Key Takeaways

• A concise, fundamentals-first escape course that targets the big four bad spots most people dread: mount, side control/north-south, knee on belly, and back control (plus turtle).
• Gi-friendly details show up immediately (including pant-grip options), but the mechanics translate cleanly to No-Gi with small grip swaps.
• The best value is in the repeatable structure: frame first, create space, win an angle, then recover guard or come up to your knees—no panic-scrambling required.
• Short runtime means it’s easy to rewatch the Jiu-Jitsu Escapes From Bottom Joe Woo DVD and drill, but advanced grapplers may want more depth on layered counters and late-stage “oh no” scenarios.

• Rating: 7.5/10

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If you’ve ever had a roll derailed by getting flattened under mount, crossfaced in side control, or stapled with knee on belly, you already know the real issue isn’t toughness—it’s having a plan. The Jiu-Jitsu Escapes From Bottom Joe Woo DVD is built around that exact problem: giving you a dependable, repeatable blueprint for surviving, creating space, and escaping without burning your gas tank in the first minute.

Joe Woo’s approach here is refreshingly practical. Instead of dumping a hundred cool variations on you, he organizes the material around the positions you’ll hit constantly in training. The result is a Joe Woo BJJ instructional that feels like a training partner talking you through what matters: where your frames go, how to keep your elbows safe, when to bridge, and when to slow down so you don’t give up your back trying to be a hero.

At its best, the Jiu-Jitsu Escapes From Bottom Joe Woo DVD works like a reset button for your rounds: you get pinned, you follow the checklist, and you start climbing back to safety—either to guard or to your knees—without the chaos.

Tactical vs. Explosive Escapes 

Escaping bottom pins in Jiu-Jitsu is less about escaping and more about undoing control. Most pins work because the top player wins three things: your head position, your hip line, and your ability to rotate. When all three are taken away, even strong athletes feel helpless.

The universal starting point is framing—especially with forearms and elbows—because frames buy you the one thing you can’t fake: space. Space lets you recover alignment. Alignment lets you turn. And turning is what actually breaks pins. That’s why good escape systems almost always look similar under the hood: you frame, you make a wedge, you shift your hips, you win an angle, and only then do you go.

Timing is the second pillar. Explosive bridges and hip escapes work great—but only when the top person’s weight is committed in the wrong direction, or when they’re transitioning. When you try to bridge at the wrong moment, you give the top player your back, your arms, or your energy. A good bottom game isn’t passive, but it’s also not frantic. It’s patient pressure applied at the right second.

Finally, the goal of most real-world escapes isn’t a highlight-reel reversal. It’s regaining a playable position: closed guard, half guard, seated guard, or coming up to your knees into a wrestle-up. If your escapes reliably land you in one of those hubs, your defense becomes offense without you needing to be a submission wizard.

That’s the lane the Jiu–Jitsu Escapes From Bottom Joe Woo DVD sits in: practical pin escapes that prioritize structure over improvisation.

Faria Instructor Joe Woo

Joe Woo is a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Bernardo Faria and Marcos Tinoco, with decades of martial arts experience across multiple styles. He’s also not coming at instruction from a purely sport-only lens—his background includes professional MMA competition, security work, and long-term coaching experience.

That matters for an escapes instructional because teaching defense well is largely about filtering. Plenty of people know escapes. Fewer people can teach them in a way that keeps students calm and consistent under pressure.

Woo’s general coaching profile suggests a fundamentals-based mindset: emphasis on repeatable mechanics, reliable body positioning, and decision-making that doesn’t fall apart when the opponent is bigger, tighter, or more experienced. In other words: he’s a credible voice for a topic where overcomplication is the enemy.

Detailed Jiu-Jitsu Escapes From Bottom Joe Woo DVD Review

The Jiu-Jitsu Escapes From Bottom Joe Woo DVD is divided into four volumes and runs roughly an hour and a half total—short enough to revisit often, but organized enough to build an actual training plan around.

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Volume 1 – All Mount

The first volume is all mount, and it starts in the most useful place possible: the elbow escape. The early chapters revolve around building the basic structure—protecting your neck and arms, keeping your elbows tight, and using incremental hip movement rather than trying to bench press someone off you. From there, Woo adds practical variations like foot-trap details and a pant-grip option (a clear signal this is Gi-friendly material).

He also covers upa-style escapes with specific leg/ankle considerations, which is helpful because a lot of people bridge hard but don’t control the base that makes the bridge actually work. The through-line of the volume is that mount escapes don’t need to be dramatic—they need to be systematic. If you suffer in mount and donate your arms constantly, this section alone justifies spending time with the Jiu-Jitsu Escapes From Bottom Joe Woo DVD.

Volume 2 – Framing From Side Control

Volume 2 shifts to side control and north-south, and the primary theme is framing—especially with a double-forearm structure. That choice makes sense: side control is where people panic most, and frames are the quickest way to turn panic into a plan.

