Posted by Marshal Carper, lockflow.com
Marcelo Garcia's guard game, in Hall's opinion, is the correct way to use the guard.
Hall cited Marcelo Garcia's guard game as an effective use of the guard position because Garcia uses the guard in the way that a wrestler uses a shot: to get a leg and score a takedown.
"The way Marcelo Garcia plays guard, is, in my opinion, how it should be done," Hall said. "Your whole job is to pull them off of you and stand up into a single leg. I'm finding more and more that the traditional sweeps don't really work at the high level, at least not in the way that you normally think of them: you cut me over, and I fall like kaboom right on my back. That doesn't really happen. It's like a 20 point touchdown. It just doesn't usually work like that when both guys are at a truly elite level... I guess I'd say my approach to the guard has changed drastically. It isn't to pull some whacky sweep or triangle out of my ass anymore. My whole goal is to just make you off balance to the point that you can't, for a moment, stop me from standing up--and now I finish from a positional advantage. I feel that's the truly reliable way to do it. You can replicate it against a high-level opponent who knows what you're doing. That's when you know you've got something.
