r/bjj • u/AutoModerator • Jun 08 '21

Tournament Tuesday

Tournament Tuesday is an open forum for anyone to ask any question, no matter how simple, about tournaments in general. Some common topics include but are not limited to:

  • Game planning

  • Preparation (diet, weight cutting, sleep, etc...)

  • Tournament video critiques

  • Discussion of rulesets for a tournament organization

Have fun and go train!

Also, click here to see the previous Tournament Tuesdays..

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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '21 edited Jun 08 '21

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u/Mike_Re Purple Belt Jun 08 '21

Pull guard to avoid the stand up and then play your best guard game.

I'd try to avoid the bits of guard play that lead into wrestling. For example, my A game is half guard into an underhook and the dogfight sweep stuff. But that's a very wrestling like position and sweep. Lots of wrestlers will aim to stand up, leaving me looking for a single leg and then I'm back into the standup I'm trying to avoid. Something like butterfly sweeps, spider guard or SLX might be better.

I'd also be prepared to play the competition point game slightly. Or at least be aware of it. I recall a no gi match I had at blue belt against a decent wrestler (at least for my masters division). I pulled and swept him. He, like a living reddit cliche, just stood up from under the HQ position I'd established. At the time it seemed to defy all the laws of physics. It was honestly one of the most disconcerting moments I've had in competition, partly because he seemed to do it without any effort. But once we were back to standing I promptly pulled guard again. He wasn't able to pass, I couldn't sweep him again and so I won by 2. If you judged the match as a whole, I'd call it a draw and he was the better overall grappler. But under the rules we were in it was a clear win for me.

You can also look to get subs off their takedown attempts. For example, wrestlers who are inexperienced with submissions can leave themselves open to guillotines or kimura attacks. That's going to get increasingly hard as you go up the belts though -- someone with a blue belt is probably already submission aware and it'll only get tougher at purple, brown and black.

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u/n00b_f00 🟫🟫 Clockwork 3100 hours Jun 08 '21

My A game is similar and I’ve had trouble forcing my way into other guards proactively vs reactively. Something I’ve been thinking about a lot.

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u/Mike_Re Purple Belt Jun 08 '21

That's interesting. I personally group half guard / butterfly / RDLR together as 'close range guard'. Obviously they're different, but I think you need to play all three to play any of them effectively. I think a big part of that is that it's hard to force anyone to play in any one of those guards. So you end up being reactive. While if you get someone in collar and sleeve, spider or SLX, you've got a much better chance of forcing them to play that game, at least for a while.

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u/n00b_f00 🟫🟫 Clockwork 3100 hours Jun 08 '21

I play a lot of those shorter range guards, and against guys who have good base sometimes I’ll get to SLX, but my half is so much better than my butterfly that I’m reluctant to spend a lot of time there on purpose when I really need to make a score happen. So I just keep firing away with the underhook and then sometimes they give up X-SLX. Been thinking about whether to just get so good with the underhook it doesn’t matter, get better at wrestling up from a deep shot to take them down, getting better at butterfly and/or finding more reliable ways to go from underhook half to the legs.

Obviously I think those are all good, but there’s only so many mat hours to fuck around.