Woo walks through escaping to guard and escaping to your knees, which is a key distinction. Guard recovery is great when your guard is a weapon; coming up to knees is often the better choice when you want to wrestle, scramble, or simply stop getting smothered.

One standout element here is the inclusion of transitions into offense—specifically armbar threats off the escape motion. Even if you never finish those, the threat changes how the top player pressures you. It’s a smart reminder that good defense often becomes easier when the opponent has to respect consequences.

North-south gets its own mini-section with the same framing emphasis. If you’ve ever felt stuck because the top player’s hips and head position shut off your turning, this volume gives you a practical way to rebuild your ability to rotate.

Volume 3 – Knee on Belly Solutions

The third portion focuses on knee on belly, and it’s an underrated inclusion. Knee on belly is one of those positions that isn’t always a pin in the classic sense, but it’s a control hub that leads to mount, side control, and submission threats while making you feel like your ribs are being taxed.

Woo’s choices here are pragmatic: first, a methodical escape route back to your knees using belt/hand placement and posture; then foot-trap routes that recover half guard and even deep half guard; and finally elbow-to-knee framing variations that either get you up or recover guard. The progression is logical: reduce pressure, win inside space, then choose whether you want a guard layer or a stand-up layer.

For lighter grapplers, or anyone who routinely gets knee-on-bellied by the gym’s pressure passer, this volume will likely feel immediately usable—especially if you drill it as a survive 10 seconds and then escape positional game.

Volume 4 – Back Mount & Turtle

Volume 4 is the longest and arguably the most real-life rolling part of the instructional: back control and turtle escapes. The back section starts with no-hooks situations—an area people often ignore until it’s too late—then addresses hook-based control with a leg-wedge approach to recover guard. That’s valuable because escape the back” is rarely one move; it’s usually a sequence of small wins against hooks, chest connection, and head control.

The turtle portion is extensive and practical: options to come up on top, variations when a hook is removed, and rolling escapes to different sides. This is where the course feels most like a defensive blueprint instead of a collection of techniques. Turtle is a common consequence of escaping side control or mount poorly, so having a dedicated structure here plugs a real gap in many people’s games.

If your rolling pattern is “I escape… and immediately give my back,” this volume alone makes the Jiu-Jitsu Escapes From Bottom Joe Woo DVD feel like a system rather than a patch.

Framing Out of Bad Spots

The best way to use this course is to treat it like a weekly defensive curriculum, not a one-time watch. Because the runtime is compact, you can cycle it repeatedly without feeling like you’re behind on content

Pick one position (mount or side control). Watch the relevant volume once, then drill two escapes for 10–15 minutes after class for three sessions. Add one constraint: start every positional round in that bad spot. Your only goal is to hit your escape once per round—then reset.

As you figure stuff out, blend positions: start in side control, escape to turtle, then use the turtle section to finish the sequence to guard or top. Ask partners to hold you down at 70–80% and transition, not just freeze. Your job is to stay calm, frame, and only explode on the correct timing cue.

Because the Jiu-Jitsu Escapes From Bottom Joe Woo DVD emphasizes structured frames and predictable pathways, it pairs well with positional sparring and one-minute escape games. If you’re coaching, it also fits perfectly as a class theme because the positions are universal and the movements are easy to scale across belt levels.

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Who Is This For?

This is a strong fit for white belts and early blue belts who routinely get stuck under pins and need a simple, repeatable escape framework. Gi players who want details that match common grips and friction-based control, but still want fundamentals that carry over to No-Gi should also consider it.

The DVD is tailor-made for smaller grapplers who can’t rely on strength to bench-press out of bad spots and need better structure and timing. Also useful for hobbyists who care more about not getting smashed than building a super-niche competitive system.

It’s less ideal for advanced competitors who already have consistent escapes and are looking for deep layers against elite-level pinning chains and grapplers who want a massive encyclopedia-style course with tons of branching scenarios.

Pros & Potential Drawbacks

Pros:

• Clear positional organization: mount, side control/north-south, knee on belly, back/turtle—no filler positions.
• Frames-first emphasis: great for building calm, energy-efficient escapes that don’t rely on athletic scrambling.
• Gi-friendly details without being Gi-only: pant-grip and grip-aware options show up, but the mechanics stay universal.
• Practical offense connections: armbar threats off side control escape sequences are a smart way to punish lazy pressure.
• Easy to drill and rewatch: shorter runtime makes repetition realistic, which is what escape skill actually needs.
• Solid turtle coverage: many instructionals treat turtle as an afterthought; here it’s a major tool for survival and reversal.

Potential Drawbacks:

• Compact depth: the concise format means fewer layers for advanced late-stage problems against very skilled pinning.
• Position scope is focused: if you want extensive bottom half-guard problem-solving (beyond what appears as a recovery destination), you may want additional resources.

No More Bad Spots!

The Jiu-Jitsu Escapes From Bottom Joe Woo DVD is a fundamentals-first defensive course that does its job: it gives you reliable, high-percentage ways to get out of mount, side control, knee on belly, and back control—plus a meaningful chunk of turtle work that connects the whole system.

