Grappling and BJJ tips by Liam The Part-Time Grappler Wandi: BJJ / Grappling Tips: How to Open and Pass the Closed Guard

My teacher Professor Eddie Kone recently released a beautiful video on "How to Develop Pressure in Jiujitsu" and the geography he chose to demonstrate these concepts was inside the closed guard. Developing and maintaining pressure is something we spend a ton (pardon the pun) of time and energy on within EKBJJ, no less so when passing the guard. Here's professor Kone's video on the subject:

Once you use these concepts to keep your opponent under physical and mental pressure and the legs are opened, your main choices to pass are:

over the leg,
under the leg and to a lesser extent...
around the leg

I say to a lesser extent simply because (mostly) when you are creating pressure, you are keeping your hips connected to the opponent's hips from start to finish, meaning you are either sliding over their leg (e.g. within a tight knee slide pass) or under it (e.g. within a super heavy double / single underhook pass). There are indeed ways to pass around the legs without disconnecting the hip-to-hip pressure but they are less common.

In the following video, you will see very similar concepts being illustrated by another Gracie Humaita alumni, one of my personal jiujitsu heroes Sensei Saulo Ribeiro from his first series: Jiu-Jitsu Revolution:

Here's an earlier video that professor Kone shot where he flowed into an over the leg pass. What you can't see or feel in this video is the immense pressure he develops and maintains while passing over the leg and establishing side control:

Putting all these concepts together, you will start looking at being inside the guard differently. It's not a scary position where you are constantly under threat of sweep, submission or back take. Instead, it's an opportunity for you to show your opponent what your pressure feels like.

In the words of Rorschach (Watchmen 2009):