training notes, April 28th - passing open guard

I can't say I was at all enthused about having everyone learn open guard passes, since I love playing open guard. No, I kid: having a group of people who know how to foil my go-to guard position means I either develop a new guard game, or I improve my existing one. And that's win-win stuff right there.

Pass 1: Push away at their hips -- keep your elbows in, NOT flared out; place one knee in their tailbone (as a position, not Pride rules striking) and the other knee opens up to the side; sit back and twist your hips -- their guard should open up/fall apart.

Pass 2: Place both of your hands up into their armpits; scoot your hips back as you push them away. This clearly requires some reach, and as such, I didn't find much success with it this go-round.

Pass 3: Hands placed in their armpits; stand and wedge your knee in at their tailbone; sit back down over that same knee, sliding the opponent down your shin-- should bust apart their guard.

{After the fact, I'm wondering if maybe I would've seen a little better success with these 2 passes by instead placing my hands at belt/hip level and shoving away? If I reached up to my training partners' armpits, my balance was way off, as I was having to over-extend to reach that high. Or maybe I even could have underhooked the legs and grabbed some pants cloth?}

Pass 4: Smash pass. Control their hips. Raise one of your legs, planting the sole of your foot well beyond their reach. Raise your hips, placing one hand on their inside knee, the other hand stays on their hip. Press their leg down to the floor using the inside knee grip. Underhook their other leg. Reach across with that grip to secure a cross-collar grip on opponent. Once you've secured that cross-grip, tripod yourself up to place considerable/all weight on your opponent. Rotate (slowly, if you feel like being a bastard about it), smashing your opponent over into side control.