Gordon Ryan recently shared his fundamental approach to mastering one of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu’s most common positions: the closed guard. Breaking down both offensive and defensive strategies, Ryan emphasized that success in this position comes down to understanding two core principles from the bottom and one essential concept from the top.
“If I have movement and angle from bottom closed guard, you’re going to be able to start making things happen,”
he explains.
The key to creating movement lies in an often overlooked technique. Rather than reaching toward your opponent, which typically results in getting pushed away or posted on, Ryan advocates for pulling your knees to your chest.
“The foundation of being able to attack from closed guard is the ability to pull my knees to my chest to create movement and off-balance my partner,”
he states. This approach draws your opponent forward into you rather than resisting their defensive structure.
For creating angles, Ryan recommends a specific shrimping technique that maintains pressure on your opponent. Instead of posting on the floor and shrimping away, which allows your opponent to follow and readjust, he suggests keeping body weight on your partner while pivoting.
“I put body weight on him. So when I try to create an angle, when he goes to follow me, I’m wedging his hips in place as I’m moving.”
The technique involves turning one knee toward the floor and extending the opposite leg while pinching down toward your opponent’s hips. This creates the necessary angle while maintaining control.
From the top position, Ryan’s advice is refreshingly straightforward: just stand up. He emphasizes that
“the dangers of being pulled forward are much greater than the dangers of being knocked backwards.”
Rather than attempting traditional guard-breaking methods like posting on the knee or grabbing the gi, Ryan advocates for achieving vertical posture.
“From here, I just focus on however it may be, one foot at a time, two feet at the same time. I just go in, stand up, get to vertical posture.”
This approach eliminates the primary threats from closed guard – triangles, armbars, omoplatas and kimuras – all of which require the top player to be pulled forward. Even if knocked backwards, Ryan notes it’s relatively easy to recover and begin passing.
Ryan’s methodology strips away complicated techniques in favor of fundamental movement patterns that work consistently across all skill levels. By focusing on knee pulls and hip pivots from the bottom and vertical posture from the top, practitioners can avoid the common trap of feeling stuck in closed guard exchanges.
This systematic approach shows why Gordon Ryan has achieved such success at the highest levels of competition – by mastering and perfecting the fundamentals that many overlook in favor of flashier techniques.
