Week 6 - Gordon Ryan's 2.0 Passing System 🤯
This week's focus will be Gordon Ryan's Loose Passing System.
This week's focus will be Gordon Ryan's Loose Passing System and how to create Passing Trilemmas 💎 … so you always know what to do next when you’re loose passing.
Some considerations before we start:
While pressure passing and body-lock passing can be hard to master and use if you are smaller/weaker than your opponent, loose passing sequences work with any opponent.
Gordon employs many passing systems and styles. And I think you can only excel at passing at the highest level if you master all of these systems and learn how to make them work together… however, you need to start somewhere, and I think loose passing reinforces many good principles of passing and maintaining top control that other systems don’t.
This guide doesn’t include Chest-to-Chest Half Guard Passing, Body-Lock passing, or Float Passing. In the future, I’ll cover some of these systems specifically.
Concepts before we start
To understand the system, you need to understand a couple of basic concepts first:
J-Point: Jeopardy Point
Gordon refers to the J-Point as the point where your opponent needs to address your passing actions, or he (your opponent) is in jeopardy of getting his guard passed. This point usually consists of passing the hipline of your opponent:
J-Point Camping:
Camping in the J-Point instead of trying to advance position. The position is very safe and makes your opponent carry your weight as long as they stay in position. As soon as they move, they usually give away the pass. The way GR plays it is like this:
Position Details:
Gordon's legs are free
His right hand posts on the hip, protecting his opponent’s left leg from pummeling inside.
His head is crashing Bernardo’s far shoulder.
His left hand controls and pushes Bernardo’s right leg threatening his elbow-knee connection.
System Overview
This one is a bit of a trickier guide to write since the sequence of actions will depend on our opponent’s actions. I think the best way to understand the overall system is visual.
I’ll break down each passing sequence in the next section, but make sure you come back to this section after so you understand how they play together and create a Trilemma.
💡 Remember: Our ultimate goal is to get to either the J-Point Camping position or Chest-to-Chest Half-Guard
Image Breakdown
Toreando Style Pass Sequence (Opponent’s knees are close to his chest)
Side-to-side movement controlling legs to create tension in your opponent’s legs:
As soon as you pass the hip line, get to the J-Point Camping Position like so:
High-Step Passing Sequence (Opponent's knees are separated from his chest)
Step over your opponent’s leg and rotate your hips to create a close wedge around his leg:
Make a reverse v grip on your opponent’s ankle with your bottom hand and take a shoulder post with your top hand. The position looks unstable, but it isn’t unstable at all.
High step with the leg that’s between your opponent’s legs and pass to side control. If they recover their guard, your goal is to get to the J-Point Camping position and pass from there.
If they recover go to J-Point Camping:
Related Resources
Watch it in action
Gordon’s Passing 2.0 Volume 7 and 8 (Rolling footage)
Jake from LIMI BJJ has great videos and an EXCELLENT online course about passing half-guard that covers most of this. I highly recommend it!
Best Fighters to watch
Gordon Ryan
Some of the New Wave guys
Training Plan for the Week
I train 3-4 days per week (I drill at home with a dummy almost every day). In order to make it easier for you and everyone else to adapt this plan to their training schedule, I'll divide the week into 2 parts and an extra for the lucky ones who can train more than 3-4 times per week.
First Half of the Week (Training sessions 1 & 2 of 4 for me):
Drill the whole sequence and try the positions with your training partners before you try them while rolling
Focus on rolling playfully with smaller, weaker opponents that are way below your skill level. If you can roll playfully with someone that knows what you are trying, that’s better. Tell them to resist, but ultimately let you win and try the positions.
After you finish or pass, release and start over again.
Remember, the first half of the week is meant to get reps and some feedback on what you are doing wrong and how to fix them.
Second Half of the Week (Training sessions 3 & 4 of 4 for me):
Gradually start picking better opponents until you can no longer perform the move. Once this happens, start going down and picking less skilled opponents until you get to a sweet spot where you are performing the move more than 50% of the time you try it.
Try to finish your week performing the move as flawlessly as possible with someone, no matter how low their skill level is: You want to make the last rep as perfect as possible; that's the repetition we internalize the most when we leave the training room.
NOTE: At the least, you should be drilling at home with a homemade dummy for 10 min almost every day to take advantage of your real training time at the gym and maximize your learnings.
That’s it!
PS. I'd love to hear your feedback on this newsletter. Please reply and let me know what you want to cover next week.
I'm trying to grow this newsletter, so please, share it with your friends and training partners 🙏
I'm loving this J-point passing system. I usually end up in north-south by crashing head to far hip. It's great against knee-shield specialists or butter-half players. Just pop up to your feet and V-grip.
Hi! How did you make your dummy? In my gym, we don't drill as much as I want to, and I've been thinking about drilling daily at home before going there to roll.