Long Guard Theory (diary entry)

03.12.19 My first evening class on Tuesday brought my client up to the third hour of his Submission Grappling/Ground-Fighting and we focused on long-guard concepts. We warmed up with various ground callisthenics and agility ladder drills. From here we moved onto techniques from the spider-guard. The spider-guard has limited use in no-gi training and MMA. I was taught very much as a gi technique, taking full advantage of sleeve holds and other useful grips provided by the uniforms worn in this particular sport. However, some might argue that an open guard where the feet are kept on the hips and the arms are controlled on the outside of the knees is a type of spider-guard. I used this as a control point and a transitional place for a fighter who wishes to escape to standing. Next we moved onto the hook guard where we covered a basic sweep, followed by an adjusted variation on the position. I also briefly covered the heel hook which we will cover again next week. We then went back to butterfly guard as a point to move into the X-guard and drilled sweeping, the toe-hold and knee-bar. Then we linked the adjusted hook guard with the X-guard. The lesson finished with some freestyle drilling, working on the principle of keeping a minimum of three control points. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPg5L1iyT4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEL83OPpxDA