About This Episode

Many practitioners treat individual guards as isolated identities or rigid rooms in a house—declaring themselves strictly "half guard players" or "butterfly specialists." In this episode of Tapped In, coach David Figueroa-Martinez explores the concept of guard fluidity.

Discover why your primary objective from the bottom is defense and achieving top position, how to maintain 3–4 dynamic points of contact, and how to seamlessly chain positions like Spider, De La Riva, X-Guard, and Butterfly without getting stuck in a single box.

3 Key Takeaways

• Guard Hierarchy of Priorities: The first job of any guard is halting your opponent’s advancement and defending yourself; the second is creating kuzushi (off-balancing) to sweep and secure the dominant top position.
• The 3-to-4 Point Contact Rule: Maintaining 3 to 4 points of active connection (grips and foot placement) prevents guard passes and allows effortless transitions between open guard systems.
• Fluidity Over Static Identity: Rather than locking yourself into a single specialty guard, treat different guards as an interconnected web—transitioning dynamically as your opponent attempts to pass.

Chapter Markers

• 00:00 – Introduction: The Concept of Guard Fluidity
• 00:55 – Primary Objectives: Defense, Kuzushi, and Getting on Top
• 02:40 – The Evolution of Personal Guard Systems
• 04:15 – Interconnecting Guards: Butterfly, X-Guard, and Spider
• 06:30 – Guard Transitions Under Pressure
• 08:15 – The 3-to-4 Points of Contact Rule
• 09:45 – Embracing Failure and Mat Experimentation
• 10:50 – Outro & Coaching Contacts

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David Figueroa-Martinez

Founder, DFM Coaching Bjj

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Full Transcript

**** Welcome to Tapped In. My name is David Figueroa-Martinez of DFM Coaching, and today we're going to be discussing the fluidity of guard. When I came up, we often looked at specific guards as fragments or rooms or categories within the guard, and people tended to be really specific or subject matter experts about a guard or two. And that almost became the identity. If you were a butterfly guard player, if you were a half guard player, those things became who you were.

**** And while that's still true in a large degree with many people, I think the best way to look at guards is to understand them as elements or foundations within a single structure—a house, if you will. And I don't want to get stuck in one room and only know that room to a high level of expertise. I want to be able to float or flow into different guards as they present themselves so that I can keep people at bay, I can keep people off balance, maybe submit, and/or sweep.

**** First off, the guard itself—I'm going to annoy some people—is secondary to being on top. It is a defensive measure. Your first priority is to halt the advancement of your opponent and to keep yourself safe. First priority of the guard, no matter which one you play.

**** Your second goal should be off-balance, break kuzushi, and then sweep/submit. Priority for me is to get on top. Submissions are not the highest priority for me if I was to put that versus sweeping and getting to a dominant position. I want to get to the dominant position. Can I submit from my back? Yes. Can I threaten submissions from my back to the point where they force maybe submissions? Yes. I would much rather sweep than submit you.

**** I find that me personally, when I see people who focus on submitting off the back, they are willing to exchange a lot of bad things or bad positions or habits to stay on their back. Which, if we're going to get to the overall structure of what the guard is supposed to be for, we get into this bigger debate about: is it functionally sound, does it help you if someone was actually punching you, and all this other shit, which we're not going to get into today.

**** But I personally feel I want to get to the top position, crush you with weight, pressure, get the positions that I want, and then submit you. So for me, the guard is stopping you from advancing, passing my guard, and then it's to off-balance, kuzushi, sweep. If I get submissions based off of this, then great, but it's not my priority at all. Not everyone works that way, but in my opinion, this is the safest way to go about it. Not everyone's going to have that same opinion, and that is perfectly fine.

**** When we're playing guards, we sometimes relegate ourselves to a specific type of guard. Coming up, I was a butterfly guard player from early white belt. That was my assignment, that's what I studied. I was told to study Marcelo Garcia, and that's what I did. From that, I got into X-Guard, a little bit of Single Leg X, but I liked X-Guard much more.

**** Then I got into Spider for a bit, and I think that was because of Leandro Lo. And I started playing Spider quite a bit. It's a pain in the ass on your hands and fingers, but it's an excellent guard to use. It's even better if you have longer limbs. I am a short king at 5'4", so I could still utilize it, but it's not the greatest thing if I was to say, "Hey, who am I going to adapt spider guard to?" It would probably be a longer-limbed student.

**** But I liked the game. I liked watching Leandro Lo and how he played that, and so I started adapting it into my game, and it became part of me for a while. And then I gave it up for a while, I was doing a little bit more no-gi, and even when I was doing gi, I didn't use it as much. I started playing more half guard, and then at one point I started playing closed guard. And with time, I started developing a skillset over several guards, understanding them individually.

**** And then I started to understand them and their relationship with one another. So there were times when I'd be in butterfly, and I would start going into X-Guard. It's a quick transition, it's pretty standard. But then sometimes I would be in X-Guard, and then I would start using maybe a little bit of Spider on one side. And I would sweep, and if I wanted to sweep them to the back onto their butt, I would take out the hook that was across the groin line or the hip line, and I would place it on their bicep behind the leg, and I would be able to sweep them to the right.

**** I don't think that was orthodox. I don't think that was something that someone taught me and said, "Okay, yeah, this works really well here." I think it was just something I ended up doing. And then I found a little bit of success with it, and I continued to do it. I don't know of anyone who played that game specifically, because it shouldn't actually work if you think about it—it's not a natural jump.

