This week the topic was seated upright guard. On monday I did some work with the butterfly guard. I have a post here outlining that matierial as I usually teach it already. On tuesday I decided to do something a bit different. I wanted to work the upright guard position vs combat base. Lots of SBG guys use the combat base. It’s a legacy from Chris Hauter who is Matt’s coach. There isn’t much material at all out there on how to counter the combat base so I wanted to work it in the lab a bit. I watched the few videos I could find and checked in with some guys at the gym to see how they deal with combat base. I also had in mind the material that Matt teaches with regard to that position. After piecing it all together I tried to come up with some basic fundamentals that most of that material had in common.
Combat Base Posture
I wasn’t interested in teaching a set or series of techniques. I was more interested in exploring the geography of the position. I wanted students to leave class having a better understanding of attacking combat base regardless of whether or not they learned any techniques. I wanted them to have a technical base to use to explore more on their own.
The typical combat base is illustrated in the photo to the right. One knee is up and one is down. The arm on the knee side can be inside or outside of the knee. The advantages of this position are many. Your knee makes triangles and arm bars hard for the bottom guy. He can’t close his guard because your knee is in the way. Your base is nice and wide which takes away most sweeps. You also have tremendous forward driving power from here.
If we are going to attack this posture we need to know it’s strengths and objectives and then we can build a counter posture that takes those away. That’s what we are going to do. So, put your bullshit meter on and strap in!
Counter Posture Step by Step
Step 1
Step 1 is to control his forward pressure. We can do this easy enough by getting a foot up on his hip right away. This combined with framing on his shoulders/neck with your forearm will prevent him from being able to drive forward through your guard.
Right foot goes up to hip to prevent his forward drive.
An alternative foot position is to use the other foot on his hip if he removes your right one.
Here you can see that the top guy removes my foot from his hip. I immediately respond by weaving my other foot in and placing it on his hip.
Step 2
Now we need to take care of that forward knee. He can’t drive into us too effectively with our foot on his hip but he can shove his knee across our leg on either side pinning out hips. We need to negate that advantage. In order to do that we’ll circle a bit towards his up knee. We are trying to move to his side a bit.
Circle towards his back on the up knee side.
Step 3
Isolate the knee. We need to lock in his up knee so that he can’t drive effectively with it. We do this by closing off the space. You can underhook the knee and hug it to your shoulder, or you can reach around and grab his belt.
Isolating the knee by underhooking and attaching it to my shoulder. You must squeeze your knees together here to make a good posture.
You can isolate his knee by reaching around and grabbing his belt while you squeeze your knees together.
Step 4
Once we establish this posture the top guy will panic a bit and usually try to back out.
Top guy backing out of my posture. If we don't lock him in he'll do this every time.
In order to prevent the back out we need to lock him in. We’ll do that by grabbing with our left hand. There are several different grip possibilities that will accomplish holding him in so that he can’t back out easily. Here are a few.
Grab the belt from behind. Squeeze your knees together. I'd also reach around with my right hand and get his left arm in this picture.
Reach under the knee and grab the far lapel. This isolates the knee and keeps him from backing out.
Sleeve and lapel grip.
Far sleeve only.
Step 5
Step 5 is unbalancing him and going for a sweep. You can go forwards, backwards, or back out and smash. If you establish your posture correctly it’s easy at this point to take him over.
Unbalance him forward...
Unbalance backwards...
Bail out and smash. In this case I'm taking his leg with me.
April 21, 2010 at 5:14 pm
[...] week 1 = open guard offense week 2 = upright guard offense, upright guard vs combat base [...]
April 23, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Sweet. My favourite after step 3 is if they give you the opportunity to back out a little and establish ankle to ankle contact
May 1, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Thanks Liam. That’s an interesting option. I thought of working that one as well. I didn’t want to complicate things too much though. Plus I’m not very good at that option yet. I think I’ve seen Matt teach that one?
May 1, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Hi Cane!
We worked this the other night in class. When we increased the resistance, we found it was a battle with the CB player having the advantage. The foot on the hip was the contested item.
Our original thought was not to play seated guard at all, but look to immediately stand up to take the pressure advantage away from the CB player.
I suppose that’s more of an approach/strategy, as opposed to having a look at options when you stay seated/attached.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Kier (SBG Toronto)
May 1, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Kier,
I agree. The key to combat base top is range. It’s really a tight close range position. If you make space by standing or even scooting back then it takes away much of the advantage. I started my lesson with that advice. The best way to nullify combat base is to take it’s range away immediately. Having said that, if you want to stay there and fight then I’d maybe do what I outlined in the post. Thanks for the comment!
May 3, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Perfect! Thanks for the clarification!
May 17, 2010 at 2:45 am
I genuinely enjoyed reading through this posting.Many thanks.
January 23, 2011 at 6:09 am
Thanks for a great post, and a great blog.
I like your ideas on drilling – I’m going to try to implement them when learning techniques in class, and when I’m doing my own drilling.
http://soniahamilton.wordpress.com/tag/bjj/
February 14, 2011 at 12:55 am
Your counter/solutions are pretty good. I always counter it with DeLa Riva guard, which used to be called “the vine & ankle guard”
(when I learned it, Dela Riva hadn’t made his name yet)
I actually teach whole clinics on “Countering the Combat Base”
February 14, 2011 at 10:06 pm
Thanks Chris. As I understand it the combat base as used all over SBG came from you to Matt. I’d love to see you do a combat base clinic at one of our SBG camps one day.