Today I am here with a good friend of mine, Daniel McCarthy, who trains at my academy in Bedford, MA.  Daniel is a black belt and he is 50 years old, he is one of the nicest guys and he is very tough.  Daniel rolls with all of the guys in our academy, the young competitors, the white belts, me, and everybody.  It is amazing to see that if you adapt your game, even at 50 years old you will be able to train hard with people.  This is why I love bjj, no matter how old you get, there is Jiu Jitsu for you.  Dan is very tough and he is amazing at opening the closed guard.  Today I asked him to share some details.  Let’s see the video below and then I will do some breakdown.

Breakdown of Daniel McCarthy’s Details on Breaking The Closed Guard:

So guys, as you can see in the video above, there are a lot of little details that are really good and really important.  For example, the way that Daniel stands up is very important.  He steps his leg up on the side of the sleeve he is controlling and he steps way up by my head.  This makes his posture very good and brings my hip up high.
The reason he does this is because he is going to use his knees to pinch my hips really really tight.  You can’t see this in the video but he is pinching my hip so tight with his knees and it makes my hips locked in place. He is also using his elbows to keep my knees tight, this also makes it very hard to move.
The next think he does is break open the guard, he keeps his elbow locked on my knee so that I cannot move it.  Once he does this he is still controlling the sleeve and he is going to run away from me as he pulls me and there it is, guard pass strait to the knee on belly.  I see Daniel doing this to a lot of the guys at the gym.  Anyways I hope this helps, try it out, ossssssssssssssss.