The biggest strength is the structure. If your defense currently depends on grit and hope, this course replaces that with frames, timing, and pathways you can drill into muscle memory. The biggest limitation is simply that it’s compact—advanced grapplers may want more layers and more worst-case troubleshooting.

Key Takeaways

• A Gi-focused passing course built around the most common problem guards you’ll actually see in training: De La Riva, lasso, and spider.
• The structure is refreshingly tight: five volumes, each centered on one guard cluster, with a small set of repeatable passes instead of 40 unrelated options.
• Pena’s big selling point is pressure that ramps up step-by-step—less explode past the legs, more suffocate the frames until the guard breaks.
• Best suited for people who already pass sometimes and want to pass reliably against experienced guard players (solid white belts through black belts).
• Rating: 9/10

0 TO 100 OPEN GUARD PASSING FELIPE PENA DVD GRAB NOW

The Open Guard Passing Felipe Pena DVD is one of those instructionals that shows you what elite pressure passing looks like when it’s stripped down to core problems and direct answers. Instead of trying to give you open guard passing in the abstract (which usually turns into a messy grab-bag of techniques), Pena narrows the scope to three guards that routinely stall out even strong top players in the Gi: outside/middle/inside De La Riva, lasso, and spider.

That focus matters, because these guards aren’t just positions—they’re systems of grips, distance, and tempo. If you’re late on one detail, the guard player doesn’t just retain, they start building offense (tilt sweeps, back takes, triangles, omoplatas, and the dreaded slow-motion grip death). Pena’s goal here is to stop the guard from ever feeling comfortable enough to start that chain.

If you’ve been looking for a Felipe Pena instructional review angle in one sentence: this is a pressure passer’s blueprint for turning popular Gi open guards into predictable checkpoints—and then walking through them without rushing.

Navigating Sticky Guards

Open guard passing in the Gi is mostly a battle over attachments. In No-Gi, you can sometimes win with speed, body positioning, and hand-fighting. In the Gi, the bottom player can staple you in place with sleeve grips, collars, and hooks—and once they’ve attached, they get to decide the rhythm.

That’s why the best passers don’t just do a pass. They solve three problems in order:

1. Kill the distance (or force the guard player into a distance they don’t want).
2. Remove their strongest frame (usually a shin, a lasso, or a spider hook tied to a sleeve).
3. Land in a stable checkpoint (quarters/half/side control/mount) where the guard no longer exists.

What I liked about Pena’s approach is that it respects how guards actually work in live rounds. He doesn’t treat De La Riva like a static pose; he treats it like a moving dilemma where your reaction determines whether you end up leg-dragging, knee-slicing, or getting loop-choked while your posture collapses.

And since this is primarily De La Riva guard passing, a big theme is recognizing which De La Riva you’re dealing with (outside, middle, inside) and choosing a compatible solution—rather than forcing your favorite pass into the wrong shape.

Felipe “Preguiça” Pena

Felipe “Preguiça” Pena is one of the era-defining big men in modern Jiu-Jitsu: a heavyweight who can actually play guard, invert when needed, and still apply top pressure like he’s closing a hydraulic press. He’s widely recognized as a multiple-time IBJJF World Champion in the Gi and an ADCC champion, which matters because it proves his game holds up across very different rule sets and styles of resistance.

He’s also the kind of competitor whose passing doesn’t depend on athletic bursts. Pena’s best work tends to look slow until you’re the person under it—then you realize the slowness is the trap. He consistently upgrades position, tightens your hips and shoulders, and turns your guard reactions into predictable openings.

That competitive identity is exactly why a course like this makes sense. Passing De La Riva, lasso, and spider isn’t about memorizing ten techniques per guard—it’s about understanding where pressure goes, which grips matter, and how to keep climbing from a half-pass to a real pass without giving the guard player a reset.

Full Open Guard Passing Felipe Pena DVD Review

The best way to describe this course is: a small passing toolbox applied to five distinct guard scenarios, with Pena showing how he chains pressure forward rather than bouncing between unrelated techniques. You’ll see recurring ideas—leg drags, knee slices, smash passing, stacking—because those are the workhorses. The difference is how he aims them at the specific shape each guard creates.

Volume 1 – Outside De La Riva Passes

Volume 1 is the hello reality section, because outside De La Riva is everywhere in the Gi, and it’s often the first guard people build when they’re not a dedicated spider/lasso player. Pena’s solution set here is compact: he shows a direct pass to side control, then layers in an inverted knee slice option, and finishes by addressing how he handles the transition into quarter guard as the guard player starts to scramble and clamp.

What stands out in the opening portion of the Open Guard Passing Felipe Pena DVD is how he treats outside De La Riva like a posture problem first. The grips and hooks are annoying, but the real danger is that your posture breaks and your hips drift out of alignment—then your legs become available for off-balancing, and your arms become available for lasso/spider upgrades.

