Key Takeaways
- A 4-part No-Gi BJJ instructional deconstructing Luke Griffith’s competition passing system.
- It features directions and drills to beat seated, supine and half guards.
- Luke breaks down how to execute and combine loose and tight passing against No-Gi guards.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 9 out of 10.
EFFECTIVELY PASSING THE GUARD LUKE GRIFFITH DVD HERE:
No-Gi guards are one of the most consistent sources of headaches in Jiu-Jitsu, regardless of how experienced of a grappler you are. As more and more trap-based guards spring into daily use, passers face more and more challenges in beating the legs of people lying or sitting on the ground in front of them.
While not promising to offer a silver bullet for this conundrum, the Passing The Guard Luke Griffith DVD does offer a very succinct way of approaching these challenges. it provides several different perspectives to passing No-Gi guard, and offers effective ways to combine them, increasing your chances of achieving pins and finally catching that pesky guard player in a sub.
Competition-Tested Passing
Guard passing is one of the most tricky aspects of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and that’s particularly true in No-Gi. The one thing I’ve found is that people figure out ways that work for them, and they go on to use them in competitions, but when the time comes to teach others how to do the same, they fail.
That had me a bit worried when I saw that the Luke Griffith Passing DVD contains his competition-tested methods of dealing with guards. I wasn’t completely off the mark, to be honest, as some of the moves in this DVD are definitely not going to work for a wide variety of people.
However, for the most part, Luke manged to offer options, mainly by providing more than one general method of passing, and including more than one direction of passing. He also uses a fairly loose categorization of guards into seated, supine, and half-guard which is better than using a hundred different guard names and actually helps simplify his system so that anyone can use it.
Grappling Prodigy Luke Griffith
Luke Griffith is an unmissable character in the high-level competitive BJJ circuit. The South African prodigy has been killing it at the biggest stages of the sport, already winning two different EADCC Trials and the pro GrappleFest heavyweight title.
Considering that Luke is still a brown belt, which was awarded to him by John Danaher, there’s literally no limit to what the 24-year-old grappler can do. Let’s not forget that he is already a World, Pans, and European No-Gi champion, comfortably beating black belts since he was a purple belt.
Like most of the people training in Austin under the New Wave Team led by Danaher and Ryan, Luke is also an exceptionally good teacher. A lifetime on the mats means Luke has more experience than most of the team members anyway, which makes his instructionals, such as the Passing The Guard Luke Griffith DVD very valuable for anyone looking to improve specific aspects of their No-Gi BJJ game.
Detailed Passing The Guard Luke Griffith DVD Review
The four-volume Passing The Guard Luke Griffith DVD contains lots of material, spread over almost three hours. Using his sister Hannah as a Uke, Luke does a great job of delivering on the title of this DVD, which emphasizes efficient and effective guard passing strategies.
Part 1 – Approaching Supine Guards
There is a lot of Danaher-type categorization of the moves and concepts in this Passing The Guard Luke Griffith DVD, which is understandable given the New Wave connection. I found it smart that Luke decided to present his own passing systems using the base already set up by John and Gordon in terms of concepts.
The first part of his DVD addresses supine guards in No-Gi, with two recognizable modalities used by Griffith – loos and tight passing. First up he goes over a bunch of loose passes, prioritizing motion by using high steps, crossovers, X-passing, and a bunch of Torreando variations.
He follows up with his take on tight passes, mostly in the form of stacking (which makes sense against supine guards) and sitting on people using cutbacks. Up until this point, nothing much we haven’t seen, although Luke has interesting details to offer.
The best part in volume #1 comes when Griffith teaches us how to combine loose and tight passing, through the concept of camping (I really loved that one!) and feinting. The DVD concludes with drills to help you practice live.
Part 2 – Loose Passing vs. Seated Guards
The second part of the Passing The Guard Luke Griffith DVD goes over seated guards, but only from the aspect of loose passing. Since the threats are different against the much more mobile seated guard player, Luek shifts his attention to knee-cut passing for the most part.
Sticking to the route that takes him in between the legs, Griffith sheds light on how you can use different entries, from the traditional knee cut setup to collar-elbow or shin-shoulder pins to execute it against high-level opponents.
Feints and misdirections once again play a huge part in the success of these passes, and Luke spares no details explaining them.
Part 3 – Tight Seated Guard Passing
Part three of this already stellar Luke Griffith Passing DVD goes on to offer ways of beating seated guards, this time using pressure instead of motion. the tight passing Griffith teaches in this volume is something New Wave has built their passing success on – the body lock pass.
Using a body lock grip configuration, Luke guides you through the basics of passing the legs using different methods, such as windshield wipers, split passes, and long steps. There’s a neat chapter on forcing the body lock in there, which will help you solve lots of grip conundrums when setting the position up.
Part 4 – Beating Half Guard
After taking care of supine and seated open guards, Luke dedicates the last portion of the Passing The Guard Luke Griffith DVD to solving the half guard from a passer’s perspective.
Luke sticks to using underhooks as his anchors during his half guard passing exploits, shifting between single and double underhooks to set up effective ways of freeing up his trapped leg. Near and far side underhook iterations also feature, as well as ways of turning single into double underhook controls.
You Can’t Use Only One Pass
There are plenty of instances in JiuiJitsu where I advocate for the use of one or two moves/techniques/concepts to achieve a major goal. Passing is not one of them. If there is one aspect of grappling where you need diversity, it is passing guards.
It doesn’t have as much to do with all the different guards as it has to do with the threats that the bottom person can throw at you, including submissions on your upper and/or lower body, sweeps, and back takes.
Since the guard acts as a trap, going in one directionally pretty much guarantees you’ll end up tangled in the spider’s web of attacks butt scooters like to use. So, for you to pull off effective passing, you’ll need to mix up your passing methods, passing ranges, and passing directions constantly if you want to throw a wrench in any No-Gi guard.
That is exactly what you’ll get from the Passing The Guard Luke Griffith DVD – a very simple, yet complete program of proven guard passing methods, along with the ways in which you can use them interchangeably, and the drills to help you perfect them.
DOWNLOAD: EFFECTIVELY PASSING THE GUARD LUKE GRIFFITH DVD
Pass Everyone!
If you want to pass guard like Luke Griffith, you’ll need to figure out how to get to Austin and spend considerable time training with him. If you want to understand what he does and get useful hints and tips you can apply to his game, though, you’ve got everything you need in the Passing The Guard Luke Griffith DVD. It will still take time, especially since loose and tight passing require lots of attention each to master, but you’ll certainly emerge a better guard passer on the other end of it.
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