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You Need To Know These Things about Knee Shield Half Guard Retention

You Need To Know These Things about Knee Shield Half Guard Retention

The knee shield/Z-Guard is a conservative half guard game where you keep your shield up and never let your opponents come too close.

Bottom half guard players that like to either play knee shield or to drop their shield are Bernardo Faria, Xande Ribeiro or Lucas Leite.

When you play half guard, the worst thing you can do is letting your opponent get passed all of your line of defenses (feet, knees, arms) and start to pass your guard with a knee slice. It’s even worse if they add extra shoulder pressure.

The weakness of the knee slice is that it allows the bottom guy to have a focus point. You should never let your opponent go deep into a knee slice by keeping a strong knee shield and diamond shape frame with your arm on the opponent’s shoulder. Your bottom leg is used to “paddle” and to be repositioned on the opponent’s hip to return to a safer closed guard.

In this knee shield video, you can see 3 important points to improve your knee shield guard retention:

So you want to play a simple and effective half guard? Well, get your hands on arguably the best half guard player ever, Bernardo Faria’s DVD set, “Battle Tested Half Guard.”  Bernardo is infamous for his simple, effective, and tenacious half guard.  He has a game that is suitable for anybody at any age, weight, gender, or fitness level!