How To Beat Someone Up In Half Guard

Table of Contents

• Half Guard is One Big Problem in MMA

  • Half Guard for BJJ vs MMA

  • Passing from Half Guard

    • Far - High step

    • Middle - Knee Slice

    • Near

      • Head & Arm

      • Body Locks

    • Switching Hips

  • Breaking the Knee Shield

  • Opening the Lockdown

• Submissions

  • Leg Locks

  • Kimura

  • Chokes

    • Arm Triangle

    • Guillotine Choke

    • D’arce Choke

  • One Strategy For Putting it All Together

• Half Guard’s Saving Grace

• Uncharted Territory

• Half Guard And The Full Truth

Half Guard is One Big Problem in MMA

Half guard is one of the most popular guards in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It makes sense; us guard players are lazy and a lot of us can’t fully commit to anything so we’ll settle for half the work. While this doesn’t always get grapplers in trouble in BJJ, in MMA it can be disastrous.

Half guard is proving to be a painful position to retain and use, and recently we’ve seen fighters’ half guards get abused through all sorts of submissions and ground pound. I love it.

I think top half is one of the most versatile positions to attack from, whether you want to pass, hit, or submit. I love teaching how to score from half guard and we’re going to synthesize attacking half guard today.

We’re going to discuss how half guard changes from BJJ to MMA, break down passing half guard into three distinct areas, and quickly illustrate which submissions are available. Let’s get into it.

Half Guard for BJJ vs MMA

The primary difference between half guard in MMA and BJJ is your ability to hit. This is obvious but still massively important.

Hitting and hurting is the name of the game in MMA. Too many grapplers neglect punishing their opponents in favor of looking to pin and pass. Half guard is especially valuable for hitting because you’re close to your opponent and literally sitting on one of their legs so they can’t stand. Let’s take a brief look at Alexander Volkanovski’s recent maestro performance against Yair Rodriguez to see this in more detail.

Hit, try to submit, and all the while tire your opponent out. Simple enough.

We can also look at a couple of sequences from Khabib Nurmagomedov’s masterclass against Michael Johnson to see two important points.

It’s a simple point but it needs to be reinforced. When you’re in half guard you can sit on your opponent’s leg. That means it’s much harder for them to use their feet to bridge, go back to guard, or stand up. Derrick Lewis basically built a bottom game off of this principle.

I’m not saying getting up from underneath someone is always this easy or that you should never go to side control. What I am saying is that camping low in half guard prevents your opponent’s ability to bridge and stand up.

Let’s move on and talk about how to get around half guard to get closer to more direct submissions from mount and back mount.

Passing from Half Guard

The simplest way to understand guard passing is to look at it in terms of distance. The further away you are from your opponent, the better timing and precision your passing needs to have. When you’re passing loose from a further distance you need to be a sniper. You’ve got one shot to complete the action and if you miss the target it won’t be there again. Near and tight passing is almost the opposite.

When you’re passing from up close you can take your time and grind on your opponent. It’s not that you don’t have to be precise, small errors doesn’t create such a catastrophic failures. Oftentimes the tighter you are means that their struggles give you more opportunities for finishing the pass.

Let’s start by looking at how to pass from far away in a position similar to Khabib Nurmagomedov’s ground and pound position above.

Far - High step

High step passing straight up feels like a cheat code. You stand up out of someone’s control and quickly extract your leg to get to a better place.

Similar to the principle of diagonal control, you’ll have more success with high step passing the more you can cover opposite ends & sides of your opponent’s spine. This means if I’m controlling my opponent’s left leg to open up for my high step, I’ll use my opposite arm to post on their right shoulder so I can control both sides of their spine. I can put both of my hands on the far side of my opponent’s body once my knee is free and drops to their belly to pinch them in place. Let’s look at an easy example.

Does this position look familiar? In the gifs above Khabib Nurmagomedov was in a perfect place to high step out of Johnson’s guard. Because they were doing MMA he wisely chose to strike. Combining both could be an excellent strategy to destroy someone from half guard.

Now let’s get a bit closer and pass from the middle distance.

Middle - Knee Slice

This day one technique looks simple but there are countless variations for finishing it. A good knee slicer can wreak havoc on guard players and smoothly melt opposition beneath them without expending much energy. If you don’t have a good knee slice stop reading this and drill it. Now.

