The bottom player’s legs are wrapped around the top player’s torso with ankles crossed. It is the most fundamental guard in jiu-jitsu: the bottom player attacks posture, arms, and neck (armbar, triangle, kimura, sweeps) while the top player must break the legs open before any pass exists.
Gi & No-gi · Category: Guards
What can you do from Closed Guard?
Guard player (positional score 0/10)
Submissions
Armbar from Closed Guard — The first submission most people ever learn and one of the highest-percentage in history: isolate an arm across your center line, swing your hips to a right angle, and hyperextend the elbow over your pelvis.
Triangle Choke — Strangle your opponent with your own legs: one of their arms in, one out, your legs locked in a figure-four around their neck and trapped shoulder. Their shoulder does half the choking for you.
Cross Collar Choke — The oldest gi strangle in the book: two deep, crossed collar grips and a curl of the wrists that closes both carotids. Helio Gracie finished with it into his 80s; Roger Gracie finished world finals with it.
Kimura — The figure-four shoulder lock named for the judoka who broke Helio Gracie’s arm with it in 1951. From closed guard it is equal parts submission, sweep engine, and grip-fighting weapon.
Omoplata — A kimura performed with your legs: swing a leg over their shoulder, triangle the arm, and sit up to rotate the shoulder. When the tap doesn’t come, it converts into a sweep — a two-for-one attack.
Sweeps
Hip Bump Sweep — Sit up explosively into a posting opponent, catch their tricep, and drive your hips over theirs to roll them into mount. The armbar–kimura–guillotine triangle of attacks all begin with this same sit-up.
Scissor Sweep — The first sweep in nearly every gi curriculum: load your opponent onto your shin, then scissor your legs to tip them sideways into mount.
Flower Sweep — Swing one leg like a pendulum into their armpit while chopping their posted leg away — momentum, not strength, rolls them over into mount. Also the classic setup swing for the guard armbar.
Transitions
Rubber Guard Entry (Mission Control) — Break their posture, swing one leg high over their back, and overhook your own shin — locking their head down with your leg so a hand comes free to attack.
Worm Guard Entry — Free your opponent’s lapel, feed it under your own lead leg, and hand their posture to your leg — the entry into the lapel-guard labyrinth.
Passer (positional score 0/10)
Guard Passes
Standing Guard Break — The safest way out of closed guard: control the hips, stand up in base, and let gravity plus a knee wedge break the ankles open — landing you in headquarters to start passing.