherwise, you are simply asking for trouble. The other important aspect is where your legs are. Never let them drift below your opponent’s hips. They need to be above the hips, on the mid of the back or high up by the shoulders. Do not forget.

– Keep your hands active and pull with your legs

When you are playing from the closed guard, you cannot let your hands get lazy. While your opponent is in the guard, you need to use one hand to control a sleeve, and you should use the other to cross grab deep in the collar. This way, you can control your opponent’s posture and start working offensive techniques. Armbars, triangles and omoplatas all come from an opponent that is properly broken down, posture wise. Your hands and arms can also be used with over hooks, head grabs, and head and arm control with under hooks from the closed guard. And yet another tactic you can use to break posture is to pull with your legs. You can pull your opponent in sometimes by just pulling with your legs.

– Use those hips

Don’t forget to use your hips. While watching people play closed guard, it may seem that they are flat on their back. But that only is true, when someone is resting. The rest of the time, you need to keep those hips moving. When you move your hips, you can easily hit sweeps like the flower sweep and the hip bump sweep. You also need to use your hips to create angles. The angles will help you when successfully executing armbars and triangles in particular. You cannot be flat on your back with no hip movement, and actually submit your opponent with those techniques.

The closed guard is one that you will see every world famous black belt use. If it is good enough for them, then it should be good enough to you. Always expand and improve your game, but also don’t scoff at the closed guard. It will give you the attacks you need to attain victory and gain those championship wins. In addition to training, also pick up a good instructional DVD on the position. The best possible DVD for it would be…

If you are looking to improve your Closed Guard, we highly recommend you checking out “The Closed Guard by Bernardo Faria”. Click here to see!“