Preventing Standing In The Guard @SBG Bury BJJ & Mixed Martial Arts MMA Classes – YouTube

When your opponent begins to stand in the guard, it is almost impossible for them not to direct their force into you. They are effectively “pushing” you. What do we need to do when someone “pushes” us? We need to “pull” them. 

I picked up this sweep from Henry Akins. He also emphasises blocking the arm so that they can’t post out. I do not show that here. Instead, we first try to build out the skill of blocking their knees advancing forward, which they must do in order to stand up. Then we pull them with our legs. 

The common mistake here is failing to load your hips on top of your opponent’s hips. I demonstrate how you do that here by walking myself into my opponent when on the bottom of closed guard. This tends to elicit a push response from the guard top player, else I can begin to place their buttocks on top of their heels, a position known in sports science as passive insufficiency, from which its very hard to generate force from the quadriceps, as they are at the weakest part of the strength curve (think about squatting at the very bottom of the squat – there’s a reason instagram squatters don’t go very deep with excessive amounts of weight on the bar). Instinctively most people realise they must “push” you back and may well attempt to stand. This creates the perfect timing to pull and thus use their force, and yours, in compound to complete the sweep.