Stealing John Danaher's Instagram Posts

  The great advantage of half guard passing:  There are many excellent ways to pass a tough opponents guard and get into your upper body pins; but the one I always favor above all others is half guard passing - why?  The vast majority of guard passes always finish with control of an opponents head as the final step. You generally begin at the feet, progress to the knees and then beat the all important hips before settling into the penultimate step of pinning the head and shoulders. It’s almost always LEGS AND HIPS first and HEAD last.  Half guard switches that all around.  Most half guard passes begin with control of the head and shoulders first and then passing the hips second. This fundamental change of order creates a very impressive degree of control in half guard passing.  Of all the methods of control, HEAD CONTROL is the most powerful, and the fact that you get it EARLIER in the case of half guard passing makes for an impressive improvement in cont...

Pressure: The single greatest determinant of victory or defeat in grappling is the ability (or lack of) to apply PRESSURE OVER TIME on an opponent.  Remember always that the opponent you face in the first minute of a match is not the same person as you face in the tenth minute of that match.  Pressure wears us down, makes us poor decision makers, makes us settle for acceptable outcomes rather than optimal, makes us incapable or unwilling to perform moves we are capable of.  The more pressure you impose upon an opponent the more dramatic will be the degrading of the opponents abilities over time.  The skill of pressure fighting is to be able to CONSTANTLY KEEP YOUR OPPONENTS WORK RATE HIGHER THAN YOUR OWN OVER TIME AND ULTIMATELY HIGHER THAN WHAT HE IS CAPABLE OF SUSTAINING FOR THAT LENGTH OF TIME, WHILE KEEPING YOUR OWN WORK RATE WITHIN ACCEPTABLE LIMITS.  Learning and expanding your repertoire of techniques is your first goal in Jiu jitsu but as you progress y...