Half Guards & Flat Hips

Half Guard & Unfinished Plans

Literally and figuratively, it seems like people don’t know what to do with half guard. Keenan Cornelius claimed the position is falling off while no gi grappling implodes into a hybrid of leg locks and wrestling. Old guys reply that half guard is the best guard, built for the lazy man to make the top player less athletic. Both arguments have their merits but neither really answer the question, what do we do with half guard?

I’m writing this after UFC on ABC: Rozenstruik vs. Almeida. In the co-main event between Anthony Smith and Johnny Walker, Smith got Walker down but couldn’t do anything with it. This fight showed one frustrating sequence that I can’t stop thinking about.

Above Smith achieves chest to chest position and even gets a cross face with his hands locked. What he doesn’t do is anything to control Walker’s far side. This allows Walker to squirm around and scoop Smith’s near leg.

I wouldn’t be overly worried about getting my leg scooped when my opponent is flat, particularly in MMA. Still, the technique was enough to make Smith stop progressing and Walker ended up getting up from underneath. This brings up an important question that you need to answer for your own training; what could Smith have done to keep Walker flat?

Hold the Hips First

The easiest way to lock down your opponent’s far hip is to get your knee past it before crowding their space. By moving your knee past their fair hip, it pushes their low back to the floor and it brings your chest to theirs, meaning it could have perfectly played into what Smith was trying to accomplish.

Below we see Gordon Ryan showing how you can pin an opponent’s low back and hips to the floor by moving your knee past their hip and then dropping your weight.

Below, Ryan shows what to do after you’ve moved your knee past their hip as he finishes controlling his opponent’s far side. He gets a cross face and uses it to anchor himself to his opponent, secure an under hook, and pass the guard. Absolutely suffocating.

When half guard is used correctly you hold one of your opponent’s legs, making them considerably less athletic. When pinning from half guard, you can sit on the hips preventing real guard play before it begins. This is particularly useful in MMA where you need to strike and impact opponents. Half guard can be awesome for both sides of the equation, the trick is to move diligently and deliberately so you can make use of it before your opponent.

This is only one way to pass half guard. When I teach half guard passing, I like to explain it based on your distance from your opponent. Are you far and loose, near their body, or are you fully chest to chest? We’ll talk about what to do in those situations later. Today, we’re already at 500 words.