It doesn’t matter if most of your body is in bottom position when your hips are on top of your opponents hips

Principles: Weight, Connection, Posture, Grips, Kuzushi...,Guards

February 11, 2020

It doesn’t matter if most of your body is in bottom position when your hips are on top of your opponents hips: A distinctive feature of closed guard is that even though your body as a whole is in bottom position, your HIPS are in top position on top of your opponents hips - and your hips are the most important part of your body when it comes to grappling. Learn to take advantage of this fact. Here, Gordon takes advantage of top hip position from bottom closed guard to threaten a sweep and play off the defensive reactions to this threat. He has come up so effectively that the whole idea of bottom position is moot at this point. The beauty of sweeping from position featuring top hip position is that any successful sweep will lead directly to a mounted pin after the sweep - greatly adding to the effect.