Pena’s early answers are designed to stop that spiral before it starts. This is also where the course begins to show its personality: it’s not trying to impress you with novelty, it’s trying to give you a reliable baseline that survives rounds with stubborn training partners.

Volume 2 – Middle De La Riva Passing

Part 2 of the Open Guard Passing Felipe Pena DVD narrows the lens to middle De La Riva and keeps it short and purposeful—exactly how it should be. The main idea revolves around a leg drag from this configuration, with a bonus pass variation to round it out.

I like this organizational choice because middle De La Riva can be a grey zone for many passers: it doesn’t always feel like classic outside De La Riva, but it’s not quite inside De La Riva either. People hesitate, and hesitation is where the bottom player gets their second sleeve grip, starts setting up the lasso, or angles for a tilt.

Pena’s answer is basically: stop treating it like a mystery, treat it like a checkpoint. Get to your preferred alignment, commit to the leg-drag mechanics, and use pressure to prevent the guard player from re-threading their hooks. This is where the 0 to 100 passing system begins to feel very real—small upgrades, constant control, no big leaps.

Volume 3 – Inside De La Riva

Inside De La Riva is where a lot of passers start to panic, because the guard player’s hooks and angles can feel closer to your base, and the off-balancing hits harder. Pena’s solutions here are a knee slice from inside De La Riva, a smash pass option, and then a smash pass route that takes you all the way to mount. He finishes with a practical quarter guard to side control segment—because that’s where a lot of real passing success actually lives.

This volume does a great job of framing success correctly. Passing isn’t always the clean highlight-reel moment; sometimes it’s winning the ugly half-pass and then refusing to give it back. Pena shows how to turn that half-pass into inevitability. The inside De La Riva chapter choices also mesh well with the rest of the course: you can tell he’s steering you toward a consistent top identity rather than creating five different passing personalities.

Volume 4 – Lasso Guard Pass

The fourth volume is where the course becomes a real quality of life upgrade for Gi training, because lasso is one of the easiest guards to stall with—and one of the hardest to look good against if you don’t have a plan. Pena addresses lasso half guard pressure passing first, then adds variations for when the opponent turns and faces you (a common moment where people lose structure). He also includes a steering wheel pressure pass, which fits the overall theme while adding some flair: keep control of the frame, keep your alignment, and keep walking forward.

Then you get the stand-up pass vs the Spider-Lasso, which is an important bridge because good guard players rarely stay in one guard position. They’ll start lassoing, you start to solve it, and they’ll re-thread into spider or vice versa. Finally, he addresses spider guard stack passing as a lead-in to Volume 5, which is smart sequencing. Lasso and spider are cousins; treating them separately is fine, but acknowledging the overlap is crucial.

Volume 5 – Spider Guard Passing

Spider guard is one of those positions where you can know passes and still get nowhere, because the bottom player’s grip and foot connection is what makes everything sticky. Pena’s volume is built around a spider guard stepping pass.

The practical highlight for me is that he doesn’t pretend spider passing is always clean. He includes answers like pinning the legs down and transitioning into stack to double unders—because in real rounds, spider often collapses into a messy in-between where you either secure control or you get re-guarded immediately.

And yes, there’s a specific Spider guard stack pass pathway here that will make heavy-pressure passers happy. If you’re the kind of top player who wants the guard player’s knees pointed the wrong way while you stack and climb, this volume will feel like permission to do what you already want to do—just with cleaner structure.

Not Panicking in Gi Guards

If you want to get full value from the Open Guard Passing Felipe Pena DVD, don’t treat it like a watch once, then freestyle instructional. Treat it like a set of problems you’re going to deliberately hunt in training.

A good way to do it is to pick one guard or a guard player that plays it (outside De La Riva is usually the best start). Try to force that exact situation in sparring, even if it means you lose other passing opportunities. Your goal is repetition, not dominance.

Add the next guard (middle/inside De La Riva). Your job is to identify the variation quickly and choose the correct response without stalling. Start chaining. The key is to train the decision-making, not just the moves. These guards are all about timing and posture.

Also, don’t skip the quarter guard moments. That’s where passes become real. If you learn to stabilize the half-pass and keep progressing, your open guard passing will improve even against people who are “better guards” than you are passers.

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Who Is This For?

This Open Guard Passing Felipe Pena DVD is best for white belts to advanced belts who already understand basic passing posture and want a reliable system for common Gi open guards, pressure passers who like controlling hips, stacking, and upgrading position rather than sprinting around legs and competitors (or serious hobbyists) who keep running into the same guard problems—De La Riva, lasso, spider—and want consistent answers.

Brand-new white belts who still struggle with stance, grips, and maintaining base will aslo struggle with these passes—this DVD assumes you can stay upright long enough to apply the ideas.

