Name: 10 CONCEPTS You Need To Pass Guards
Uploaded: 2026-01-27T13:12:33.000Z
Duration: 6 min 55 s
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Adverbs of degree

so many people focus on the techniques to actually get it done when they should be focusing on concepts.

Concepts are principles like posture, weight distribution, angles and timing that make guard passing effective no matter the specific technique that you use.

In this video, we're going to go over 10 concepts that you need in your jitsu game to improve your passing.

But keep in mind, not all these concepts will be used together, although they will all be important.

Concept 1 Removing posts posts create distance and stop offense, such as feet on your hips or hands on your shoulders.

The bottom player always has access to more posts as they can engage both feet in both hands.

In order to pass the guard, we need to find ways to remove posts.

Stripping, extracting and redirecting are all effective ways to remove posts from your body.

If you're outside passing, you can push them down to keep their hands from posting against your legs and you put your hands up their hips to weaken their legs from wrapping around your body.

Or if we are tight and they are posting against their shoulders, we can use a drag to redirect the arm and remove the post.

Concept 2 Distance management controlling the distance denies connections.

Your opponent can use connections to create posts, pull you in or enter into favorable positions, but

by controlling the distance as the top player, this lets you choose when you want to initiate.

This could mean being outside of their reach when you are standing, so they need to overextend.

This could mean you're playing a middle ground where you camp them and they are stuck waiting for what's coming next.

Or this could mean you're extremely tight looking for chest to chest positioning and you won't let them move.

The goal is always to be elusive or overwhelming.

Distance management achieves this by using the third concept of selective engagement.

Just because someone grabs your wrist doesn't mean you need to kneel down and start working in their half guard.

Selective engagement is a key concept in guard passing, so you enter preferred positions.

An example would be someone entering into a leg entanglement on you.

You are losing this position as they are the threatening player.

You should first clear a leg before proceeding to pass instead of going into the leg entanglement with your original plan.

Dorian Olivares is a master of this, where he is constantly pulling out of bad positions and restarting his attack instead of forcing a game of chess.

You still need to engage, but pick only the engagements that benefit you the most.

Concept 4 Inside Positioning this should be a little bit obvious, but the inside positioning is.

That could mean the ribcage when you're underneath their elbow.

It could mean by their neck when they can't cover with their ear, posting on the hip inside their legs, negating your opponent's inside space by going chest to chest or even having an underhook instead of an overhook.

The inside position allows you to react first because they need to go around your body.

It can even stop them entirely if you have sealed the inside position and they can no longer move.

There's a reason so many of your favorite techniques need something like an underhook, why we deny inside connections, and

Concept 5 on their back and Feet Away Putting your opponent on their back is preferable so they have less attacking options.

Remember earlier we talked about posts where they can put their hands and feet on us?

Pointing the feet away is also preferable because they can't use their legs to defend.

Now if we can put them on their back and point their feet away simultaneously, we're close to passing their guard.

You can put your opponent down by elevating the legs or by pushing their shoulders behind their hips.

You can point the feet away by redirecting, pushing or pulling.

Here's a great example of Dorian constantly keeping his opponent on his back, redirecting, pushing and pulling legs all at the same time.

Concept six Directions of Attack There are four ways around the guard.

You can go through it like a knee, slice around it like outside, passing over it, such as a leapfrog, and

even under it such as a double underpass.

All directions are viable attacks and create openings.

The more you can change directions of attack, such as combining an outside pass with a duck under, the more luck you have in actually finishing the pass.

Personally, I've completely changed my passing style to prioritize outside passing, and

what really helped me was understanding I needed to combine my directions of attack.

If I'm passing on the outside, I might switch the other side immediately by going under the leg.

Or maybe I'll double fake and go the same way.

I started Keep changing attacks to pass the guard.

Concept 7 Gravity 1 concept not commonly talked about is using gravity.

I wouldn't be surprised if Isaac Newton practiced jutsu when he was alive.

Pinning and isolating the opponent's body is much easier when you're directly pushing down.

The goal is to feel as heavy as possible when you decide to connect to your opponent.

One of my favorite parts of passing is being able to hang out in a middle stage between Passing and not passing, where I camp and pin their hips to the mat.

This is so much easier because I'm leaning my entire body on them, letting gravity push hard against them, and

preventing easy movements from my opponent.

We talked about the concept of inside space, but

how do we actually do that when we are passing?

It's important to know that the tighter of a ball our opponent is in, the the tougher it is to pass.

They aren't giving us inside positioning.

We can remove legs from the equation with something like a leg drag where we have now isolated one of their legs.

We can even remove one arm by using a Kimura grip to rip an isolating arm, also giving us inside space.

As long as we can open up this ball, we're going to have more success.

And while this video is for passing, isolating these limbs will help us later.

It's easy to think about using our hands and legs to pass.

But a lot of students forget to use their head.

You can almost think of your head as a fifth limb with how much utility it brings to passing.

Your head can be used as a line of defense or as a line of offense.

When I looked at pressure pass, I like to use my head as an extra pinning method.

When I look to outside pass, I also use it to help pin.

If someone comes into me too strong, guess what?

I'll use it to create distance or to close distance.

Additionally, your opponent needs their head.

Whenever you move their head, the rest of their body will follow.

Concept 10 pinning we've seen lots of concepts beat around the bush with pinning, but

Pinning is essential to passing because guess what the body moves.

If our opponent can move, they can prevent us from passing.

By pinning the opponent's body, we take away movement.

The shoulders are responsible for keeping them upright and allowing a lot of core movement.

By pinning shoulders to the mat, it creates openings for passing.

If I pin them, I can use body lock style passes, or I can do duck underpasses.

The shoulders aren't the only thing worth pinning, but

the more of their body that can't move, the more success we will have.

That quickly wraps up 10 passing concepts that you need if you want to be successful in jiu jitsu.

I'll be creating more videos like this to make your jiu jitsu easy so you have the most success in your room.

Make sure to subscribe and watch out for the new videos.