Key Takeaways
- A modern lower-body guard blueprint built around shin-to-shin, single leg X, and X-guard—aimed at creating reliable sweeps and top position.
- Best for grapplers who want a connected system (entries → off-balance → sweep/stand-up → transitions), not a bag of random techniques.
- Strong emphasis on details that make these positions “stick” in live rounds: angles, inside positioning, weight distribution, and grip choices.
- Slight drawback: the product breakdown (as published) is very “Part 1”-heavy, so buyers who want a crystal-clear volume-by-volume map may wish for more structure detail up front.
- Rating: 7.5/10
RETURN TO THE X VERSE CHIS NEWMAN DVD AVAILABLE HERE
Lower-body open guard has become the default language of modern grappling. Even if you’re not hunting heel hooks, the best athletes use shin-to-shin, single leg X, and X-guard as engines—ways to tilt people, force posts, stand up into takedowns, or land on top in clean passing sequences.
That’s the promise of Return To The X Verse Chris Newman DVD: not “here are a few X-guard sweeps,” but a blueprint for building a guard you can actually rely on when opponents scramble, posture, and try to disengage. The instructional frames these positions as a connected system—enter, control, off-balance, sweep, and transition—rather than isolated moves you hope will work on Tuesday night.
In practice, that’s a refreshing goal. X-guard is one of those positions everyone recognizes, but far fewer people can maintain against someone who knows how to backstep, kick free, or simply stand tall and deny the angles. If you’ve ever felt your X-guard turn into “hanging on until you get smashed,” this is exactly the kind of systemized approach that can turn it into a real weapon.
The Best Open Guard in BJJ?
The biggest misconception about X-guard is that it’s a sweep position. It’s more accurate to think of it as an alignment position—a way to put your legs under their base and force your opponent to carry your frames. Once you get the alignment right, the sweep often feels inevitable. When the alignment is wrong, you end up burning your grips, getting flattened, or conceding the pass.
That’s why shin-to-shin is such an important hub. A good shin-to-shin guard isn’t just “a way to get to single leg X.” It’s a place where you can manage distance, win inside position with your legs, and start moving your opponent’s weight before you ever commit to being underneath them. When people treat shin-to-shin as a brief checkpoint, they miss the part that makes the whole chain work: off-balancing mechanics that make the opponent light and predictable.
Single leg X is the bridge. It’s often the safest way to get underneath a standing opponent without fully committing both legs inside (which can expose you to knee cuts and backsteps if you’re late). It also gives you a very practical decision tree: tilt for a sweep, come up on a single, or transition to deeper X-guard when the opponent’s reactions open the door.
A good single leg X guard system should do two things well:
- Make you hard to peel off (good angle control and connection), and
- Give you predictable follow-ups when the opponent tries the standard answers—posting hands, backstepping, slipping the knee, or simply refusing to engage.
If an instructional can make those reactions feel “scripted,” it’s doing real work.
X-Guard Guru Chris Newman
Chris Newman is a London-based Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt and long-time instructor at Fightzone London. According to Fightzone’s coach bio, he joined Marco Canha’s Jiu-Jitsu program in January 2013, earned his blue belt later in 2013, and quickly became a standout on the UK competition circuit.
He won a British National title in 2015, then made a major leap in 2018, taking four gold medals across featherweight and open weight divisions in both Gi and No-Gi. Newman later captured the IBJJF European Open (Gi) in 2018 and 2019, as well as the IBJJF No-Gi European Open in 2019, receiving his black belt from Marco Canha in November 2019.
That competition résumé matters for this topic. Lower-body guard systems—especially X-guard—tend to expose “empty technique” quickly. If your angles are off by a few degrees, or your weight distribution is wrong, good opponents don’t just defend… they pass. Newman has spent years solving those problems against athletes who expect shin-to-shin and X-guard and still can’t fully shut it down.
Detailed Return To The X Verse Chris Newman DVD Review
The DVD is pretty straightforward and somewhat short, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t deliver any value. On the contrary, every second of this instructional is going to offer you revelations about the X-guard.
Entries Into X and High-Percentage Follow-Ups
The Return To The X Verse Chris Newman DVD reads like Newman’s answer to the most common X-guard failure: people can hit the position in drilling, but they can’t enter it cleanly from real guard situations. The section includes multiple pathways into X-guard from recognizable positions—arm-drag scenarios, knee shield to deeper underhook-style entries, Reverse De La Riva routes, and closed guard/K-guard style transitions.
That matters because entries are where open guard systems usually die. If you don’t have reliable access points, your “system” becomes a highlight reel: it works when you magically arrive in perfect X-guard, and nowhere else.
