Separating knee and elbows to pass in BJJ

Separating knee and elbows to pass in BJJ is crucial. When you can separate knee and elbow you can pass and pin. One of the main difficulties associated with passing the guard of a trained opponent is separating his knee and elbow on the side towards which you are passing. As long as your opponent keeps his knee and elbow framed together you will not have the space required to establish chest to chest contact and though you may have passed his legs/hips- you have not passed his guard. Learn to understand the need to separate knee and elbow as part of the guard passing process and you will have a lot more success getting to your pins. Don’t be satisfied with the superficial action of getting past the legs and hips – this has little effect on a skilled opponent. Even as you are doing that, start plotting how you lever apart his knee and elbow so that you can actually profit from passing the legs/hips and get your score. Here, Professor Sav does a great job of keeping knee and elbow far apart as he exerts his passing pressure and is rewards with a gap big enough to drive a truck through. The result? A clean pass to a controlling pin. This is something we stress at Savarese BJJ (www.njbjj.com). Pins lead to “cooking”, cooking makes people tired, and tired leads to submissions. This is why I always loved this quote by Saulo Ribeiro: “If you think, you are late. If you are late, you use strength. If you use strength you get tired. And if you get tired, you die!” Saulo himself used this theory to become a multiple time Wrold BJJ Champion and Masters World champion and even led some of his students like his brother Xande and Rafael Lovato Jr to great success.