Half guard looks like one position but behaves like two, and the difference is the underhook. With your inside arm underneath their armpit and your head on the outside of theirs, you can come onto your side, load their weight over your shoulder, and threaten to come up. Without it, their crossface flattens you, their shoulder pins your jaw, and the knee slice arrives shortly after. Everything else — the knee shield, the lockdown, the deep half entry — is a way of buying time to win the underhook or to prevent them from settling with theirs.
Key points
- Get onto your side immediately; a flat half guard bottom has no leverage and no route to the underhook.
- Drive your head to the outside of their head so the crossface has nothing solid to press against.
- Use a knee shield to hold distance while your hands fight, then trade it away once the underhook lands.
- Keep your bottom knee pointed at their hip so they cannot flatten your legs into a simple pass.
- Once the underhook is in, walk your hips underneath theirs before trying to come up or dive under.
Common mistakes
- Holding the half guard hooks tight while lying flat, which is a comfortable way to get slowly passed.
- Reaching for the underhook with a straight arm from underneath, giving away a whizzer and a kimura.
- Letting the crossface set before you turn, because turning into a locked crossface costs far more energy.
Put it into practice
Underhook battle rounds
- Begin on your side in half guard with your inside hand already under their armpit and your head outside.
- Have your partner attempt to whizzer and flatten you while you work only to keep the underhook.
- Reset with the underhook lost, spending sixty seconds recovering it using the knee shield and hip movement.
- Add one sweep of your choice off the underhook and run five repetitions on each side.
half guardunderhookknee shieldsweeps