From there, he emphasizes practical outcomes: sweeps, top-position transitions, and the ability to punish common counters. The outline includes examples that go beyond “finish the sweep” and into “what now?”—like using X-guard to create a leg drag, answering an X-guard counter with a backtake, and chaining De La Riva to single leg X into stronger entanglement-based follow-ups.
One of the more interesting themes is how the course frames X-guard as a connector between positions rather than the endpoint. You can see it in the chain choices involving De la Riva variations, halfgaurd options and modern guards such as K, all hybridized into the X verse.
That’s not just variety for the sake of variety. It’s a strategic message: if your opponent is defending one entry, your guard should naturally “spill” into another pathway without forcing you to reset. In that sense, Return To The X Verse Chris Newman DVD does what good modern instructionals do: it focuses on transitions and reactions, not just end techniques.
Attaching Guards to the Single Leg X-Guard
To get real value from Return To The X Verse Chris Newman DVD, treat it like a positional language course, not a move list.
First build your shin-to-shin and single leg X entries. Pick one main entry path that fits your current guard (for many people, that’s shin-to-shin → single leg X). Do short, high-quality reps, then immediately do positional sparring starting from shin-to-shin with the goal of reaching single leg X or X-guard.
Then look to add one alternative entry (for example, a Reverse De La Riva route or a knee shield-to-under entry). The goal isn’t to “learn more,” it’s to avoid being one-dimensional when your first path gets stuffed.
When you’re ready, start chaining to the top deliberately. Every time you hit the sweep, your job is to land with intent: leg drag, stabilize passing angle, or come up to a strong single. This is where the system becomes competition-relevant.
Finally, focus on counter-problems: backsteps, knee slips, posting hands, and opponents refusing to engage. That’s where the “unbreakable lower-body guard” claim either becomes true for you—or it doesn’t.
If you’re also a Gi player, the key is to use the system principles rather than trying to copy-grab everything. Shin-to-shin guard and angle management transfer well across rule sets; you may just adjust how you connect (and how you slow the scramble) with grips.
DOWNLOAD RETURN TO THE X VERSE CHIS NEWMAN DVD
Who Is This For?
This is a strong fit for Blue belts through black belts who already understand open guard basics and want a more coherent lower-body guard game and competitors who want a No-Gi-friendly X-guard sweep approach that leads to top control, not just a scramble.
Guard players who enjoy playing shin-to-shin as a true hub (not a temporary stop), and who want to connect it to single-leg X and deeper X systematically, will also have fun with this one.
Newman’s instructional is definitely going to help those who struggle with bigger opponents disengaging or trying to brute-force posture—this system repeatedly stresses angle and distance solutions that matter when strength is a factor.
It’s a weaker fit for brand-new white belts who still don’t have stable guard retention and framing fundamentals. You can absolutely start learning shin-to-shin early, but the payoff of this kind of interconnected system is much higher once you can keep someone in front of you.
Pros & Potential Drawbacks
Pros
- Systematic approach: it emphasizes connections between shin-to-shin, single leg X, and X-guard, which is how these guards actually function in live rounds.
- Entry diversity from real positions: arm-drag, knee shield/deep half/waiter routes, Reverse De La Riva, and closed guard/K-guard style pathways give you multiple “doors” into the same game.
- Practical outcomes: the outline repeatedly points toward sweeps, standing up, and top-position transitions rather than staying stuck underneath.
- Addresses common resistance patterns: the course description explicitly targets typical counters like backsteps, knee slips, posting hands, and disengagement—exactly what kills many X-guard attempts.
- Gi/No-Gi relevance: the framing is modern and scramble-aware, and the core mechanics (angle, inside position, weight distribution) transfer well.
Potential Drawbacks
- Not a beginner fundamentals course: if your guard retention and framing are still shaky, you may need to build those first to make the system reliably “unbreakable.”
- Requires live positional work: this material won’t turn into skill through passive watching; you’ll need positional sparring from shin-to-shin/single leg X to make it stick.
X Marks the Spot
Return To The X Verse Chris Newman DVD is a smart, modern take on building a lower-body guard that actually functions in today’s fast exchanges. The emphasis on shin-to-shin as a real hub, single leg X as a reliable bridge, and X-guard as a connector (not an endpoint) is exactly how successful guard players think—especially in No-Gi where you don’t get to “hold” people in place with grips.
The instructional’s biggest strength is its system logic: entries from familiar positions, off-balancing mechanics, and practical follow-ups that land you on top or in dominant transitions.
