Poster of two green-lit grapplers demonstrating guard, with text: Master Your Guard, essential training games for beginners.

Guard passing gets messy when you treat every guard the same. That was the big theme in the eighth lesson of my couple client’s Submission Grappling course. We came back to guard passing, but this time we didn’t start with a single pass. We started with distance.

The best rounds in grappling don’t always look like sparring. Sometimes they look like a tiny fight inside one position, with clear rules, short time limits, and one simple question: can you solve this problem before the other person does? Tonight’s session was a good example.

The kimura grip looks simple until somebody refuses to give you their arm. That was the theme of this private lesson. My couple client continued their submission grappling work with the same bigger goal we’ve been chasing for a while: better hip control. This time, we used that goal to build something more specific, getting to the kimura grip from three common places: North South, guard, and turtle.

Lesson eight showed clear progress. The client’s top control is becoming smoother. His transitions between pins are less forced. His escapes are also improving because he is starting to recognise pressure, frames, and timing earlier. That matters. In grappling, control comes before submission. A choke or lock is hard to apply if the position is loose. This session kept that order: hold the position, move between pins, isolate the back, then attack the choke.

The rules are simple but clever. Each round, both sparring partners roll a die or dice in secret. The number rolled corresponds to a specific technique or strategy from a numbered list. Only the techniques linked to the rolled number count for scoring during that round. All other techniques are allowed but do not score points.