Key Takeaways
- A Gi BJJ DVD offering a peek into what Baby Shark likes to do from open guards.
- The main feature is the De la Riva, with supine, standing, and hybrid options appearing throughout the DVD.
- Diogo covers sweeps, and upper body submissions, and shares different ways in which grips can change the outcome of your guard attacks.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 8.0 out of 10.
BABY SHARK GUARD SYSTEM DIOGO REIS DVD GET NOW:
Emulating the guard game of proven competitors and world champions is a common attempt for people to figure out a guard game for themselves. It doesn’t always work, but that’s because competitors find stuff that works for them, and even if they explain it perfectly, it may turn out to be less effective for everyone else.
The Baby Shark Guard System Diogo Reis DVD offers the Gi open guard game that Diogo likes to play. Somehow, whether intentionally or not, it also happens to contain instructions that work super effectively for others. It is definitely worth a look if you like to play classic open guards with reliable Gi grips.
A Winning Combo for Playing Open Guard
Open guards in BJJ are all about flirting with the danger of passing or leg locks as you try to attack the top person by initially making them work for their balance. While it is difficult to figure out a formula for open guard, mostly as a result of all the variations that exist, there are a few things that are foundational for each of them.
Namely, the two areas that you should aim to control on your opponent are his hips and his shoulders. Since this can be difficult given the many levels of passing that exist, I’ll dumb it down: control their legs and their arms, and you’ll do great.
Now whether you invert and control the arms with your legs and grab their legs with your arms, or you just grab two sleeves from the De la Riva guard, you’re doing the same thing, just in a different manner. For those who enjoy this latter iteration of open guard, the Baby Shark Guard System Diogo Reis DVD is tailor-made for you.
Diogo “Baby Shark” Reis
ADCC 2022. All Brazilians come dressed in soccer jersey-style Brazil rashguards, so it’s hard to make sense of who is who. I have no idea who some of them are anyway, especially the youngest one. By the end of the event, the grappler in question made sure everyone knew who he was and what his Jiu-Jitsu was about.
That grappler was Diogo Reis, the Baby Shark that exploded on the biggest stage in old-school Brazilian Style, coming out of nowhere. But that is only the way the BJJ world got introduced to him.
Behind all that success was a painstaking decade of work on the mats. Since he was 10, Diogo has spent all his time training, under the tutelage of his Alexandre Oliveira. It was Diogo’s older brother who lit a flame for grappling in Diogo and quickly impressed everyone.
After a few years of training and a rank of yellow belt, Diogo switched to Melqui Galvao’s gym, as it could provide a lot more opportunities. And so it did. Reis won the Worlds, Euros, Pans, Pan Kids, Brazilian Nationals, and Copa America during his collared belt days.
Galvao promoted the young prodigy to black belt in 2020, and it only took Diogo one try to win the ADCC, a feat he repeated in 2024. I bet you’re very interested now in the Baby Shark Guard System Diogo Reis DVD. Well, you should be, and here’s why:
Full Baby Shark Guard System Diogo Reis DVD Review
The Baby Shark Guard System Diogo Reis DVD offers four volumes, each covering a different aspect of playing the De la Riva guard in the Gi. The total running time of the instructional is under 2 hours, with all the basics and some advanced concepts covered in sufficient detail:
Part 1 – Sweeps and Armlocks
If there is one thing that “Baby Shark” is instantly recognizable for, it is armbars. The young Brazilian dominated the ADCC with them, and the Baby Shark Guard System Diogo Reis DVD shows in even greater detail why he is so good at them.
Most of the guard work in this instructional is from open guards, with the De la Riva being Diogo’s preferred position. Throughout the insturctional, he pairs the guard up with different grips but mostly uses double sleeve grips to set up his attacks.
Those attacks come in the form of sweep-submission dilemmas and upper-body submission chains. Several interesting supine sweeping options feature in this opening volume, connected to a bunch of direct or rolling armbars, and a tringle here and there to provide a surprise factor.
Part 2 – Sit Up Guard System
The second portion of the Baby Shark Guard System Diogo Reis DVD covers the De la Riva variation most people like to play in the Gi when they are attacking, which is a seated variety of the guard.
While a bit more complicated to hold on to, this version does provide a lot more in terms of attacks, and a lot less for the top person to use against you, especially after you see Diogo’s details and gameplan.
The skull crusher sweep, in several variations, is the star here, with the sleeve grips doing all the heavy lifting. Triangles open up an indirect route to even more sweeping if/when you can’t finish, and wrestling up from the position into single legs rounds off your options.
Part 3 – More Sweeps
The third part of the Diogo Reis Baby Shark Guard DVD was the one I enjoyed the most. The mermaid sweep is something I’ve been using since my white belt days, and it gets lots of attention in this part.
A few other very attractive sweeps that tend to be underutilized, such as the balloon sweep also get an update in terms of details and applications here. Reis includes lots of unbalancing by grabbing different parts of the legs and opening up a very interesting proverbial can of worms with sweeping in mind.
Part 4 – Hybrid Open Guards
The final part is all about flair and complications, way more than I personally enjoy. That said, I know guards such as the De la spider and DLR Lasso combinations work for some, so to each their own.
To Baby Shark’s credit, he does a good job of focusing on what really matters as he demonstrates how to sweep and submit from the aforementioned positions. The concept that runs through this final volume of the Baby Shark Guard System Diogo Reis DVD is stepping on the hip of the top person, something that I actually loved very much.
Old School Brazilian Guards
15 years ago the Spider Guard was the new thing everyone was trying to figure out, and the De la Riva was that staple open guard people learned. Both featured some sound mechanics and some very potent attacks, with the DLR also translating pretty well to No-Gi.
However, people started forgetting about the Spider Guard (I guess because No-Gi kind of took over) and they started overcomplicating the De la Riva, creating hybrid guards that only shared a starting position with the original DLR. Both are now in the category of old-school Brazilian-style guard, even though the DLR does have its regular flashes of brilliance nearly every year.
As a proponent of basic Jiu-Jitsu, I have no problem playing the DLR, and value its original versions just as much as I do the closed guard and half guard. The spider guard is a very one-dimensional one that I don’t really think has an important place in modern Jiu-Jitsu.
Luckily, there was not much Spider Guard in the Baby Shark Guard System Diogo Reis DVD. The De la Riva is the hero in it, and the throwback to this old-school open guard, and the improvements and ‘modernization’ Baby Shark brings without overcomplicating things is impressive, and above all, seems to be effective.
DOWNLOAD HERE: BABY SHARK GUARD SYSTEM DIOGO REIS DVD
The Apex Predator Guard
You can’t claim to be a shark anymore, as that legendary phrase has now been memefied beyond recognition. You could, however, opt to look into the Baby Shark Guard System Diogo Reis DVD and adopt the game plan he offers in it. If you are a Gi grappler, then this instructional is perfect for you, as it features the techniques that a reigning world champion uses daily.
