ALTA Week 6 Grappling

Grappling – Half Guard Bottom – Week 6

Any time you hear the word “guard”, think legs. If you have a guard, then you are using your legs to control part of your opponent’s body. The “half” part refers to the fact that your guard is controlling half of their lower body. If you had your legs wrapped fully around their waist/hips and locked behind their back, that would be “full” or “closed” guard. Now, like all grappling positions, there’s a top and a bottom and you’ll have different goals depending on which you are. In this lesson, we’ll be the bottom player – hence “Half-guard bottom”. 

Posture and Goals

1. Lower body Control: Using your leg that’s between your opponent’s two legs, you’ll be crossing your shin over their calf muscle on their leg that’s closest to you. By applying downwards pressure (being heavy) on their calf, you prevent (or at least slow down) their advance to side control or mount. Your other leg (the free leg) can help in a number of ways (each making a different variation of half guard). You could, for example, triangle your legs (which is great for clamping down on their leg, but also keeps you stuck on bottom); you could insert a knee shield to maintain distance (referred to as “knee-shield half guard” or “z-guard”; you could insert a butterfly hook for “butterfly half”; you could cross your ankles and put your knee cap on the corner of their hip for what’s called the “G-roll half guard”; you could opt for the “super hook” which involves wrapping your lace around their shin with your leg that’s between theirs leaving your free leg free to post on the mat for glute bridging. The common denominator on all variations is your leg between their two and heavy on their calf. 
2. Upper Body Control: While the legs are doing their thing, there’s a different battle happening on the upper body. The top player will want to grab your head with a “cross-face” and get an underhook. With that combination of grips, they can force you flat to your back and immobilise your upper body, thus allowing them to focus on then beating your legs for a pass to side control or mount. With that in mind, your focus, on bottom, is to block their hand that’s trying to grab your head. Co-incidentally, this is also the hand they’ll punch you with so controlling that arm of theirs is a very good idea. You’ll also want to look at getting your own underhook, whenever you get the opportunity. This will allow you to start wrestling back up. 
3. General position: The top player, as mentioned in the previous point, will want to put you flat on your back. It therefore follows that your goal is to prevent that. You should always aim to be on your side facing towards them. Resist any attempt they make to put your shoulders on the mat.

Jaws of Life (half guard version)

If you get flattened out by a cross-face and underhook, putting you flat on your back, your guard is going to be passed very soon after. You have a late option to recover upper body control using the “Jaws of Life”. We had a version of this in side control bottom also so the concept should be familiar.

• Push their head back to the middle: When they have cross-face and underhook, their head will be beside yours on the side where you’d ideally like your own underhook. Due to the chest to chest pressure, it’s impossible to just dig an underhook here. Instead use that hand to push their face back towards the middle, effecting moving their head directly above yours.
• Join your hands and bench press their chin: On the side they have a cross-face grip, your arm is an underhook. However, that underhook is no good to you. It’s on the wrong side. So instead bring that hand across over their shoulder and under their head, joining with your other hand under their chin. With both hands combined, you should now find it easy to bench press their chin towards the ceiling. This will separate their chest from yours.
• Frame under their shoulder to maintain the distance: Now with the hand you first used to push their face towards the middle, circle your elbow inside their armpit space and use your forearm to make a frame across their shoulder, chest and collar bone. This frame will provide a strong support to maintain the distance you previously created between your chest and theirs. 
• Swim a cross-face blocker inside: With the frame in place, now you can circle your other arm inside and push their cross-face arm out and away from your head.
• Get on your side: As you’re clearing the cross-face, you’ll find it easier to begin shifting your hips away from them and getting your back off the floor. The goal is to get back on your side, so you’re facing them.
• Dig your frame through for an underhook: This step is optional. You may choose to keep your forearm frame a while longer, but ultimately this frame is the arm you’ll use to dig an underhook if you decide to wrestle up.

