I remember back when I was a purple belt I developed a guard play system (using existing guards) and I thought I was a genius for it.
This was maybe 8 or 9 years ago and looking back, this system had a lot of merit, but looking back, there were a lot of holes in it.
In any case, I developed it with the idea that there are only so many ways a person can move. For a long time in my private lessons, I’d call this “the fundamentals of human movement.” I’ve written about it before in a post I can’t seem to find but I’ll outline it briefly here.
The “fundamentals of human movement” was simply a concept I came up with to describe the limited ways a person can move. Because of our anatomy and physics, we’re limited to how we can move. Therefore, we can only move forward, backward, side to side and rotationally.
This whole system (and perhaps most of my game now) came from the half guard + Reverse De La Riva. I had this bright idea that the half guard and the RDLR were the same position except one involved a standing opponent and the other, kneeling. Therefore, these guards were the starting point of my game.
From each guard, I started to think about HOW my opponent could move. Could they move forward? Backward? Rotationally? Side to side? And then, how could I set up a specific technique based on which direction they chose to move.
[I’ll have a video below the paywall with a better demonstration] .
It was a great system but to be fair, I grew to not be a fan of RDLR as my jiu-jitsu continued to improve. Soon after this systematization of my guard play, I started venturing/revisiting an old guard of mine, Single Leg X/X guard where I spend most of my time playing now (until last week where I’m experimenting with the Spider Guard).
Now, I bring this up to talk about an important concept in jiu-jitsu.
About two weeks ago, I had an opportunity to attend a seminar with Prof. Romulo Barral. There were a few concepts I picked up in that class but one stood out the most.
Romulo talked about the development of his Spider Guard and how it came to be. He talked about how he had ONE sweep that he would use all the time. He would get to the spider guard position, hold it and then use the Tomoe Nage sweep (if I recall correctly). This was the beginning. From here, he started evaluating what happened when an opponent did X. And then what happened when an opponent did Y. And then what happened when an opponent did Z.
From here, he developed a particular technique for each reaction.
His game evolved from the capacity to set up a position, defend it (my building the base article I posted above and here go into this), and then work through his techniques through anticipation of what an opponent might do.
If they defended one way, he’d have an answer. If they went another, he’d have another answer. And so on.
This was my goal when attempting to create a system for the RDLR and Half Guard. I wanted to have a specific set of answers for very specific reactions that my opponent had in the guard. And after internalizing and practicing those techniques, I had to then anticipate what my opponent might do so I could beat him to it.
On Anticipation
The key to anticipation lies on your ability to first control a position and then realize that your opponent has limited options. Within those options, you have a few viable choices where an opponent has a chance to defend. You’ll also have one great option, which is usually categorized by the proper defense. And, you’ll have a bunch of other options that have no bearing on the position, if in fact, you are doing everything right.
For all of the useless options, you can usually ignore them. They’re irrelevant to diminishing your control of the position.
The great option —the actual defense — is what must be minded.
The other viable options an opponent has are important and should be taken into consideration but it’s that one GREAT option that’s going to properly and effectively compromise your position.
For example, when you set up your guard, you must establish connection. Often times the great option here is to find ways to disconnect to you so that they can create angles on the guard pass.
Other viable options may include trying to circumvent the connection while worthless options may include trying to move around the connection without disrupting your connection first.
In this situation, you don’t necessarily have to plan for anything that doesn’t adequately compromise your connection. You really only have to focus on the small handful of things that will.
In the paywall below, I’m going to show you ways you can anticipate from two very different scenarios.
First I’ll cover a general overview on anticipation with regard to how it helps your overall game.
I’ll then give a specific example of spider guard (since I’ve been working on it lately) where I talk about how I anticipate my opponent’s movement based on how he moves (forward, backward, side to side).
Lastly, because everyone loves submissions, I’ll show a nice little sequence on how I anticipate arm-bar defense and move into a submission chain based on how I anticipate his defense.
Let’s dive in!
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