Key Takeaways
- A No-Gi BJJ DVD demonstrates how you can play half guard even without having your opponent’s leg in between yours.
- Covers how to use frames and leg configurations to stave off passes as you recover different guards.
- Features submission finishes on both the upper and the lower body.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 10 out of 10.
THE EMPTY HALF GUARD MICHAEL CURRIER DVD GET HERE:
“Big fellas giving you trouble from the top? Play half guard, you’ll be fine.”
If I had a penny for every time I heard this piece of “advice” on the mats. If only things were as easy as getting to half guard and turning into a giant slayer of Mikey Musumeci’s caliber. The truth is, though, that the half guard can be destroyed and smashed and passed, just like any other guard.
So what happens when you no longer have your opponent in the half guard? Well, you have a position that is innovatively named and covered in detail in the Empty Half Guard Michael Currier DVD. While highly effective, it is also very temporary, so you need a very clear idea of what you’re going to do. Currier has a bunch of them to offer.
What’s an Empty Half Guard?
The concept of the empty half guard is one I’d never heard before. Michael gave a name to a position I’ve found myself in again and again over the years. Simply put, the empty half guard is that final glimmer of hope to prevent a pass you have, courtesy of a “random” hook somewhere, once your half guard has failed.
And no, the stuff presented in the Empty Half Guard Michael Currier DVD is not just another take on the quarter guard. In fact, it happens even after the quarter guard, which was thought to be the final application of guard that can save your hide from passing.
Currier’s empty half guard combines instinctive reactions to hold on to a guard for dear life, using your feet as hooks and your hamstrings. This concept works when there’s no more half guard (or any amount of guard, for that matter, so we avoid fractions altogether), and you’re laid out on the mats with both shoulder blades smashed.
As a final note, there is a method to the madness, and the leg configurations are not at all random, even though they were probably inspired by such occurrences. Michael delivers all the “hows” and “whys” regarding leg placement and what you can do from the position.to turn it around.
The Gymnast Grappler – Michael Currier
There aren’t many people in their 40s that just see a random pull-up bar, jump on it, invert, and hang solely by their feet. Michael Currier did exactly that right in front of me while explaining the importance of tibialis (front shin) muscles in relation to what he was teaching.
A black belt under Michel Chapman, Currier has been roaming the world as a professional grappler, teaching all over the place and featuring as one of the most regular BJJ Golobetrotters instructors in the past several years. The combination of a lifetime of grappling and him being a smaller framed grappler makes him one of the most technical BJJ instructors out there.
Another very important aspect of Michael’s background that directly relates to his style of Jiu-Jitsu is that he is a former gymnast, hence his show-stopping pull-up bar antics. All in all, when it comes to the half guard, especially for smaller people, there’s no way to go wrong with a Michael Currier Half Guard DVD.
Empty Half Guard Michael Currier DVD Review
Over the course of two volumes, each just under an hour, the Empty Half Guard Michael Currier DVD delivers a fool-proof system that you can easily use and implement into your existing game without having to dedicate 2 weeks just to get through the material:
Part 1 – Guard Recovery & Frames
As the innovative Empty Half Guard Michael Currier DVD kicks off, and the mandatory short instructor and Uke intro is done, Michael goes straight to business by delivering a concept that is absolutely critical to his system – how to set up inside arm frames and manage the little distance you can.
The following chapters address the leg positioning, going over several versions of the empty half guard that you might run into. Since the position is not one to hold for long, recovery options follow, with everyone’s favourite butterfly and half guard mas-up taking center stage.
Towards the end of the first volume, recovery also leads to the X-guard, providing a solution for standing opponents, and concludes with even more details on framing, this time using your elbows.
Part 2 – Upper & Lower Body Attacks
The idea behind this Empty Half Guard Michael Currier DVD is to teach you how to recover a half guard that’s pretty much gone and end up in a legitimate attacking position. The first portion – recovery- was covered in the previous volume, leaving this portion to focus on attacks.
Currier begins with upper body submissions, tying a very slick Guillotine choke entry off his elbow frame. Building on this very strong start, he shows you how to pile on misery to people who think they’ve managed to pass through an interplay of triangles and arm locks.
This is a good place to mention that Michel is very proficient at stargiht armlocks, Choi Bar-style, so his moves come in the form of the shotgun straight armlock and the Mir Lock bent armlock, which always deliver the element of surprise along with a strong submission threat.
Wrapping up is Michael’s bread-and-butter leg lock game, or at least a snippet of it. The backside 50/50 is the destination that Currier ties in with the empty half guard recovery system, resulting in an unmistakable inside heel hook finish.
Attacking From “Bad Spots”
Bad spots is a term I try to avoid using, and even when I teach and mention it for context, it always has quotation marks on either side of it. The reason is that I don’t believe that there are bad spots, but rather spots that place you further from achieving a goal because you can attack from anywhere in BJJ.
By attacking, I don’t mean reaching out and getting a tap. If you want to practice imaginary martial arts, you have Aikido. In the BJJ world of real grappling, you have to work for any end-range move, be it a submission, pass, pin, or sweep.
That means that the goals for both grapplers are pretty much the same during exchanges – they both want inside space control, pinning (top and bottom, but that’s a subject for another day), and isolation to get a sub, as the ultimate finishing option.
The Michael Currier Empty Half Guard DVD sheds light on how you can use a position that people don’t even regard as being one and set up an entire attacking game from it. Yes, it’ll take longer than setting the same stuff up from the butterfly guard, but it’ll still work. Does more effort and work requirements make it a bad spot to fight from?
DOWNLOAD HERE: EMPTY HALF GUARD MICHAEL CURRIER DVD
From Zero to Hero
Dominating people from the bottom usually means trapping someone in a guard that’s difficult to get out of. However, the Empty Half Guard Michael Currier DVD offers a different type of domination, one where you break your opponent’s mind as well as their game, as they fail to finish a pass and end up tapping from a position they were supposed to be in control of.