Pros & Potential Drawbacks

Pros:

• Clear problem-solving structure: each volume targets one guard family, so you’re not guessing what you’re supposed to learn.
• A coherent pressure identity across all sections—leg drags, knee slices, smash passing, and stacking show up as connected tools.
• Practical handling of messy almost passed situations (quarter guard, half-pass, leg pinning) that actually decide rounds.
• Strong overlap management between lasso and spider, which is how good guard players really behave.
• Techniques are compact enough to drill and then apply quickly, instead of requiring a month of choreography.

Potential Drawbacks:

• The scope is intentionally narrow: if your main problems are collar-sleeve, lapel guards, or modern inversion-heavy guard systems, you’ll need other resources.
• Because it’s pressure-based, lighter passers who rely on mobility might need time to adapt the pacing to their body type and style.

Passing at 100 MPH

As far as Gi passing instructionals go, the Open Guard Passing Felipe Pena DVD hits a sweet spot: narrow enough to be usable, broad enough to matter. The course doesn’t try to teach passing in general. It teaches you how to deal with three of the most common Gi open guards by using a small number of high-percentage answers and building pressure in a predictable way.

Key Takeaways

• A No-Gi anti-meta instructional built around shutting down Octopus Guard/overback style attacks before they turn into scrambles.
• Strongest value is the positional logic: knee positioning, hip control, and “thresholds” that keep you from getting dragged into weird angles.
• The middle volumes give a very specific map for dealing with overback from half guard and from side control (two places people love to get cute).
• Bonus sections cover buggy choke counters and a D’arce escape module, plus rolling footage with commentary to see the ideas under stress.
• Rating: 6.5/10

DOWNLOAD DISMANTLING OCTOPUS GUARD GORDON RYAN DVD

Counter instructionals are tricky to judge, because they’re never supposed to feel like a complete game. They’re more like insurance: you buy them because you’re tired of one specific problem showing up in the room and hijacking your rounds.

That’s exactly what the Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD is. The theme is simple: stop letting trendy, overhyped positions force you into frantic exchanges. Gordon frames this as a system of denial—deny the structure first, then deny the movement, and only then worry about passing or advancing. At a high level, the DVD earns its keep when you already understand the basics and you want specific answers to specific problems—without guessing.

Why Bother With the Octopus Guard?

Octopus Guard is one of those positions that looks creative, but the reason it spreads is simple: it gives bottom players a way to come up and threaten reversals when your top pressure is slightly lazy. In practice, it often shows up as an overback-style connection—your opponent clamps around your upper body and tries to climb to your back or off-balance you into a scramble.

The hard part isn’t knowing the name. It’s recognizing the moment it becomes dangerous. People usually try to solve it late—when the bottom player already has their hips turned, their knees positioned, and their torso glued to you. That’s when you start doing the classic BJJ thing: try harder and hope balance saves you.

The smarter solution (and the one this instructional leans on) is preemption: win the battle of knees, keep your hips in the correct lane, and treat the position like a set of checkpoints. If you’re hunting for octopus guard counters, you’ll notice a pattern across the material: Gordon keeps coming back to structure and alignment—where your hips sit relative to your opponent’s knees, and how you prevent them from building height.

The Retired “King” Gordon Ryan

Gordon Ryan is one of the defining No-Gi competitors of his era, rising through the Danaher Death Squad ecosystem before competing under the New Wave banner. He’s widely known for a competition style that blends ruthless position control with a very clinical finishing approach—especially in leg entanglements and dominant upper-body control.

He was born in 1995 in New Jersey and earned his black belt through the Danaher/Tonon lineage. His resume includes major titles across the top end of submission grappling, with repeated success at ADCC (including multiple wins across weight and absolute/superfight contexts) and other elite formats.

In February 2026, Ryan publicly announced a retirement from competition, citing ongoing stomach/immune-system related health issues that have impacted his ability to train and compete the way he wants. That context matters for this DVD, because it reinforces what you feel throughout the material: it’s “thinking-first” Jiu-Jitsu. Even when he’s talking about chaotic positions, the goal is to remove chaos—not win chaos.

Systematically Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD Review

This Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD is organized into eight volumes and runs roughly 5.5+ hours total. The structure is consistent: a core conceptual foundation, then situational problem-solving (half guard and side control), then a few “low-percentage move” counters, followed by rolling footage and commentary.

Volume 1 – Over Back Theory

Volume 1 is the philosophical and mechanical backbone. It opens with the tone-setter mindset and then quickly gets into over back theory and the battle of the knees from both top and neutral/bottom contexts.

This is where you’ll either buy in or bounce off. Gordon isn’t trying to entertain—he’s trying to give you a framework that applies before the position fully develops. Chapters like “Hips Between Knees,” “Dilemma Games,” and “Position Threshold” are basically telling you: if you can control these relationships early, you don’t need a heroic late escape later. For the Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD, this volume is the why that makes the later how make sense.

Volume 2 – Overback From Half Guard

Part 2 gets very specific with a chain of counters depending on what the bottom player is doing with their grips and secondary controls. This is one of the more practically useful sections because it lives in a high-frequency problem area.