Okay, now that you’re back let’s look at some knee slices.

The basic idea of the knee slice is you’re trying control your opponent’s far side with an under hook while your same side knee cuts over your opponent’s thigh, away from the under hook. Right leg trapped? Dig an under hook on the right side and slide your right knee over your opponent’s right thigh until you free your leg. The beauty of the knee slice is you can dive and cut across from far away or slowly grind over the thigh. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Both of these knee slices above cut away from your under hooking side. Sometimes you can drive your knee the other way and pass straight to mount or back mount, depending on where your opponent’s hips go. We already saw Nurmagomedov go straight to mount, now let’s look at how to go to back mount.

Broadly speaking we now have two ways to get around half guard. You can stand and high step or slice your knee through your opponent’s legs. Or, you can look to high step, reclaim an under hook, and then close the distance for the knee slice.

Now let’s get in close and look at how you can pass half guard in tight.

Near

When you’re passing from in tight you want to try to close your hands around your opponent. This can either be accomplished with a body lock or head and arm control. Let’s start there.

Head & Arm

If at any point your opponent crosses your center line with their high arm that should be under hooking they are giving you free access to head and arm control. You can use this grip to hold them down or threaten the arm triangle choke. Let’s look at some examples below.

Couch is trying to dig an under hook to prevent Ryan from keeping him flat. That’s generally the first thing your opponents will do from this position. Your opponent’s under hook is a perfect opportunity for you to lock up a body lock and pass their guard.

Body Locks

This is not the only type of body lock you can get from half guard, but it is the most accessible. Almost everyone will fight to wrestle up using the under hook in half guard. By doing so they give you an over under body lock. Another common body lock would be a double under body lock.

Another way to deal with an under hook involves moving away from it to reduce its effect on your body. Let’s look at how you can use that position to beat the under hook.

Switching Hips

If your opponent successfully digs an under hook on you you can switch your hips towards it. This reduces their ability to manipulate your weight with the under hook, gives you a clean look at two submissions, and gives you an unobscured path to punch them in the stomach.

Here is what effectively switching hips looks like.

Before we go deep on submissions from half guard let’s address two ways to get around your opponent’s specific leg configurations in half guard.

Breaking the Knee Shield

It’s exceedingly rare that someone will just hold your leg in half guard. Generally your opponent will put their free knee in between you two to create what is called a knee shield.

The knee shield can be a pesky problem but there are some straight forward ways to get around it. The simplest way to get around the knee shield is by high stepping like we showed above. Another way to get around it is by dynamically switching your hips around it.

When you switch your base you need to get in tight to chest to chest position like Lachlan does. If there is any space between you two after you switch your hips the bottom player will turn into you for a sweep.

Opening the Lockdown

One annoying snag you’ll run into in half guard is what Eddie Bravo coined the lockdown. The lock down involves the half guard player looping their outside foot under their own inside thigh, before looping the inside leg under their opponent’s trapped shin. Let’s look at it below.

The simplest and fastest method for opening the lockdown involves using your free leg to pummel against the lockdown and undo it. Let’s look at two of the most reliable ways to accomplish that.

Now that we have an idea of how to get around half guard let’s look at how to submit someone from the position.

Submissions

Let’s start all the way at the bottom and move up. Two options you have immediately available from half guard are the heel hook and the knee bar. The first involves the back step and the second involves turning toward the knee.

Leg Locks

There’s another knee bar variation that you can attack from further back while passing half guard. This variation is known as the dog bar.

For what it’s worth, at the end of every knee bar is a toe hold. Here is another way to turn into the legs and attack them.

Kimura

The kimura is one of the most versatile submissions in grappling. There are countless ways to get one from several distinct positions. Even when you have a kimura you can use it to advance your position if you don’t want to just get the submission.

You can also grab the kimura as a counter to your opponent framing and under hooking. Now let’s move up the body to chokes.

Chokes

Arm Triangle

My personal favorite submission to attack from half guard is the arm triangle choke. Not only can you finish the submission from there, but you can take it all the way to the back if your opponent defends.

