Overwhelming and passing a good guard player – the half guard route: When you have a dangerous guard player underneath you, there are few better routes than getting chest to chest, with an intimidating cross face and flattening him out with either an underhook or hip walking so that he is left with little offense. The beauty of half guard passing is that it reverses the normal order of events in guard passing. In most guard passes you pass the hips first and control the head last. In half guard passing the first target is usually the head and then you pass the hips by extracting your leg. As such it is qualitatively different from regular methods of guard passing. You must make it a separate study and delve deeply into it. Almost all of the great guard passers had strong half guard passing as a big part of their repertoire – make it part of yours too!