A lot of people run Octopus/overback ideas from half guard specifically because it’s easier to connect your upper body while your legs stall the pass. Here, Gordon’s answers are largely about stripping the route—not just reacting to the moment. It’s also where you’ll get a clearer picture of overback from half guard as a repeatable situation, not a random scramble.

Volume 3 – Passing & Pinning

The next volume continues the half-guard battle, but shifts into what happens when the bottom player tries to bridge and force movement. It starts with a back take counter and then follows the consequences: to mount, and pinning domination.

The connective tissue here is pin-building. Once Gordon frames a solution, he tries to land in a control that keeps you from re-entering the same mess. It’s also one of the better places to study how he thinks about heists and opponents returning to their knees.

Volume 4 – Butterfly Half Guard

Volume 4 pivots into the Butterfly Half Guard, which is a smart inclusion because many Octopus/overback threats show up when the bottom player has a butterfly hook that helps them build height. The key focus here is on controlling the space between the knees— basically, the entire game when you’re trying to stop someone from turning into you and climbing.

From there, it progresses throughstep over and cut through passing. The final chunk ties it back to the reality that people mix in off-balancing and hooking games to create the angle for the upper-body clamp. If you like instruction that gives you a small set of high-leverage ideas rather than endless variations, this volume will click.

Volume 5 – Overback From Side Control

This part is all about the overback from side control, and it’s one of the more underrated reasons to consider this course. Side control is supposed to be safe, which is why overback/Octopus-style counters from there feel extra annoying—like someone is stealing your turn.

The volume focuses on preventing the overback in the first place, plus what to do when the opponent starts the heist and tries to reinsert knees. The chapter list makes it clear Gordon is obsessed with the domino effect: if they bring the knee inside, it changes what’s easier or harder for both players.

Volume 6 – Countering the Buggy

Volume 6 is all about the Buggy choke, or rather, how to beat it. Gordon treats the buggy choke as a low percentage move that becomes a problem mostly when top players get careless with head and hip positioning. It breaks the subject into mechanics, head position, pinning hips, transitioning to north-south, and late escape ideas.

Even if you don’t see buggy attempts daily, the underlying lesson is valuable: a lot of viral attacks only work because the top player gives the bottom player two things at once—space and alignment. As a focused module on buggy choke defense, it’s solid and fairly digestible.

Volume 7 – D’arce Escapes

The penultimate part is a bonus covering Darce choke escapes. It covers a handful of scenarios like countering peak outs, and a couple of situations that resemble common grappling transitions. If you’ve been looking for a D’arce escape instructional that emphasizes positional logic over frantic hand-fighting, you’ll likely appreciate how this is framed.

Volume 8 – Narrarted Rolling

Volume 8 is rolling footage followed by rolling commentary. In a course that’s about preventing scrambles, it helps to see the concepts appear during live exchanges—especially when the opponent’s reactions aren’t scripted. If you like seeing real movement and hearing the thought process, it rounds out the package well.

Practical Application

The most effective way to use this course is to treat it like a troubleshooting manual, not a curriculum. Pick one position that keeps burning you—overback from half guard, overback from side control, or butterfly half guard connections—and build short training loops around it.

Start in half guard with the overback connection already in place. Your job is to win the knee/hip relationship before you try to pass. Then, explore side control with your opponent hunting the overback. Focus on preventing the entry and shutting down the heist. Be sure to add a failure rep round where you start late—then compare how much harder it feels when you skip the early checkpoints.

If you do it that way, the Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD becomes a set of constraints you can plug directly into positional sparring. It’s also a very coach-friendly instructional: the chapter themes map cleanly to the kind of games you can run in class (space between knees, hips between knees, far-hip pin).

DISMANTLING OCTOPUS GUARD GORDON RYAN DVD GET HERE

Who Is This For?

This is best for blue belt through black belt, especially people who already pass and pin but get dragged into scrambles by “come-up” guards, No-Gi focused grapplers who deal with overhooks, overbacks, and butterfly half guard dilemmas regularly and competitors and coaches, because the material is built around eliminating high-variance exchanges.

I didn’t like it, and neither will brand-new white belts who don’t yet understand basic pinning and guard-passing posture (you’ll miss why the checkpoints matter) and Gi-only players looking for grip-specific solutions (the themes still apply, but the scenarios are clearly No-Gi rooted).

If your main pain point is exactly what the title suggests, the Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD will feel targeted. However, if your problem is the Octopus guard, you need to figure out Jiu-Jitsu better, because it is so useless that it shouldn’t be.

Pros & Potential Drawbacks

Pros:

• Very clear positional logic. The recurring themes (knees, hips, space, thresholds) make it easier to troubleshoot in live rounds.
• High-frequency scenarios. Overback threats from half guard and side control are common problems, not niche edge cases.
• Teaches prevention, not just reaction. You’ll spend more time avoiding bad structure than learning flashy late escapes.
• Useful coaching material. The chapter themes translate well into positional sparring games.
• Bonus modules add practical room problems. Buggy choke counters and D’arce escapes are real issues people run into.