Coming up on a single leg

In BJJ, being on bottom isn’t necessarily a bad thing – especially if you’ve got good attacks from your guard. However, with the added complication of being punched in the face, the goals are slightly different in MMA. Getting back up on top is always going to be plan A in MMA. Coming up on a single is your best bet from half guard bottom.

1. Dig the underhook and bury your head: Whenever you get an opportunity, you want to dig your underhook and sit up into your opponent, burying your head into their stomach as low as you can. To facilitate this, you’ll be building up to your elbow on the other arm. (Note: building to an elbow comes with its own risk. This leaves the opportunity for the top player to get a “Dagestani handcuff” on you, but that’s another day’s work). With your head buried low in their stomach, blocking the cross-face grip is no longer that much of a priority.
2. Bump them forward or rake their leg outwards: There’s two variations on this next step.
   1. Bump them forwards allows you to get further underneath them. To bump them, you can shrug your underhook grip and launch their weight forwards up over your head. Your free leg can perform a glute bridge motion to assist the bump. 
   2. If you prefer, you can use your free leg to step over their leg that’s closest to you and rake it outwards. This puts their knee in a precarious angle and turns their hips in a different angle preventing the mount. 
3. Upgrade the Underhook to a Single Leg: With an underhook grip, there’s a split second after the bump or rake where the top player can step over to get mount. Timing is critical here. Without any delay, you need to upgrade your underhook to a single leg grip. Bring your underhook down to grab the back of the leg that’s closest to you. Your bicep should be on their hamstring and your hand should be able to grab the front of their thigh. If you did a good job of burying your head low on their stomach earlier, this grip should be relatively easy to achieve. If you find it difficult to grab their leg, you probably didn’t bury your head low enough or bump them up high enough.
4. Get to your knees and finish the sweep: Once you’ve gotten the single leg grip, all that’s left to do is to get both your knees underneath you. Use the single leg grip to lift your opponent’s leg slightly off the ground. This will allow you to get your leg, that’s been between their legs all this time, out and back under you. Now that you’re back on your knees with a single leg grip, you will find it easy to use your other arm (previously used to block the cross-face) to reach for their far knee, block it and run them over to reverse your positions. 

Kimura attack (submission and sweep)

While getting back on top is always Plan A, sometimes you’ll get an opportunity to end a fight from bottom. The kimura is a very effective shoulder lock that you can hit from half guard bottom.

1. Sit up to attack get the kimura grip: From your half guard bottom position (assuming you’re on your side, blocking their cross-face and have a forearm frame across their chest), you can aggressively sit up and reach over their shoulder (getting your armpit on the ball of their shoulder). Your other hand should have a grip of their wrist as you post on that elbow for balance. Now thread your top arm around the back of their tricep and under their forearm to grab your own wrist of your bottom arm. Congratulations, you have now achieved a double wrist lock or kimura grip.
2. Roll to your back and apply the lock: With the grip established, you can know roll back and over towards your other shoulder. Due to the kimura grip, this will bring your opponent’s chest down and forwards. To apply the shoulder lock, keep their elbow tight to your chest and their forearm parallel to their spine. Aim to put the palm of their hand on the mat (like you’re high five-ing the floor with their hand). This comes on fast, so don’t jerk the movement. Slow steady pressure and give plenty of time for them to tap.
3. Optional Sweep: By keeping lower body control with a half guard, you’ll get the shoulder lock submission. However, if you let go of the half guard, the top player can forward roll over the shoulder you’re attacking. You can follow them up and take top position. You can also keep hold of the kimura grip and apply the shoulder lock from a top position which is even better.

Note on Kimura Grip: In BJJ, it’s common to switch to a “thumbless grip” once you’ve achieved the kimura grip. This is to avoid spraining the thumb. However, it catch wrestling, they keep a c-clamp grip with both hands. Former UFC Heavyweight Champion – Josh Barnett – visited SBG Cork in 2024 and when I asked him about the thumbless grip and the danger of spraining a thumb, he looked at me with disgust as if I was a shame to the human race. Wrestlers don’t believe in sprains, apparently.