Body lock pass: lock the hips first

Position and problem

You are in front of a seated or supine guard in no-gi, and every time you drop your weight a shin arrives across your hips. A guard like this works because the bottom player's hips can turn, shift and re-aim their legs faster than you can clear them, and without cloth there is little to slow those hips down. The body lock pass leaves the legs alone at first. You close the distance, wrap both arms around their lower back with your hands clasped to each other, and take the hips out of the guard before doing anything about the knees.

Objective

Lock your hands around the bottom player's hips with your own hips tight to theirs, pin one leg, and walk past it without opening the lock.

Core concept

A guard can only chase you with its legs as far as its hips can turn, so a pass that holds the hips makes the legs follow you instead of finding you. The body lock does that with a grip that needs no fabric: your own hands, clasped palm to palm or around a wrist behind their belt line, with your chest on their torso and your hips close to theirs. The hip-to-hip contact is the part that holds. A lock held with your hips far back gives their knees room to come between you, while a lock with your hips tight to theirs leaves the knees little room. From there the pass runs in stages. With the lock set, you pin one of their legs, by sitting your hip onto their thigh or trapping the leg between your own, and then you step your free leg over or walk your hips past the pinned leg until you arrive in half guard or beyond it. The last stage frees your own knee, and it tends to go quickly because the hips that would have re-guarded are still inside your arms. Because the grip is your own hands, it does not slip the way a grip on a sweaty wrist does, which is part of why it suits no-gi, against seated guards, butterfly hooks and the leg-entanglement guards that punish a passer who keeps distance. The same lock is also used by some passers to stand up inside closed guard and open the legs. A bottom player who frames early can still keep the lock from closing, so the pass depends on how completely you close the distance to set it.

Key mechanics

1. 01Lock the hands low, at the belt line or below it. The hips turn from the pelvis, and a lock around the pelvis stops the turn where it starts, while a lock around the ribs holds a part of them the hips can move without.
2. 02Keep your hips tight to theirs, not back and away. The space between your hips and theirs is the space their knees use to come back between you, so a lock with the hips far back is holding very little.
3. 03Keep the chest low on their torso with your head tight against their chest or ribs. A high chest gives their hands a clear frame on your shoulders and head, and a framed passer is a passer whose lock is being pried open.
4. 04Pin one leg before stepping over anything. Trap it between your thighs or sit your hip on the thigh so it cannot rise, and the free leg becomes the only one left to clear.
5. 05Step or walk your hips past the pinned leg with the lock still closed. Opening the hands to deal with a leg returns the hips to the bottom player and gives the guard back its engine.
6. 06Free your trapped knee last, from half guard, by walking the hips back or stepping over with the arms still locked. Their hips are still held, so their half guard answers arrive late.
7. 07Adjust the lock's height as they turn inside it. A lock that follows the hips keeps holding them; a lock left where it was first set ends up around the ribs.

Common errors

• ×Locking the hands around the ribs instead of the hips, which holds the torso while the pelvis turns underneath and a knee slides back through.
• ×Holding the lock with the arms stretched and the hips back, which leaves room between the hips for a shin to fill.
• ×Opening the lock to clear a leg with the hands, which releases the hips at the moment the guard most needs them back.
• ×Stepping over before a leg is pinned, so the step lands on a leg that is still free to rise and hook.
• ×Squeezing harder when the pass stalls instead of moving the hips, which tires the arms and changes nothing about where their knees are.

Safety

Training progression

1. 01Static: partner seated, no resistance. Close the distance and set the lock at the belt line, then check that your hips are against theirs before anything else moves.
2. 02Static: from the lock, pin one leg by sitting your hip on the thigh, step past it to half guard and stop there with the hands still clasped.
3. 03Cooperative: partner turns their hips slowly one way and then the other inside the lock. Follow the turn with the height of the lock instead of squeezing harder.
4. 04Counter drill: partner frames on your shoulder and head as you enter. Practise closing the distance before the frames lock out, then swap roles and feel what an early frame does to the passer.
5. 05Constrained: top player may pass only with the body lock; bottom player may frame and re-guard but not attack. Restart when the lock opens or the pass settles in side control.
6. 06Live rounds: count the body locks that opened, and mark each one ribs or hips by where your hands were when it went.

Related entries

• The knee cut pass
• Guard retention: the hips back underneath
• The butterfly hook as a lever
• Connection in open guard