The Sao Paulo Synchronicity
Has Lachlan Giles sparked a pressure passing revolution?
It’s funny how the mind absorbs heuristics. Three years ago, I heard Roger Gracie declare “There’s nobody in the world who can open my closed guard without standing up.” At the time I remember thinking that 1) “Nobody can open Roger’s closed guard.” and 2) “Plenty of people can open my closed guard without standing up.” These were two good reasons for taking this advice with a grain of salt.
Slowly, however, I began to gravitate towards standing guard breaks. Furthermore, I based my game around imitating Roger’s closed guard and worked from the premise that if I did everything “right” my guard wouldn’t open unless the opponent stood up. It was a fruitful endeavor, and I began to notice a direct correlation between preventing opponents from standing up in my closed guard and getting sweeps and submissions. Eventually, at-least around the gym I began to identify people for whom getting stuck in my closed guard was a guaranteed kill. Before long I found myself parotting the phrase “Nobody can open my closed guard unless they stand up.” Even though this obviously wasn’t literally true.
What I failed to realize was that all of this was taking place in the context of Reflexivity. Much like a stock trader investing in a company, I was just a node in the Jiu Jitsu network, and my…
