Mini Ep. 77: Types of Guard

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member, has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in Jiu-Jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in Jiu-Jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access. And if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free. Go to BJJmentalmodels.com and check it out today. Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. And I want to quickly break down the different types of guard that you're going to encounter in Jiu-Jitsu. This is nomenclature that I borrowed from Rob Bernacki from Island Top Team and BJJ Concepts. So, just giving credit where it is due. If you like these explanations, then you might want to check out his work as well at BJJconcepts.net. But here's the idea. There are many, many different types of named guards that you're going to encounter. So many different variations of these. And the challenge, of course, is that new guards are being created all the time. It's never possible to know every single type of guard in Jiu-Jitsu because it's just going to be a week or a month before there are new guards that you then have to learn. It's an unwinnable battle. That is not to say that you shouldn't study these things, but we can propose a framework that helps us organize all of these different types of guards into our minds so that whenever we see a new type of guard, we can just more intuitively understand what it is, how it works, and when we would want to use it. So, back to how Rob Bernacki breaks down the different types of guard. He classifies into four broad categories: hook-based guards, clamp-based guards, frame-based guards, and hybrid guards. There will always be new guards being invented and we got to study those, but they should all map back to one of these four categories. And once we understand that, we can start to see commonalities between them. And the nice thing is, unless the human body changes, these four categories should not change. So let's run through these one at a time. Number one, hook-based guards. These are, as the name implies, guards where you use a hook to connect with your opponent. Your goal is to track or check their movement or maybe to find opportunities to off-balance them. One of the most classic examples of a hook-based guard is butterfly guard. In-step or shin-to-shin guard is another great example of a hook-based guard. These are especially common in open guard scenarios where the person may not be close enough that you can wrap your whole body around them and close your guard. The second type is a clamp-based guard. This is where, much like a clamp, you are literally locking yourself onto your opponent. You are trying to hinder their movement. You're trying to use your body like an anchor to break their alignment, slow them down, and stop them from moving. The single most famous example of a clamp-based guard is going to be closed guard. There are pros and cons to clamping onto an opponent, right? The pro is that if you do it right, you can hold them in position. The con is that if you fail to do it, then they can move you around because you're tethered to them. The third type of guard is a frame-based guard. When you're on the bottom, really the thing that changes the guard from being a defensive to an offensive position, one of the things, is being able to keep your opponent at a distance where they cannot attack you. How do you keep your opponent at a distance? You use frames. You use your limbs to get space between yourself and your opponent. So if you are using your arms or your legs to keep your opponent at a distance, that would be a frame-based guard. Very common example of this would be the knee shield guard. You are using your knee as a shield, as a frame to prevent your opponent from collapsing their weight down on top of you. There's other variants as well, though. Spider guard works by framing into the arms and the biceps of your opponent so that they can't put their weight down on top of you as well. Frame-based guards tend to be especially helpful in situations or rule sets that involve striking. So in MMA and in self-defense, you might see a lot of frame-based guards because if strikes are an option and if they're on the table, then stopping your opponent from striking you might be one of your top priorities even above and beyond advancing position or doing what we might normally consider Jiu-Jitsu. And finally, the fourth category of guard is hybrid guards. Now you might have listened to me talk about the prior three types, hook, clamp, and frame-based guards, and you might have been able to think of some examples of where maybe a guard that you like doesn't fit cleanly into one of those categories. Maybe you're using a combination of these things. That would be a hybrid guard where you are using some combination of hook, clamp, and frame-based mechanics to make the guard work. Why would we restrict ourselves to using only one of those weapons when we could use multiple weapons like that? De La Riva guard is an example of a guard that is frame-based because your De La Riva hook, you are using that to prevent your opponent from closing the distance, but it's also hook-based because your free leg is being used to track their other leg so that they can't just free themselves from your De La Riva hook. And I generally encourage people, if you are only using a single mechanic to make your guard work, take a look at what you're doing and ask yourself, is there the possibility that I could make this a hybrid? If I'm only clamping onto someone, do I have the ability to blend this with frames or hooks to make this more effective? So, this is just a very brief conceptual overview of the four types of guard. Again, that is hook-based guards where you are using your limbs, usually your legs, to connect with and track your opponent. Clamp-based guards where you are locking onto your opponent. The third is frame-based guards where you are using your limbs as a frame to keep your opponent at a comfortable distance. And the fourth is hybrid guards where you combine those three mechanics into a guard that uses more than one mechanic to make things happen. If you think of every guard through the lens of these four families, then when you see a new type of guard, it helps to more quickly understand what is making that guard work and why and how you can do it more effectively. If you like this, there's more of it at BJJmentalmodels.com. You'll get full-length episodes of our podcast, but you also get mini-episodes like this, which get to the point faster. And I strongly suggest joining BJJ Mental Models Premium. It is incredibly unique and the first week is free. And again, all of that is at BJJmentalmodels.com. I'll put a link in the show notes, but thank you again for hanging out and listening with me here and I will talk to you in the next episode.