Guest post by Henry Akins, the third American to receive a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu black belt from legendary fighter Rickson Gracie. Akins trained under Rickson Gracie for 15 years. Akins became the head instructor or “Professor” at the Rickson Gracie Academy from 2005 to 2008 before resigning due to a back injury. 

Akins has recently released an instructional website called Hidden Jiu-Jitsu where for the first time ever, he reveals the secret details that nobody outside of the Gracie family has been taught. 

Let’s clear this up…

Hey everyone, first off just want to thank everyone for the outpouring of love on my birthday. On my birthday I always like to reflect how far I’ve come in life and how much jiu-jitsu has given to me and I like to use it as a day to give back.

I filmed a video to share to help clear up some details on a guard break that Keenan Cornelius said was WRONG and a worthless technique. Unfortunately his instructional video got spliced together with Rickson’s recent instructional video and titled “Is it wrong the way Rickson Gracie escapes the closed guard” and the video title which was definitely click bait got shared throughout the community and caused some controversy.

Keenan acknowledged in his own video that he’s never really used that guard break and there’s too many problems with it and demonstrated how easy it was to counter. The issue is, it seems he was never taught all the correct details and specifics of how to do the technique effectively so against more experienced players the way he was demonstrating the technique in his video is certainly going to fail. After experiencing constant failure because the lack of important details many times we feel a technique is ineffective or WRONG. In jiu-jitsu almost all moves can be countered but that doesn’t necessarily make them wrong. It all comes down to effectiveness and efficiency.

This is a long video but there are so many details that most people have never seen or learned, including high level black belt competitors, that help make the technique work.

All of the details of how to maintain posture in the guard without relying on your hands can be found in my “inside the closed guard course” this video was specifically to help people understand the details of the guard break and how to do it the RIGHT WAY!
This is just the tip of the iceberg.

If you liked this video, then check out my “Inside the Closed Guard” course, where I show you everything you’ll ever need to know about how to stay safe and completely shut down your opponent’s closed guard.

This is the video that Henry Akins was referring to: