Bernardo Faria's Tips To Improve Your Half Guard
1. – FOCUS ON ADJUSTING YOUR GRIPS BEFORE YOU TRY TO SWEEP: This is probably the biggest mistake I see people making when they are playing half-guard. Sometimes they try to sweep too fast, without getting the perfect grips and the perfect timing.
2 - IF YOU JUST STARTED PLAYING HALF-GUARD, AVOID GIVING UP THE UNDERHOOK: I believe that the easiest way to start effectively playing from half-guard is to start from the knee shield (Z-Guard). From there, you can maintain distance between you and your opponent and start developing your half-guard game without being “smashed”.
3 – AVOID THE KIMURA – DON'T LET YOUR OPPONENT GET A DOUBLE WRIST LOCK GRIP: This is probably one of the questions I receive most frequently. What should I do if my opponent tries a Kimura on me? Well, if he gets the Kimura grip, you are already at a huge disadvantage; you should have stopped it before he got there. I have a way for example in the deep half-guard to stop the Kimura: it's been working well for me. When my opponent touches my arm trying to go for the kimura, I bump him forward, forcing him to post his hands on the mat, to stop himself from being swept, so he can't get the grip on the Kimura
4 – IF HE GETS THE UNDERHOOK, DON'T GET DESPERATE: This is a very important point! Many times I see people trying to play half-guard, but once the person on top gets the under hook, the guy on bottom gets completely desperate and starts moving frantically to try to get out of there. Instead, you need to keep your composure and work on some sweeps when your opponent has this grip. Some of my most effective sweeps come from there!
5 - AS UNPLEASANT AS IT SOUNDS, GET USED TO TAKING HIS SHOULDER PRESSURE ON YOUR FACE: This is a very important point. If you are one of those that once the guy puts their shoulder on your face, you open up everything to try to get out of there, half-guard might be a tough game for you. You are going to need to take some pressure if you want to play half guard.. Shoulder pressure is tough to handle, I agree, but its not the end of the world, and if you can develop an offensive game even when under some pressure from a strong guy - you find yourself able to see a lot more opportunities to sweep.
Another thing that I believe its very important, is developing the perfect timing to hit the technique. If you have good technique, but you do it at the wrong time, it wont work. Sometimes though, you don't even have to have the most perfect technique, but if you try it at the right time, the technique will work. So timing is definitely, one of the most important things in Jiu-Jitsu. In the video to the right, I show the proper timing that I try to execute each move. This segment is part of my new Half-Guard DVD - The Battle Tested Half-Guard, where I not only demonstrate techniques, I also filmed myself rolling for almost one hour and commented during each roll to properly show the proper timing for each technique: some have said this method of teaching really helped them a lot.
This DVD taught me so much about timing. I have seen other DVDs before but Bernardo narrating segments, telling me exactly what he was thinking and more importantly when to go for moves helped me more than any other instructional I have seen: Brendan V. - White Belt
The last detail, which is often neglected is knowing how to pull the half-guard safely. If you have a great half-guard, but you don't know how to get there, it will not help you too much, so I believe that it is really important to know how to get there properly. In this video on the side I show exactly how I pull to the half-guard from the knees. Most of our rolls on the gym start from the knees, I think its really important to know to do it well not only in the gym where the rolls start on the knees but also in tournaments from the feet.
This Half-Guard game has helped a lot of my students and friends. Here below I have some examples from people who started doing it and became successful on this type of game.
"My name is Pound Lamb. I am 52 years old and train at Nashville MMA. I want to sing praises on Bernardo’s half guard system. I was introduced to the Faria Guard and Pressure Passing system by a teammate last year. I promptly purchased both DVD sets and with only three months of training I was fortunate enough to win the 2015 World Masters. The system worked so easily. I was promoted to Purple belt in 2016 and placed 2nd in the 2016 World Masters. I knew this system was designed for me when I started beating upper belts half my age. It was like my game had jumped three years. This system allows me to slow the super athletic guy’s game down and places me in control. It sounds crazy but I feel like I’m literally resting in this guard while the young guys are gassing out. They know what’s coming and still have a hard time stopping it. I think this is absolutely the best guard system for masters who like beating the young guns." Pound Lamb
"I started training bjj regularly in 2011 when I was in my early 30s. Initially I focused on butterfly and X-guard, which was such an elegant game that worked at the highest levels both gi and no gi. But I found that my younger and more athletic training partners would just blow past my guard and I didn't have any answer. I did ok in tournaments, but same thing, I couldn't contain the quicker guys and was always losing scrambles. I'd medal but not often gold, and I felt like I was over the hill and saw more and more younger guys passing me up. I liked half-guard since my first few months of training because I could slow people down, and because unlike closed guard I could get there from even the worst positions (mount, back, side control). But I didn't have any reliable sweeps - until I learned Bernardo's game. He came to my academy when I was a blue belt and taught us his deep half guard game, and I started sweeping everyone. Not getting lucky, but sweeping guys that I had never swept before, several times in the same round - even after they knew what sweep I was going to do. If you wound up in my deep half guard, you were going to get swept. Even in no gi, where his lapel controls disappear, Bernardo had techniques that turned half guard from a single-leg wrestling position to a true sweeping position. My tournament turnaround was even more dramatic. I never won an ibjjf gold in two years as a blue belt, but as a purple belt I won gold in every tournament I entered, even in absolute divisions against guys who outweighed me by 100lbs. Two weeks after getting my brown belt in mid 2015 I won open weight gold in my first tournament (an IBJJF Pro), and in November of 2016 won my first IBJJF No Gi World Championship in Master 2 Middleweight." Jeffrey Holman, Brown Belt
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Check Out Bernardo Using His Half-Guard Against The Best Fighters In The World
