Guest post by James Duscio, a BJJ black belt under Walter Cascao Vital. He runs Cascao Evolution BJJ out of Las Vegas nv.
What If You Don’t Like Sports Guards?
There are so many styles and ways to play Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, that it becomes impossible to find a one size fits all for all our practitioners. Some like to play bottom, some like to play top, some like to play closed and some like to play open. But what if you tend to not like the so called fancy sports guards? Is there still hope for you in modern BJJ?
Whether you are old or new school, you can’t deny that sports guards are here and effective. They have been developing for decades and have become a central part of many top level players games. You see them on your social media feeds and that’s all the new white belts want to learn. Why learn a classic elevator sweep when you can learn a worm guard wrap sweep to a slick knee bar from mount, all without letting go of the lapel. This sounds crazy but it is our reality on the mats.
Now even if you don’t want to include them into your arsenal, you do have to face the fact that your training partners and competition will use them against you. So you need a game plan of how to deal with these techniques.
The first thing you need to do is learn the basics of each sports guard. Take the De La Riva guard for example. You must learn how to apply the guard and what the most common sweeps and submissions from that guard are going to be. Now you are not doing this so it’s added into your offensive game, but for the ability to know your enemy. By knowing that they want to wrap their leg behind your lead knee you can focus on how to take away that control. Turn your wrapped knee towards the outside and their hook comes undone like it was never there to begin with. Their guard control is neutralized along with any of their potential sweeps or submissions. This process should be repeated for all the major sports guards.
It takes a lot less energy and skill to prevent and neutralize a sports guard then it is to apply and perfect it on a resisting opponent. So my advice is to learn the basics of the new fancy sports guards and break down what is needed for them to control the situation. Then train to take away those controls while staying safe from their attacks. Not every aspect of BJJ is appealing for everybody and it’s impossible to master every style of our art, but at minimum we need to know how to defend and prevent the areas that are not our strongest. So next time your instructor or training partner is going over a sports guard, pay attention and learn, because you most likely will be going against these guards in the near future.
