BJJ guards: the main types of guard and how to choose yours

What a guard is in BJJ

A guard in BJJ is any position in which you are on your back or seated and use your legs, together with your grips, to control a partner who is on top of you or standing. To pin you in side control, mount or another dominant position, your partner first has to get past your legs, which is called passing the guard.

From guard you work toward a sweep, a submission, a back take, or coming up to your feet, often called a wrestle-up. Guard work in jiu-jitsu has two parts: keeping the guard while your partner tries to pass, known as guard retention, and attacking from it.

Guards grouped by distance

Grapplers name dozens of guards, and many are variations of one another. This series groups them by how close each guard keeps you to your partner and what holds the connection.

Closed guard keeps your partner closest. Before they can start to pass, they have to break your guard open, either from their knees or after standing up.

Half guard and its variations, such as deep half guard, Z guard and coyote guard, trap one of your partner’s legs. You are close to them and often on your side, using an underhook, a knee shield or a grip on their leg to keep them from flattening you.

Open guards hold your partner at about the length of your legs, with your feet on their hips, biceps or legs and your hands on sleeves, collar, pants, wrists or ankles. Several are often combined, such as the lasso with spider guard or De La Riva. Butterfly guard belongs here as well, although you play it seated and close to your partner.

Leg entanglement guards wrap your legs around one of your partner’s legs. This series places X guard here, although many instructors list it with the open guards. Leg lock rules, covered below, matter most for these guards. The map lists pulling guard on its own, because it leads into any of these groups rather than belonging to one.

Select a guard to see what it is and open its full article.

Choosing guards that suit your body

Leg length affects which guards come easily. Long legs give you more room to recover an open guard after a partner gets past your feet. With shorter legs, closed guard works as long as you can lock your feet behind your partner’s back, and guards that keep you close, such as half guard and butterfly guard, depend less on reach.

Flexibility matters most in guards that fold a leg high, such as rubber guard, and in guards where you invert or turn your hips underneath your partner. If a position strains your knees or lower back, build on guards that do not need that range.

Instructors disagree about which guards suit a given build, so give a guard several weeks of practice before you decide it does not fit you.

Gi, no-gi and your ruleset

In the gi, grips on the sleeves, collar, lapels and pants hold for a long time, and guards such as spider guard, the lasso and many De La Riva variations are built on them. In no-gi, grips slip more easily, so guards rely on wrist control, underhooks, collar ties and leg hooks. Butterfly guard, X guard, half guard and 50/50 are played in both.

Rulesets change which attacks a guard offers. Organizations restrict heel hooks and knee reaping differently by belt, by age division and by gi or no-gi. Under the IBJJF rules introduced in 2021, for example, heel hooks are illegal in the gi at every belt and allowed in no-gi only for adult brown and black belts.

Rules on pulling guard differ as well. The IBJJF gives no points for it but penalizes a pull made without a grip, while ADCC gives a negative point to the grappler who pulls. If you compete, check that the main attacks of the guards you train are legal in your division.

Building a guard game over time

Closed guard is a sound place to start, because it teaches posture control, angles and basic sweeps and submissions while your partner is held in place. Guard retention deserves the same attention: framing, moving your hips and recovering your guard when a pass is half finished.

Then choose one guard to build around and learn it in layers: the grips that control your partner, a sweep and a submission or back take from those grips, and what to do when your partner defends each one. Our guide to the BJJ plateau explains how to run a block of training around one position.

Over time, add guards that connect to the one you have. When a partner stands up in your closed guard, you can open into a guard that works against a standing partner, such as De La Riva. De La Riva and butterfly guard both connect to X guard.

Seeing your guard game on video

Film a few rounds and note which guards you actually reach, how each one ended, and the grip or frame you lost just before each pass. You can also send the footage to a verified black belt for a roll review, which marks where your guard held and where it was passed.