Key Takeaways
- A 4-part BJJ DVD featuring the Gi that explores how to optimally play guard using double sleeve control.
- Covers guard retention, submission and sweep attacks, and transitions between different guards.
- Features the Spider/Lasso guard, De la Riva guard, shin-to-shin guard and X-guard.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 8.5 out of 10.
DOUBLE SLEEVE GUARD JON THOMAS DVD GET HERE:
What’s the first grip you establish when you play guard in the Gi? If you mention the collar anywhere in your answer, you have no idea how to play guard against standing opponents. If you don’t mention a sleeve grip, you have no idea of how to play any guard.
Allow Jon Thomas to help. In the Double Sleeve Guard Jon Thomas BJJ DVDyou get everything that he usually offers in his YouTube video, but taken up a whole level – this one lasts over two hours. Let’s take a closer look at this instructional.
The Coolest Trick in BJJ
One of the things I really love to show people when I teach anything guard-related is how to prevent a pass using nothing but their grips. I simply get the bottom person to grab the top person’s palms, one in each hand, usually from a stated position. Then, I ask the top person to pass.
You can try it out for yourself, but let me save you the hassle – the top person can’t pass. It turns out, that the top person needs to have at least one arm free to grip during passing, otherwise, they stay hopelessly far away from getting their hips past the bottom person’s knees and hips.
You can use this cool trick any way you want while playing guard. whether you opt for wrists, palms, or sleeve grips, as long as the palms of the top person stay away from you and you can control their elbows to a certain point, you’ll have a breeze at keeping any guard. Most of you are already seeing attacking opportunities that appear as the top person tries to deal with the grips.
The Double Sleeve Guard Jon Thomas BJJ DVD makes a lot of sense when you know this fact about passing. Jon knows exactly how valuable double wrist control is, and he does an outstanding job explaining how to build a full guard game using them in this instructional.
Jon ‘Spaghetti’ Thomas
If you’ve ever searched for anything BJJ related on YouTube, which you have, as well as me and everyone else who trains, you’ve seen Jon Thomas. His YouTube channel is crazy good, offering not just in-depth instructions, but also constantly going over positions and moves that many people don’t use often.
From fundamental principles to crazy move sequences, Thomas has proven to be able to explain everything in a way that makes sense using short clips only. Now, imagine what a full-length instructional, such as the Double Sleeve Guard Jon Thomas BJJ DVD can offer!
Thomas, apart from being a YouTube grappling celebrity, is a well-established black belt under Lucas Lepri. Jon has been training since he was a teenager, competing since the early 2000s. Along the way, he decided to go pro, seeking our Ryan Hall at first, before linking up with Alliance and settling under Lepti and Romero Cavalcanti.
Promoted to black belt in 2013, the Missouri native has won the Worlds twice at colored belts (purple and brown), but and the Pans three times (starting from blue belt). He still hasn’t replicated these results at black belt, although he has won a bunch of IBJJF open tournaments around the world.
The Double Sleeve Guard Jon Thomas BJJ DVD Review
The Double Sleeve Guard Jon Thomas BJJ DVD is a four-part Gi instructional that contains four volumes and lasts for over two hours. The material covers different guards that offer double sleeve control and methods to retain guard and attack using it:
Part 1 – Positional Theory & Examples
With Jon being particularly effective with his guard, the depth of knowledge available in the Double Sleeve Guard Jon Thomas BJJ DVD is staggering. That is apparent in the opening chapters of the instructional when Thomas explains the positional theory that fuels his guard game.
Through the four key aspects of any guard, Jon makes it obvious why the double sleeve control from the guard is so powerful, following it up with examples including the use of the De la Riva and sit-up guard. This first volume covers all the nuances of gripping, leg positioning, sleeve control, and basic off-balancing and set-up principles and directions.
Part 2 – Lasso/Spider Triangles & Retention
As we get to the second part of this Double Sleeve Guard Jon Thomas DVD, the focus is more on the practical use of the foundations demonstrated in the previous volume, mostly through the use of the hybrid lasso/spider guard.
Jon’s attention in this part is on explaining how attacks from the double sleeve position work, and how to stay on guard when you’re opponent’s are trying to break the connection. For the first aspect, Thomas picked triangle setups to explain how off-balancing and double-sleeve control exposes your opponent’s posture, and subsequently, their neck.
In terms of guard retention, he covers the most effective and often used threats from the top, from stomping to the wrist loops that make it impossible to hold, along with easy and straightforward solutions to them all.
Part 3 – X-Guard
Part three of the Double Sleeve Guard Jon Thomas BJJ DVD tells us about a guard we’ve seen Thomas use over and over again: the X-guard. Arriving there off the use of the spider/lasso guard brings cohesion to everything Jon demonstrates, allowing him to easily explain the back-and-forth relation between these guards.
Once again, keeping the guard is the key aspect, with JOn’s game making the most out of a double-sleeve grip from the X-guard. While it does mean you can’t immediately attack with a submission, it guarantees you can sweep in any direction you want. All of this is dissected over the course of half an hour in this volume.
Part 4 – Kneeling Opponents & More Spider Variations
The final part is Jon taking us on a journey of how his mind works in terms of applying double sleeve control to a bunch of guards, as he ties in together the lasso/spider, DLR, and X-guard, reinforcing all the information delivered up to this point.
As the Double Sleeve Guard Jon Thomas BJJ DVD nears the end, Thomas moves on to explore a level change, showing how you can use double sleeve control from the shin-to-shin guard and DLR variations even against people half-kneeling or kneeling from the top.
Grips Win Fights!
The more you understand grip fighting in BJJ, the more effective you’ll be in winning all exchanges, which also translates to winning more matches. When you’re the bottom player, grips are crucial to success, whereas you can sometimes manage to slide by using sub-optimal grips if you’re on top.
For the most part, you need to understand two key aspects of gripping to have a hope of succeeding in grappling. The first one is that you need to use your grip for a purpose, rather than just place your arm at a specific point. For example, with double writs grips, you need to pull and place tension on the arms, not just hang on to the Gi.
The second key principle of gripping in grappling is that you don’t have to break any grip an opponent has on you. Unless their grip serves a purpose, like explained above, leave it be – it won’t affect you while handicapping your opponent as a result of dedicating a limb to something that serves no goal.
The Double Sleeve Guard Jon Thomas BJJ DVD is great at providing you with plenty of answers in regard to the first of these two key gripping principles for grapplers. If you like to play guard with the Gi, this instructional must be a part of your collection.
FULL DOWNLOAD: DOUBLE SLEEVE GUARD JON THOMAS DVD
Grab Those Sleeves!
Remember, sleeve grips are not death grips! Holding on to the sleeves needs to be uncomfortable for your partner, not just give them a connection they can use to pass. The Double Sleeve Guard Jon Thomas BJJ DVD offers the perfect blueprint for setting up any guard game that utilizes double-arm control by using the same simple principles.