Potential Drawbacks:

• Narrow by design. If you don’t face Octopus Guard/overback attempts often, parts of this will feel like overkill.
• More defensive than offensive. It’s about shutting things down; it won’t build your top game from scratch.

A Needless Instructional

As a concept-driven counter manual, this is a good—not essential—addition to the library. The best parts of the Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD are the ones that turn a messy position into a checklist: win the knee line, keep your hips in the right lane, deny the heist, then stabilize and pass. For anyone who’s tired of being pulled into chaos by overback/Octopus-style movements, that’s real value.

Key Takeaways

• A three-part, chain-based approach to dismantling the knee shield that leans heavily on squaring the hips and winning wrist control before you try to pressure through.
• The system’s backbone is the wrist pin—used to shut down frames, prevent guard resets, and connect directly into passing routes like the over-back and leg weave sequences.
• Best moments come when Faris links pass threats and finish threats together, so the knee shield stops feeling like a dead-end and starts feeling like a funnel.
• Not a pure “beginner crash course”: you’ll get more out of it if you already understand half guard, underhooks, and leg entanglement danger.

• Rating: 7.5/10

GET HERE PASSING KNEE SHIELD FARIS BEN-LAMKADEM DVD

Knee shield half guard is the kind of position that makes otherwise confident passers feel like they’re trying to run through a closed door. You’re close enough to feel the guard player’s pressure, but still stuck at arm’s length—eating frames, losing posture, and getting your forward momentum turned into a reset (or worse, a leg entanglement).

That’s the problem Passing Knee Shield Faris Ben-Lamkadem DVD aims to solve with a clear, connected roadmap. Instead of giving you twenty unrelated answers to the knee shield, Faris builds a sequence that starts with structure—how to square the guard player up, how to deny inside position, and how to win wrist control—then progresses into specific passing routes and finishing options.

The Knee Shield Problem

The knee shield works for one reason: it creates distance while still keeping the bottom player connected enough to threaten. A good knee shield player can frame your shoulder, hide their hips, block your chest-to-chest pressure, and constantly angle their knees and toes toward inside position. That’s the real danger zone—once the bottom player starts winning inside space, your passing becomes risky and your base becomes vulnerable.

Most people fail against the knee shield in predictable ways:

1. They chase pressure too early. They try to flatten the guard player before they’ve neutralized the frames and underhooks that make flattening possible in the first place.
2. They accept bad alignment. They pass while being angled, which makes them easy to off-balance and easy to re-guard.
3. They ignore wrist control. They treat hands as a nuisance instead of the steering wheel of the entire position.

A good knee shield passing system isn’t just about which side you pass to. It’s about how you force the guard player to stop rebuilding the same shape. That’s why squaring up is such a recurring theme in modern pressure passing: you don’t need to be heavier, you need to be better aligned.

What I like in principle about Faris’ approach is that it respects how modern guard players behave. They don’t just sit there with a static knee shield. They frame, pummel, underhook, and hunt entanglements. So a passer’s first job is to reduce those options—then apply pressure. If you try to do it in reverse, you’re basically giving the bottom player your momentum for free.

Faris “Faradinho” Ben-Lamkadem

Faris Ben-Lamkadem is a British black belt under Roger Gracie and is widely associated with the Roger Gracie Academy lineage. He built his reputation through consistent performances across major circuits, with notable success in No-Gi at black belt, and he’s also competed extensively in Gi earlier in his career. He’s often referred to by the nickname “Faradinho,” and he’s been part of high-level competitive rooms where details matter—especially in grinding positions like half guard and knee shield.

One of the things that makes Faris a credible voice on this topic is that his competitive era is the era where knee shield isn’t half guard-lite. It’s a full-on hub for frames, underhooks, and leg-lock transitions. You can see that reality reflected in how this instructional is structured: he doesn’t just show passing routes—he spends real time on avoiding inside position and connecting the pass to control or finish.

He’s also been publicly vocal about athlete-treatment issues in the sport, including speaking out about a payment dispute with Polaris—something that, at the very least, signals he’s not trying to play the polite PR game when he feels something is off. That same bluntness shows up in his teaching style here: direct, practical, and geared toward what works when someone is actually resisting you.

Gringo Guard Passing Knee Shield Faris Ben-Lamkadem DVD Review

This is a course that feels more system-first than move-first. It doesn’t pretend the knee shield is easy. It just gives you a way to stop treating it like a puzzle and start treating it like a repeatable problem with repeatable solutions.

Volume 1 – Avoiding Danger

Part 1 of Passing Knee Shield Faris Ben-Lamkadem DVD is where Faris sets the tone: you don’t beat knee shield by forcing forward pressure. You beat it by making the guard player lose structure. The early chapters focus on squaring the opponent up, clearing the basic knee shield, and—crucially—addressing inside position before it turns into a bigger problem.

