Hook Guard (diary entry)

26.09.2022 Hour seven of my couple's current submission grappling/ground-fighting course looked at guard passing from the outside and introduced the hook guard (De La Riva guard). We warmed up with exercises specific to submission grappling including toe-to-the-line drills, combat base sit-ups, triangle crunches and half-guard side rolls before proceeding with some guard-passing drills. We looked at stepping around the guard to knee-on-belly (knee-pins) working these in as muscle memory drills. Then we did the same with back-scooting out of an under-guard pass. In the latter instance we were drilling both the guard-pass and the escape together. The last time we two clients covered the hook guard - the name my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu professor called "De La Riva" guard -  was via Zoom lessons, so it was good to address the technique in a hands-on format. I consider this type of guard to come under the long guard concepts of ground fighting. The hook guard isn't the strongest of guards to use in no-gi grappling due to the gripping limitations. Nevertheless, it has some great transitioning elements. We covered using the hook guard to switch to a single-leg takedown and transition into X-guard. This was the first time we covered X-guard. The lesson finished with two rounds of guard passing, starting from an open guard. https://clubbchimera.com/services/