[Zankou]

Awesome posts!

I have become more and more convinced that the biggest key to half guard games is simple: Elevate the hips. It is the key that makes everything else happen. Once you get your opponent's hips elevated, he is screwed. Jorge's video on Aesopian's website really brought this home to me (although Jorge himself didn't explain it real well). The regular half guard game emphasizes getting deep under the guy. But that's really just a subset of the larger key to the half guard game, which (like so much about jiu jitsu) is fundamentally based on seizing control of the hips -- in the case of half guard, elevating them so that his pressure and base are lost.

I was playing deep half guard last night, and had excellent luck transitioning into leglocks (caught a purple w/ kneebar, for example). Once you elevate your opponent's hips, he senses his balance is lost, and often tries to stand up to escape. I have instinctively been rolling into the kneebar at that point, but I think the "standup with ankle on shoulder" takedown and the single leg are something I should work on from there.

Need to work on: Sweeps when my opponent postures up and sits back in deep half guard, fighting hard against hip elevation. In that case, I think I need to transition to the pure "Paragon half guard" position that Aesopian shows above.

Also needed: A better regular half guard game. Mine is still rudimentary at best. All of these moves flow together and set each other up. Z guard or DLR/reverse DLR opens the door to entering (a) regular half guard, far in and on my side with the underhook; (b) deep half guard; or (c) worst case, half butterfly with the hips elevated high.

It's a really fun game, and it reminds me of the turtle guard in that it takes a lot of work and technical discipline to get it off the ground ... but then it starts flying.