What the rubber guard is
The rubber guard is a high guard played from closed guard. Its aim is to keep your partner’s posture broken with one folded leg instead of two locked feet, so that in several of its positions one of your arms is free to attack, or to strike in MMA. It sits with the closed guards in our guide to BJJ guards.
Nino Schembri was using the position in competition in the late 1990s. Eddie Bravo later popularized it and built it into a system at his 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu academies, mainly for no-gi and MMA. It can be played in the gi as well.
Mission control and the positions after it
From closed guard, break your partner’s posture and get an overhook on one arm. Open your guard and climb the leg on the overhook side across their upper back, then hold that shin or ankle with your hand. In Bravo’s system this base position is called mission control.
Pull the shin down actively with your hand rather than relying on flexibility to keep the leg in place. Your other foot stays active on your partner’s hip. From mission control, the system branches into named positions such as New York and chill dog. Each changes how you control your partner’s arm or head and leads to its own attacks.
Grips
- Collar gripPulls your partner's head down so the leg can climb before they sit back up.
- OverhookTraps the arm on the side where your leg goes high.
- Hand on your own shinTakes the place of the closed guard lock, so the leg stays high when your partner tries to posture.
Main attacks
- OmoplataThe high leg is already over the shoulder, so turning your hips out locks the arm. A grip on the belt or far hip stops the forward roll escape.
- GogoplataYour shin goes across your partner's throat and your hands pull their head down onto it.
- Triangle choke
- Armbar
Grips
- Head controlA hand behind the head keeps posture broken where there is no collar to hold.
- Overhook
- Hand on your own shin
- Wrist controlYour free hand controls your partner's other wrist so they cannot post it or strip your grip.
Main attacks
- Omoplata
- Gogoplata
- Triangle choke
- Armbar
Distance
Closed
How partners counter it
The rubber guard depends on your partner’s posture staying broken. Partners counter it by sitting up straight before the leg climbs, breaking your hand off your shin, and pushing the high leg off their neck or shoulder. Once the leg comes down, they flatten your hips with their weight and pass, often with a knee cut, a smash pass or an over-under pass.
Keep pulling their head down whenever they try to rise, and attack before they clear the leg. If the leg does come off, go back to closed guard or another guard rather than fighting to climb it again while they are upright.
The Williams guard
The Williams guard is a variation of the high guard named after Shawn Williams, a Renzo Gracie black belt who developed it in the late 1990s. With an overhook on one arm, your knee on that side presses on your partner’s shoulder, and you thread the overhooking arm under your own thigh to lock a grip, often a gable grip with your other hand. You play the position from your side at an angle rather than flat on your back.
Knee pressure on the shoulder and the locked grip keep your partner’s posture broken and the overhooked arm trapped, and the hip angle does the work that flexibility does in the rubber guard. Its main attacks are the omoplata, the triangle, the kimura and an armbar on the far arm.
Flexibility and your knees
The rubber guard asks a great deal of the hip on the side of the high leg. When the hip lacks the range, the knee can take the strain instead, and the knee tolerates twisting poorly. Build the range gradually with hip mobility work, and drill the position before you use it in sparring. Turning your hips out to an angle reduces how far the hip has to open, so you do not have to force the leg higher.
A partner who stacks you while your leg is high can push the folded leg further than you control. Let go of the shin and recover another guard instead of holding on. Pain inside or outside the knee during the position is a reason to stop. If it keeps coming back, build on the Williams guard or another guard that needs less range.
What a reviewer looks for in rubber guard footage
On video, a reviewer checks whether your partner’s posture was broken before the leg climbed, whether your hand stayed on your shin, and the moment your partner got the leg off their shoulder. They also note which of the named positions you reached and which attack you chose from each. A verified black belt can mark each of these moments on your own footage in a roll review.