**** So then I started doing stuff like butterfly half, thanks to Adam Wardziński. And then I started doing things with like, if they were passing and flanking me on one side, I would get a deep lasso or I'd get a foot in the bicep for spider, and I'd force them back to where I wanted them. And it was just a way of preventing the guard pass from happening when those stages occurred where I was dead to rights, in a sense, and it would save me.

**** So then, with time, I've started just developing these tendencies and habits of swimming in and out of De La Riva to X, to butterfly when necessary. A limited use of Single Leg X—not a big fan personally for me, it's not something I've picked up much. And then sometimes I would swim into Spider, and then collar-sleeve guard, and a little bit of Spider, and then I would swim back into X.

**** And it became a fluid motion of interacting with these different guards, understanding that each one of them gave you elements of success or advantageous positions based on who you were going with. So I transitioned. I started using them in different ways, unique ways. Sometimes some people I play a lot of Spider, some people I'm playing only half guard. And then I play a lot of half with a butterfly hook—that one's been a big part of my game.

**** But understanding that they were not individual rooms that did not intersect was a big plus for me, because then I stopped viewing them as "Oh, I don't do Spider," or "I don't do De La Riva," or "I don't do this, or I don't do that." Even Reverse De La Riva became a big part of my game for a while, and it's still a big part of my game now. People are knee cutting, it leads right into Reverse De La Riva. And when they're knee cutting, sometimes it leads into a collar-sleeve because I can push them back and regain some kind of a guard.

**** Sometimes it leads into Reverse De La Riva slash lasso on the sleeve. Sometimes it leads me into butterfly game because I can get the outside hook back in and square back up. The quicker you can understand, "Hey, I just need to maintain three to four points of contact on my opponent at all times," the more you'll start to understand that there's a fluidity in these guards that you don't have to ignore. You don't have to say, "I'm only this" or "I'm only that." Just pick where they actually work; be experimental.

**** If someone's passing to your right and you get that Reverse De La Riva in and you're able to hold them long enough, start playing with the sleeves, start playing with the lasso, start playing with a little bit of Spider. Maybe you start hooking under their shin to push them back, and then you start playing half guard from there, and half guard with the butterfly hook, and everything you can think of. It doesn't have to be limited to any one guard, and it doesn't have to be your identity.

**** Over time, you're going to start melding these different guards together, and you're going to start seeing which ones are more buddy-buddy-like. Again, butterfly half: beautiful combination. Half guard, butterfly half, and butterfly guard—they transition really well together. I probably won't transition butterfly to Spider guard—too much of a distance. The legs are in two widely different places, so they don't necessarily match off of that.

**** But if I'm playing De La Riva, then there's Spider. If I'm playing Spider, there's X. If I'm playing X, there's Single Leg X, there's Spider associated with it. And you start to off-balance, especially in X-Guard where I can plant a foot in your bicep on this front side, plant my foot on the ground and create more space, I can off-balance you a little bit.

**** So what I'm asking for people is just to get really creative with what you're doing. Don't limit yourself to one guard. Understand that they're going to be fluid between each other, and some of them are going to work really well together and some of them not so much. Consider them like armbar, kimura, omoplata, and triangle. Some of the guards are going to work like that, where if I go for triangle, I have an armbar. If they curl the arm underneath, I have omoplata/kimura. If they posture up and maybe they get the arm across, I have regular armbar.

**** I have a plethora of attacks because they interconnect so well together. Similar to when you're in top side and you're attacking the americana, the straight armbar, and the kimura—they intersect, they intercede. They're all part of the same connecting tissue, and you can swim back and forth between them. And the better you can understand that you can swim between guards, and that your job at all times is to use three to four points of contact—being your hands and your feet, your feet pushing like the soles of your feet, or the top of your feet hooking, and then the grips you make whether they're sleeve, collar, pants, ankle, heel, whatever they may be, sometimes torso—you get to determine what kind of feedback you're going to give them.

**** If you relegate yourself and you're not understanding the point of the guard, and maybe you're a little slower or you're not quick to react, and you make the mistake of only having two points of contact or one point of contact, you're going to lose the battle pretty early and pretty easily. If I can get you to understand three or four points of contact—four being best—you'll start to understand where you can take the guards a lot easier, because now you're used to using all four of your limbs fluidly, where then you can swim, you can hook, you can push, you can change directions, and then you can off-center, you can push them one way and create a reaction the other. It makes it a lot easier if you're already in the habit of using four points of contact.

**** Hoping this helps. I know it's a little bit abstract, and I know that it's hard to see if you don't have video. I did post some stuff recently, if I remember I'll put a link on here to an example of what I mean. You do not have to use all the guards, but I do suggest using more than one. I will always suggest that you use four points of contact; three is a bare minimum.

**** And most of all, be creative. Don't be afraid to fail, don't be afraid to let have someone pass because you were experimenting on a certain thing. I do that all the time, I do it now. I'll be experimenting on a certain guard or a certain entry or a certain sweep that I think is there, and I completely mess up the timing, and they completely step around, and then I lose the position, I'm in side control. It's fine. It's not the end of the world—you're training. This is what the academy is for: to find the failure points, find where you can alter things and improve things.

**** Be creative. If you're in an environment that's creative, you're going to enjoy this art a lot better. You're going to find answers that sometimes your instructors can't give you, and you're going to just find ways to make things work for your body type and your temperament. It's a great thing. Be experimental. Go out there and fail.