This is also where the conceptual framing becomes obvious. He’s not treating the knee shield as one static configuration. He’s treating it as a dynamic problem where your alignment and hand positioning decide whether you’re passing or scrambling. That’s why the upper body vs upper body idea matters: if you can win that battle, you can stop getting held at arm’s length, and you can start controlling how the exchange evolves.

The final piece of this first section is the introduction of the wrist pin and the goal behind it. The wrist pin isn’t presented as a gimmick grip—it’s the control mechanism that stops the bottom player from resetting frames and buying time.

Volume 2 – Knee Shield Passes

The second part is the engine room: this is where Faris stacks a series of knee shield passes around connected ideas—frame removal, wrist pin control, and forward pressure that arrives at the right time. The section starts with a knee shield passing route that includes a cross-shoulder frame and a Rau drag, and quickly moves into a chain that connects the Rau drag into an over-back pass, then into leg weave options.

This is where the course feels most like a wrist pin knee shield pass system rather than a loose collection of moves. You’re not just learning a pass. You’re learning how one control choice creates a predictable next choice. Faris shows multiple ways to use wrist pins to pass, how to square the opponent up when they try to angle away, and how to pummel legs and smash knees together so the bottom player can’t rebuild the shield.

One of the more valuable inclusions is a specific answer to the underhook battle—an over-back pass counter that addresses the underhook via a reverse body lock concept. If you’ve ever felt your pass collapse the moment the bottom player wins an underhook, you’ll immediately understand why that matters.

Volume 3 – Finishing After the Knee Shield

Volume 3 is where Faris adds teeth to the system. Instead of stopping at you passed, he builds in finishing options and higher-risk transitions that punish the guard player for overcommitting to defense. This includes submissions off the wrist pin (Kimura and armbar variations, plus a Darce sequence), as well as leg-lock threats like heel hook and kneebar options that appear once the opponent’s hips and knees are compromised.

There’s also an important conceptual message baked into the structure: if the guard player knows you only want to pass, they can defend the pass forever. If they think passing pressure might also lead to immediate submissions or back exposure, the entire defensive posture changes.

That’s why the wedge back take material is a smart inclusion—it turns the knee shield exchange into something that can end with back control, not just side control if everything goes perfectly.

Breaking the Shield

The best way to get value out of Passing Knee Shield Faris Ben-Lamkadem DVD is to treat it like a short training cycle, not a one-night binge-watch. Start every positional round in knee shield half guard. Your only goal is squaring up and clearing the basic knee shield structure. Don’t rush to pass—win alignment first.

Add wrist pins. Focus on preventing resets: if the bottom player frames and rebuilds, treat it as a failed rep and immediately restart the sequence. Choose one passing chain (Rau drag → over-back → leg weave options, for example) and run it repeatedly with progressive resistance.

Proceed with introducing one punishment layer—either a back take or a submission threat—so opponents stop defending with the same lazy frames. If you do it this way, the instructional becomes a practical skill-builder instead of a technique library you forget in two weeks.

PASSING KNEE SHIELD FARIS BEN-LAMKADEM DVD DOWNLOAD

Who Is This For?

This course is best for solid blue belt through black belt grapplers who already understand half guard basics and want a cleaner, more connected answer to knee shield. It’salso good for passers who like structure and control—especially people who prefer pressure passing but keep getting stalled at the“can’t get chest-to-chest stage.

No-Gi athletes who regularly run into opponents using inside position threats and want more confidence engaging half guard without instantly ending up in a scramble will gain a lot from the Guard Passing Knee Shield Faris Ben-Lamkadem DVD.

It’s less ideal for brand-new white belts who don’t yet understand the underhook/frame battle in half guard. You’ll still learn, but you might not know what to prioritize and people looking for “entering half guard passing from standing.” This is primarily about solving the knee shield once you’re already in the exchange.

Pros & Potential Drawbacks

Pros:

• Systemic structure instead of random answers: the course is built around connected progressions, not isolated cool moves.
• Wrist control as a real passing tool: the wrist pin concepts are practical and help solve a common problem—endless frame resets.
• Clear passing chains: the over-back and leg weave sequences give you repeatable routes that don’t rely on perfect timing.
• Leg entanglement awareness: early emphasis on avoiding inside position keeps you safer in modern No-Gi exchanges.
• Built-in punishment layer: submissions and back takes make the knee shield defense more costly for your opponent.

Potential Drawbacks:

• Wrist-pin dependency: if you don’t develop the hand-fighting and control feel, some of the system loses its punch.
• Not a omplete half guard passing encyclopedia: it’s focused on the knee shield problem, not every half guard scenario from scratch.

Pass Like a Gringo

As a targeted solution for one of the most annoying modern guard problems, Passing Knee Shield Faris Ben-Lamkadem DVD mostly delivers. The strongest value is the structure: square the opponent up, deny resets with wrist control, and run connected passing chains that don’t collapse the moment the bottom player frames or underhooks. The system leans heavily on specific controls (especially wrist pins), and it doesn’t try to be a full half guard passing from every situation course.