What Are We Guarding With Guard?

What are we guarding with guard in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu?

I’ve been doing BJJ for over 18 years. All that time I’ve been taught about guard and how it is what makes BJJ special.

But I’ve never heard anyone discuss: “what are we guarding when we use guard?”

Why do I think this is an important question? I think it’s built into the language. If I ask someone to guard my door, I’m asking them to make sure no one comes inside the house. If I talk about a dragon guarding it’s treasure, it’s clear the dragon doesn’t want you taking any gold or jewels or the Arkenstone.

But when we talk about guard in jiu jitsu, I tend to get muddled or vague answers about what we are guarding:

• our bodies (not wrong, but… my big toe is part of my body, am I guarding it with guard? Clearly not.)
• our chests (if I pull you into closed guard, your hands post on my chest. I don’t think this is it.)
• our torsos (ditto)
• space (what space? not wrong, but… not actionable)

I think the answer is that we are guarding our necks (and heads). And we do this by using our legs to control distance.

We can lose a leg, we can lose an arm, we can even lose a lung. But we can’t afford to get choked in a fight. So we are guarding our necks.

I think that:

Guard is the art of using your legs to control and manage distance to your neck.

Any time we don’t have the ability to control distance to our necks, or any time we imperfectly control distance to our necks (e.g. from half guard) we are at risk of getting choked.

This is the purpose of guard, and as a BJJ player you need to be able to recognize when your guard is not doing its job so that you can augment your neck defense with your hands.

Makhachev/Moicano

This idea crystallized recently watching the Makhachev vs Moicano fight.

Makhachev took Moicano down into half guard. While Moicano was in half guard, he did a good job of protecting his neck:

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Because it was half guard, he also used a hand to control access to his neck until he could use his legs to push Makhachev away:

But then Moicano stood up into Makhachev without protecting his neck:

Makhachev proceeded to attack the unguarded neck:

Then Makhachev finished with a short D’arce choke.

I see so many BJJ players (like Moicano) put their necks in dangerous positions like front headlock as if it is safe. I think we do this because it is not a scoring position under IBJJF rules. (Wrestlers do this too, for similar reasons.)

Any time we don’t guard our necks, whether with legs (to control distance) or with hands (to control grips), we are at risk of getting choked.

Caio Terra/Mason Fowler

My next observation about what we are guarding comes from an Internet meme with Caio Terra and Mason Fowler.

I’ve written about this before. The basic set up was that Caio Terra was in top half guard and Mason Fowler was in bottom half guard.

Because Mason Fowler had Caio Terra in guard, he felt that his neck was not under threat of attack. He was wrong. He thought Caio wanted to pass his guard.

You can watch the quick video here

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Terra was able to use his leg to brace against his arm to secure the choke.

This video is worth watching in full. But my basic take away was that guard is about guarding the neck. If your opponent is able to get to your neck, you need to take it seriously and realize your legs are no longer guarding the distance to your neck, even if you can’t immediately see the whole threat.

Implications

Because I’ve come to believe that guard is less about “good position” and more about controlling distance to your neck:

• if your opponent is able to reach your neck from guard, you need to address it.
• if your opponent passes your guard, they will reach your neck. You need to re-guard to regain some control over access to your neck.

Neither of these are earth shattering discoveries. But when I thought about my own rolling, and my students’ rolling and even high level world champion competitive level matches, I think there are a lot of times BJJ players aren’t behaving as if guard is about guarding necks.

Front Headlock Position is Dangerous!

This may seem obvious in the context of an MMA fight (attack the neck!) but for BJJ, the scoring system encourages passing guard to side control or north south. You don’t score by going to front headlock position and so I think a lot of us tend to ignore front headlock.

I’ve come to believe that front headlock position is the second most dominant position in grappling:

• your opponent cannot see what you’re doing (just like back take)
• you have access to your opponent’s neck
• guillotines are the second most successful submission in UFC and very successful submissions in BJJ.
• you have good set ups to transition to back take (the most dominant position)

If you look at the Makhachev/Moicano fight, Makhachev had the opportunity to flatten Moicano back out into side control:

Why didn’t he? Because front headlock position gave him direct access to the neck to secure the submission.

Turtle is a guard

I’ve also come to believe that turtle position is a guarding position. When your opponent stays behind you, your legs are partially in the way of their access to your neck.

This is why I believe the correct response for top from turtle position is to go to front headlock with easier access to the neck.

My own coach will always punish me if I take top turtle behind him by inverting and re-guarding.

Half guard is an imperfect guard

Because we can only control distance on one side of the body from half guard, top often has access to our necks. We need to respect that access and control it as I’ve written about here and here.

Closed guard is not perfect either

One of my pet techniques as a blue belt was to Ezequiel choke everyone from anywhere. Put me in closed guard the first time we rolled, I would lean forward and attempt to Ezequiel choke you. It was a very high percentage move for me especially because people instinctively thought their necks were safe from attack in guard.

Takedowns are dangerous… to the shooter

I have a friend who is a giant of a man. 6'4" 265 lbs. Bigger than Roger Gracie, and a former Div 1 All Amercian wrestler. You would think that if anyone could dominate BJJ with takedowns it would be him.

Instead, he has completely converted to guard pulling. Why? Because when you shoot a takedown, you are doing the opposite of guard. You are putting your neck front and center in harm’s way to be choked.

I’m starting to come around to the same way of thinking despite the fact that I was also a pretty successful wrestler. Once I trained the white and blue belts I roll with to attack guillotines mercilessly, I had to adjust. I’ll go for snapdowns and low singles where my neck is relatively far from their hands. But the moment I feel their hands by my neck I have to take it seriously and grip fight, even if that means losing the takedown.

Mount Is Overrated

If you can access the neck sometimes from guard, and you can access the neck always from side control or front headlock, is mount really an important position?

Under IBJJF rules you score 4 points for progression to mount. But in non-point based competitions, such as Marcelo Garcia vs Imanari, progressing to mount isn’t such a great deal. In fact, Marcelo Garcia dismounted Imanari in order to finish the choke (video starts at relevant point):

Conclusion

In conclusion, I have come to believe that guard means we are guarding our necks. Our necks and heads are the most important equipment we have. Guarding them over everything else makes immediate sense.

I think when you internalize the idea that guarding our necks is what guard is all about, you start to roll differently than at least the traditional BJJ I was taught. When on bottom you prioritize actions that keep you from being choked. And when on top you prioritize actions that lead towards choking your opponent. I know this sounds obvious and yet, even at high level matches, you can see examples of people getting caught because they don’t guard their necks properly or they fail to catch subs because they aren’t pursuing the neck when it’s actually available.

Next Up

Related: When One Hand is By Your Neck, You’re Halfway to Being Choked

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