While this is obviously something I need to work on, it also makes sense that—if maintaining posture is a problem—I come up with another way of dealing with the guard that makes the posture problem irrelevant.
The solution? You guessed it: STAND.
There’s really only one good reason why I don’t try and stand to pass the guard—and I’ve said it before: laziness. I don’t mean moral laziness. Just a feeling that the effort required to stand, open and pass the guard is “too much” at any given point in time (i.e., almost always). Part of that is a mental block. But part of it is indeed a physical one: I need to get my legs in better condition so that I always “feel” strong enough to stand and pass.
In no gi, this has been especially tricky. Last night, rolling with one of the newer guys, I got caught in his guard and my posture was completely broken. He had a good armwrap on my right arm and though I never felt threatened by it, I was having a hard time staying out of the armwrap when I did manage to pull my arm free.
It’s been said a thousand times: standing up in the guard eliminates much if not most of the submissions you can get caught by. Every single loss I’ve had in a tournament came from a submission from the guard (three armlocks and a triangle). Again, I’ve had some difficulty with standing passes in general. But whereas I feel confident about being able to improve my standing passes in the gi, I still feel a little lost when trying to do so in no gi.
With that in mind, here are the steps to a no gi standing pass from BJ Penn’s MyGym: 