Connection: The Line Between Attacking and Defending
Attacking Immediately off the Guard Retention
To connect or not to connect, that is the question.
As a guard player and passer, this is precisely the question you do NOT want to be asking yourself because you should know the answer already.
And it’s quite simple…
I like the idea of “defaults” or “reset positions”. These are ways you can go through your progressions (more on this another time) and when things go bad, go right back to where you started instead of digging yourself into a deeper hole.
When it comes to guard passing, this default is to remove any and all connection. Keep this important concept in mind: When you are playing guard, you need to establish connection. When you are passing, you don’t necessarily need connection [I wrote about that once here].
Therefore, the easiest/simplest way to think about guard passing is remove connection. And the easiest way to think about guard playing is to always establish connection.
Now, with that in mind, as a guard player, you’re going to end up in these cycles often. You want to continuously establish your connection while also transitioning when your opponent defends by re-establishing connection (when they remove it).
I’ve posted about this before in a sparring narration from “escapes to attacks” specifically to my game (from mount and from the back) n a recent private lesson, a student asked how I go about this during the guard retention. And the concept is simple.
Being able to go from defending to attacking is a matter of re-establishing connection AFTER the successful retention of the guard. In other words, if you find yourself getting your guard passed, you need to first frame to maintain distance, re-establish inside position and then make your connection.
As soon as you establish your connection, get to your favorite attacks IMMEDIATELY before your opponent has a chance to remove the connection.
In this first video, you’ll get an understanding of the “first line of defense” from my public YouTube channel. It’s fairly easy to re-establish an attacking position from here but things get trickier as we move forward, into those near-passes.
Now to the meat of this post.
In the paid section below, there will be two videos.
The first will go in depth into how I re-establish connection from nearly getting my guard passed. I’ll talk about it in terms of middle and late stage defense and how you can recover and attack.
The second video is a sparring narration where I’ll show you these concepts in real-time, after giving my training partner the opportunity to pass first.
Let’s dive in!
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