Connection and Disconnection From the Guard

The First Foundation for Guard Passing and Guard Playing

Good afternoon!

Today we’re talking about connection, disconnection and why they’re so important, specifically from the guard position.

This email is inspired by a recent private lesson with a student who was having problems with his seated guard. His big challenge? You guessed it: Connection.

He was too reactive from the seated guard position allowing his training partners (and me) to establish my connection, stage my pass and make it to his hips before he had a chance to respond.

The obvious problem here is that if you ain’t first, you’re last. Homage: Ricky Bobby

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Summary of Today’s Email

Connection: A Simple Foundation to All Things in Jiujitsu.

Connect and Off-balance. These are two things you have to do in almost every position in order to be successful.

Disconnection

As a result, if you’re on defense, your goal is going to be to maintain your balance (stability) and disconnect. From here you can choose to disengage or reconnect on your own terms.

Distance and Angles [A Primer for Next Time]

Connection and Disconnection is much simpler when someone remains right in front of you. It’s much more challenging when you add the variables of distance and angles.

By the end of today’s email, you’ll get a solid understanding of how to connect, disconnect and how angles influence connection.

Video Content

For today’s email, there will be some video content on connection from the bottom position as well as avoiding connection from the top position. A third video will show some ideas on how to deal with very specific control.

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Some Matkeeping Notes

• Today’s post is a paid post.

• I still don’t have a fixed schedule at the moment so while free posts are lacking, paid posts will continue to thrive.

• I’ve got some plans for more visual components to the Substack and the YouTube Channel —standby.