Guard Retention
The work of keeping legs between you and the opponent while they try to remove them.
Guard retention is the knee between you
Guard retention comes down to one rule, keep a knee between your hips and theirs, and every frame, shrimp and shoulder turn exists to put that knee back once the passer has moved it.
Foundational · Gi and no-giGuard retention: the hips back underneath
Guard is recovered by moving your hips back under the opponent's centre of mass, and most retention failures are the moment your hips stopped travelling and your legs started reaching.
Intermediate · Gi and no-giThe retention ladder: frame, angle, invert
Guard recovery is a ladder of four rungs keyed to how far the pass has progressed, frame, re-angle, invert and recover, and each rung stops working at a point you can name before you move.
Intermediate · Gi and no-gi
Reading connected to this area
Journal
- Guard retention as a system
Retention is usually taught as a list of recoveries, which describes what a held guard looks like from outside without saying what is being held.