Islam Makhachev might be the best top half player in MMA right now. He regularly attacks a variety of submissions from chest to chest position and with switched hips. Here he is with one of the cleanest arm triangle finishes we’ve ever seen in MMA.

Securing the arm triangle requires chest to chest contact. You need to be in a fairly dominant position to secure the submission. If you’re not in a dominant position and your opponent is attacking an under hook, you do have the opportunity to counter by switching your hips and attacking submissions like the guillotine choke.

Guillotine Choke

You can also choke someone from half guard through the under hook depending on how you deal with it.

D’arce Choke

To finish the D’arce choke from half guard you’ll either need to modify your grip or extend your arm forward to ensure your arm wraps all the way around your opponent’s neck.

One Strategy For Putting it All Together

When you’re in half guard the first thing you should look to do is take their space and get an under hook. No under hook = do not pass go.

The most straight forward way to pass half guard is to get chest to chest and pass with your arms locked around them for either a body lock or head and arm control. If you do get the head and arm choke, you can always threaten the submission while looking to pass.

If your opponent fights for the under hook, you can look to counter by locking a body lock over their under hooking arm. If they’re making space and pushing you away, stand up to high step out of it. This standing position that allows for high stepping is the perfect place to ground and pound from. But, if they give up the under hook as they’re framing and making space don’t be afraid to turn back into them with your own under hook to execute a knee slice. If you have the space to reach under their under hook and grab the back of their neck you can threaten the d’arce from here as well.

If your opponent gets an under hook and you’re not able to lock your hands, just switch your base to take strength away from the under hook. When you switch your base you can look for the kimura or guillotine choke. If you’re fighting in MMA this is the perfect place to drill down body punches.

You’re trying to pass close first with an under hook. If they counter with frames or an under hook of their own recounter appropriately. First with body locking, then with high stepping, and all the while looking for the under hook to knee slice through their guard. If you choose to switch your hips instead, threaten the kimura or guillotine to keep them on their toes.

Half Guard’s Saving Grace

You might be reading this and think, “Half guard sucks. Why would anyone play it, especially in MMA?”

You might want to play it because half guard gives you an extreme asymmetric advantage of your opponent. You can use four limbs to attack one side, if not one of their legs. This allows you to off balance your opponent and wrestle up, sweep them, or a hybrid of the two. To do so, you need to know how to take advantage of this asymmetric advantage correctly.

There are several people to study for examples of how to best play half guard in MMA and submission grappling. We already touched on Rani Yahya, and I’d also recommend looking at Mansour Barnaoui and Demian Maia to see crystal clear examples of how to effectively employ half guard in MMA. If you’re only interested in submission grappling, your best options might be Lucas Leite or Jeff Glover. Here are some examples of half guard working in MMA.

These gifs above are two of the most succinct examples of people successfully using half guard in MMA. If you want to see an entertaining masterclass on the interplay of single legs and half guard I cannot recommend watching Rani Yahya enough.

Uncharted Territory

We’re focusing on passing half guard with this piece. We’ve intentionally left two major options of half guard off of this article; z guard and deep half. Interestingly enough these two variations of half guard are on opposite ends of the spectrum for how you can choose to play half guard.

Z guard requires the guard player to maximize the distance between themselves and their opponent. This allows them to invert on leg attacks. Much of Craig Jones’s early game was centered around attacking from Z guard.

Deep half, on the other hand, asks the guard player to get as close to their opponent’s leg and hips as possible. You quite literally want to be comfortable under their hips holding on to their leg like a koala clinging to a tree branch. A good deep half player to study would be Jeff Glover or Rani Yahya.

We’re leaving these two positions out of this article because of how specific they are. Each would require their own article.

Half Guard And The Full Truth

The truth with playing half guard in MMA and no gi is you have to move and you have to move a lot. The more you rest under your opponent, the more likely they are to cook you, hurt you, and pass your guard. If you are playing half guard and you cannot take advantage of the extreme asymmetry you have to disrupt their base you’re going to get eaten alive by one, or several, of the techniques above.

Conversely, you as the top player can look to force half guard on your opponent to wear them out, collect yourself, and attack with the wide range of options we outlined above.

Thanks for reading the full way through this half guard article. What position should we discuss next?