Z Guard

You’ve got your partner in the guard if they’re on top of you but you’ve got your legs between them and you.  Pretty vague, right?  What this means is that there are lots of different varieties of guards.  The z guard is one of those varieties.

The z guard gets its name from the fact that it makes the letter z.  The player on the bottom is off at a 90 degree angle to the player on the top.  The bottom player’s bottom leg is hooked under the closer leg of the top player.  The bottom player’s top shin is resting on the hip of the top player.  Thus with those three legs you get the shape of a z.  Kinda baffling to try and picture, right?

Well turns out it’s a very strong structure and if you can set it up correctly the top player can’t turn into you so is faced with the choice of giving up the top position, getting swept or getting triangled.  Now those are the kinds of junky choices I’d always like to give my partner.

Thanks to the guys at Alive MMA for the class content.