Key Takeaways
- A fundamentals-first open guard course from Henry Akins, a 3rd-degree Rickson Gracie black belt and one of the most trusted teachers of Rickson’s method.
- Four volumes move from denying guard passes and breaking grips, through low singles and knee shield, into sweeps, submissions and foot-lock defence.
- The recurring theme is invisible pressure and “advanced fundamentals” — small adjustments that make standard techniques work against genuine resistance.
- Best suited to white through purple belts and anyone who values simple, self-defence-oriented guard play over sport-specific open guard systems.
- Thinner on modern sport guard systems and leg-lock offence, which is consistent with Akins’ traditional, anti-sport stance.
- Rating: 8.5/10
GET IT HERE: Easy and Effective Open Guard Henry Akins DVD
Professor Henry Akins has spent roughly three decades trying to make Jiu-Jitsu simpler, not fancier. Easy and Effective Open Guard, his four-volume BJJ Fanatics release, is that philosophy applied to one of the most sprawling positions in the art. Rather than teach an encyclopedia of open guard variations, Akins builds a compact, repeatable game around a single core idea: the first thing an opponent needs to pass your guard is control of your ankles, so the first thing you should do is never let them have it.
Open guard is where most beginners feel naked and where most instructionals get bloated. There is an endless supply of De La Riva, lasso, spider and berimbolo material aimed at sport competitors, and comparatively little aimed at the student who simply wants their guard to stop being a highway for passes.
Akins sits firmly in that second camp, and it shows in the way the series is organised. Every technique is framed by the threat that precedes it — the pass, the grip, the disengage — so nothing is taught in a vacuum. The result is a course that reads less like a technique dump and more like a coherent defensive system with attacks built on top.
From Rickson Gracie’s Academy to Hidden Jiu-Jitsu – Professor Henry Akins
Akins is not a competition-credential heavy instructor, and he does not pretend to be. His authority comes from a different place: he is a black belt directly under Rickson Gracie, one of only a handful of Americans Rickson promoted to that rank, and a former head instructor at Rickson’s academy in Los Angeles.
In 2004, after a training session at Rickson’s residence, Henry Akins received his black belt — becoming Rickson’s third American black belt — and he later ran the academy after his teacher returned to Rio de Janeiro.
He is also, by several accounts, the person Rickson trusted to teach his own son. Akins taught Kron Gracie the fundamentals of his father’s Jiu-Jitsu, a role that speaks louder than any medal count.
There was nobody Rickson trusted more to pass his Jiu-Jitsu on to Kron than Henry Akins.
–Sean Patrick Flannery, 3rd-degree black belt –
That lineage matters here because open guard, done Akins’ way, is fundamentally a self-defence position. Akins is openly sceptical of the sport side of Jiu-Jitsu, and his guard game reflects it: feet on hips, control first, submissions and sweeps as a by-product of not letting the opponent settle. He now teaches through his own Hidden Jiu-Jitsu platform, where his stated values — simple, effective, efficient — map one-to-one onto what this series delivers.
Easy and Effective Open Guard Henry Akins DVD Review
The four volumes follow a clean logical progression: survive and break control, threaten and rise, sweep and attack from the inside, then defend and finish. Each volume builds on the one before it. The gaps — no modern sport game, no offensive leg-lock curriculum — are real but predictable, and they are the price of Akins’ deliberately traditional approach.
Volume 1: Taking Away the Pass
Akins opens with his foundational idea — an opponent cannot pass your guard without controlling your legs, so the job is to strip that control the moment it appears. He works through breaking ankle control, countering the two-on-one leg drag, and late-stage recovery when a pass is already in motion.
The tripod and sickle sweeps close the volume, turning the defensive posture into a scoring threat. This is the most important volume in the set, and Akins spends appropriately long on the grip-fighting details that make everything else possible.
Volume 2: The Low Single and the Knee Shield
From the feet, Akins introduces the low single as a response to an opponent who disengages, changes angle or pulls a foot free — a wrestling-flavoured answer that keeps a guard player dangerous when a passer backs out of range. On the knees, the volume covers distance management and the knee shield guard as a structure that prevents leg control. The link between these two halves is Akins’ constant theme: create or deny space on your terms.
Volume 3: Sweeps and Attacks From the Inside
Here the series turns offensive. The scissor sweep, flower sweep and hip bump sweep form the core, each taught against a specific reaction. The kimura when the opponent pushes, and the arm drag sequences — to an armlock, to an Americana, and to the back — give the guard a genuine submission threat. This is the volume where Akins’ “invisible pressure” claims are most testable, and it rewards students who drill slowly and feel for the weight shifts he describes.
Volume 4: Feet Inside, Foot Locks and the Finish
The closing volume addresses what happens when an opponent attacks your legs, with basic preliminary defences for foot locks before bringing both feet inside to butterfly guard. The butterfly sweep (hook sweep) and an inverted armbar give a finishing route, and a “putting it together” chapter ties the volumes into a single flow. The foot-lock material is defensive rather than offensive, which fits Akins’ self-defence lens but will feel thin to leg-lock specialists.
Sharpen Your Guard Game
This is not a series you binge and immediately overhaul your game. Akins’ material rewards slow, deliberate drilling, and several techniques — the tripod sweep, the low single, the knee shield — are positions you can isolate with a partner in a single open-mat session.
A realistic path is to install one volume per month, starting with Volume 1, and let the grip-fighting concepts bleed into everything else you already do. The time investment is modest; the payoff comes from the details compounding, not from the volume count.
Easy and Effective Open Guard Henry Akins DVD DOWNLOAD
Who Is This For?
The target student is a white or blue belt whose open guard collapses under pressure, plus any purple belt who wants to strip their guard game back to reliable fundamentals. It fits both Gi and No-Gi training — Akins teaches concepts, not lapel-dependent grips, and most of the series translates cleanly. It is also a good fit for coaches who teach beginners and want a clear, structured guard curriculum.
Who won’t benefit: experienced competitors hunting modern sport systems, and anyone primarily interested in leg-lock offence or berimbolo-style inversion. Those games simply are not here.
Pros & Potential Drawbacks
Pros:
- Genuinely simple structure. Four volumes, each with a clear job, and a logical progression from defence to offence. Nothing feels padded.
- Rare lineage and teaching credibility. Akins is a Rickson Gracie black belt and former academy head instructor — not a name you buy on competition hype.
- Concept-driven, not move-driven. The ankle-control framework is portable, so students keep the lesson even when a specific sweep fails.
- Gi and No-Gi friendly. Minimal grip dependence means the material works in both settings.
- Excellent for beginners and coaches. A rare open guard title that a white belt can actually absorb end to end.
- Invisible-detail teaching. The small adjustments Akins emphasises are exactly the things most generic instructionals skip.
Potential Drawbacks:
- Not sport-competition oriented. If your goal is De La Riva, lasso and berimbolo for point-scoring, this series will feel like it ignores your world.
- Defensive foot-lock material only. Leg-lock specialists will find little to use here beyond basic defence.
- Slow, deliberate pacing. Akins teaches thoroughly, which means impatient viewers may find some chapters repetitive.
The Verdict: Who Should Buy Easy and Effective Open Guard?
Easy and Effective Open Guard earns its place as a strong, honest fundamentals course from one of the more credible teachers in Jiu-Jitsu. It is not a flashy product, and it is not trying to be; it is a well-sequenced, concept-first guard system that a white or blue belt can actually implement, taught by someone whose authority on simple, pressure-tested fundamentals is close to unmatched.
