What the leg weave pass is
The leg weave pass, also called the hip smash, is a pressure pass used mainly against a knee shield half guard, where your partner lies on their side with their top shin across your body. You thread an arm between their legs and use your weight to pin their hips while you work around the legs. Some instructors also apply it against other half guard and open guard positions. It works in both gi and no-gi, with different grips in each, and belongs with the pressure passes in our guide to BJJ guard passing.
The weave and the grips
The weaving arm goes under your partner’s top leg, the one forming the shield, and over their bottom leg, so your forearm lies across the bottom thigh and keeps that leg from following you as you move. Your free hand works on the upper body, so your partner cannot turn in to face you.
Instructors differ on where your weight goes. Many drive the shoulder down onto the top leg and straighten the weaving arm to take the shield down. Stephan Kesting has described moving away from crushing the thighs: he puts his forehead on his partner’s belly, pikes his hips up so his head pins their belly and hips to the mat, and uses his arms mainly to stop the legs from tracking him.
Gi gripsNo-gi grips
- Holds the bottom legThe weaving hand grips the pants on top of the bottom thigh, or reaches deeper to the belt or far hip.The weaving hand holds the top of the bottom thigh or the far hip.
- Controls the upper bodyThe free hand grips the lapel or a sleeve and blocks their arm.The free hand takes a crossface or an underhook.
Used against
How the bottom player counters it
- Upper-body control
- Push the shoulder away
- Shrimp and pike the hips
- Strip the weaving hand
- Kimura or omoplata
Freeing your leg and finishing the pass
With the weave and the weight in place, your partner’s shield is down and their hips are pinned, but your own leg is still caught in their half guard. Instructors free it in different ways. Lachlan Giles comes up into a tripod on his feet with his head posted on his partner and slices his knee out. Kesting keeps his head on the belly and circles around the top leg.
To finish, lean forward with your head framed on their chest as you move to the side, straighten your legs to make space, and bring your far knee up beside their hip to settle in side control.
How the bottom player breaks it down
Defending the pass starts with upper-body control. Grips on your arms, head or collar keep your head off your partner’s chest and stop you from posting on them, which takes away the pin the pass relies on. With that control, they can also frame on your head and hip escape away from the pass.
Once the weave is in, Ritchie Yip teaches a defense that works in order and starts as soon as your hand comes under the top leg. Your partner first attacks the pressure: their hand pushes your weaving-side shoulder away, and they shrimp and pike their hips up, which changes the angle of your shoulder pressure. With the pressure lighter, their top hand peels your weaving hand off their bottom thigh and pushes it back out through their legs. They then drop their top knee onto your shoulder to break your posture and attack that arm with a kimura or an omoplata.
Common leg weave mistakes
Weaving too shallow is the first. With the arm only partway through, your partner can pummel their knee back inside and rebuild their frames.
Letting the weight come off is the second. The moment your shoulder or head stops pinning them, your partner has room to bring the shield back between you.
Slicing your trapped leg out across their thigh is the third. Giles’s version slices low, near their shin.
What a reviewer looks for in your leg weave
On video, a black belt checks how deep the weave went, whether your weight stayed on the hips while you freed your leg, and which grip your partner won first on your upper body. In a roll review, a verified black belt points to each of those moments in a voiceover on your own footage and sets homework drills for the step where the pass stalls.