Does it feel as if your guard passing is somewhat stagnating? As in, you do know a number of guard passes and you perform most of them with reasonable quality… But no matter how much you try, you just seem not to be able to pass your training partners’ guard?
Well, it’s quite likely that the reason behind that is your lack of knowledge and skill in chain passing.
CHAIN PASSING – YOUR GUARD PASSING MISSING LINK
What is chain passing, anyway? It refers to an ability to chain different guard passes together, with an ultimate goal of passing the opponent’s guard.
Simple enough, right? In theory, yes; but in practice it tends to get much more difficult. Especially (and most commonly) for the blue belts out there – who have first earned self-confidence in their guard passing but now have to learn one more extremely important subset of skills.
Remember: as you progress, it’ll get increasingly demanding to use just one or two guard passes in order to gain dominant position. Rather, you have to learn how to think ahead and how each pass ties in to the next one.
In that manner, with time, you’ll learn how to continue passing the opponent’s guard even when your first one or two attempts are denied by their guard retention.
Watch Junny Ocassio explain the importance of chain passing on the video below:
