Reverse Closed Guard for Beginners and How to Abe Lock People

The Safest New Position in BJJ and a Nasty High-Percentage Submission

It’s rare when a new novel move appears in the BJJ community. But it is even rarer when the move actually works on the highest levels.

The Buggy choke is one of those rare moves I am referring to, but pretty much anyone now knows how to stay safe from it, and unless you are training with JayRod, Kade, Tye or Rene Souza, chances are you see the Buggy choke as a sneaky but not very high percentage move.

This week I want to cover my initial learnings on a move that I think is as rare and novel as the Buggy was 2 years ago, but it actually has the potential to be a move that we keep using in 2 years and not everyone will have decrypted it. Enter the: Reverse Closed Guard… Updated and refined cousin of the Donkey Guard 🫏

I have to disclaim that I am only a beginner when it comes to its use since I’ve been playing with it for only about 2 weeks, lol. But it has made my training super fun and I’ve been able to Abe lock a couple of skilled opponents already… My guess is that after a couple of more weeks and months of studying and learning more about it, I’ll be able to make it a higher percentage and use it with greater success.

First I want to cover real quick why I like the position and then I’ll give you a breakdown and a video of the tutorial that has helped me learn the first sequence I’ve been using successfully.

Why I think is a good guard and submission sequence to learn:

• It’s new and novel, which means it will give you a lot of early success and motivation with minimal effort and time commitment.

• It’s being used at the highest levels (W. Tackett submitted Jay Rod in the final of ADCC Trials, Owen Jones used it to win ADCC Trials)

• In my initial tests, it appeared effective many times when opponents were frantically trying to pass my guard, and I was too tired to defend against it. I went from almost getting my guard passed to being super safe and submitting people.

• It is super safe!

Basic Entry and Abe Lock Finish from Guard Position

From the open guard, we are going to get into a regular K-Guard entry like so:

Note: If you don’t get a reaction, please just go for backside 50/50 and heel hook them a la Lachlan Giles.

Next, we’ll try to get their knee to our upper body, and instead of going for regular backside 50/50, we are going to extract our legs and use them as frames before we can open up the necessary space to shoot our hips into a reverse closed guard:

We then extract our K-Guard leg and shoot it to the opposite side, and then we immediately shoot our hips high and close our reverse closed guard:

Is it absolutely crucial to keep this grip on the leg. Otherwise, they’ll end up in the same position as ourselves, and we’ll lose the attacking position:

We then pull their leg towards our chest and make sure that we have a tight, secure grip over one or two of their ankles:

Now, it is extremely easy to go and finish the Abe lock or even a toe hold, you pretty much have a lot of control and they have nothing to attack you with. Take your time, and do not uncross your legs. As long as your legs are behind their back, you are safe.

Here are a couple of Abe locks so you can see how the submission is done:

(Go follow @AbrahamTheMountain on YouTube to see many more examples)

And, if you haven’t watched this match, I highly recommend it:

That’s it for this week!

Hope it helps you. Please feel free to message me back with ideas for techniques or matches you’d want me to break down in the future.

OSS 👊