Guard Passing Basics Every BJJ Practitioner Needs to Know

Guard passing is how you advance position in BJJ — it's the set of techniques you use to get past your opponent's legs and establish a dominant top position like side control, mount, or knee on belly. If you can't pass, you're stuck. And being stuck in someone's guard, especially at the intermediate level, is where a lot of games go to die.

Most people who struggle with guard passing don't have a technique problem. They have a fundamentals problem. Bad posture. No pressure. Trying to pass too fast. Fix those, and the specific passes start working.

Key Takeaways

• Posture and base come before any specific pass. No posture, no pass.
• The two most reliable guard passes for beginners are the torreando (bullfighter) and the over-under. Learn those before anything else.
• Pressure is what makes passing work — not speed, not strength.
• Most guard passes fail because of grips, not footwork. Control the legs first.
• Guard passing gets easier when you understand what the guard player is trying to do. It's a reaction game.

Why Guard Passing Is the Hardest Fundamental in BJJ

Here's the honest answer: you're working against someone whose entire job is to use their legs to tie you up, sweep you, or submit you. The guard is purpose-built to stop passes. That's why so many white and blue belts feel like they're swimming in cement every time they try to advance.

Guard passing difficulty is also why it's the area that separates decent grapplers from good ones. According to BJJ Heroes, the athletes who dominate at the highest levels — your Bernardo Farias, your Lepri — built their games on pressure passing. Not flash. Not complicated. Pressure.

For most people training in Brooklyn or anywhere else, guard passing isn't clicking because they never drilled the underlying structure: posture, grip, pressure, movement. The specific technique is almost secondary.

The Foundation: Posture, Base, and Grips

Before you think about which pass to use, you need to not get swept or submitted. That means posture.

When you're in someone's closed guard, your spine needs to be upright. Elbows in. Hips heavy. If you let someone break your posture down, they can start working arm bars, triangles, and sweeps. The guard player wants you hunched forward with your head down. Don't give them that.

Your base matters just as much. Feet wider than shoulder-width when you're standing in guard. Hips low and controlled when you're kneeling. Staying heavy and grounded is what lets you establish grips and start the pass without getting reversed.

Grips are where most passes live or die. You want to control the legs, not fight the upper body. Getting a grip on the pants at the knee, the ankle, or across the legs is what lets you start moving the hips off the center line and opening up the pass.

If you're training no-gi, grips change but the concept is the same. You're grabbing at the knee pockets, the ankles, behind the knees. Check out the breakdown on no-gi lessons in Brooklyn if that's your focus, because grip strategy differs enough that it's worth addressing separately.

The Two Passes Every Beginner Should Learn First

You don't need ten passes. You need two that actually work. Here they are.

Torreando (Bullfighter Pass)

This is the pass that transfers best from beginner to advanced. You control both legs at the knee level, then pivot your body to either side while pushing the legs away. The goal is to get your hips past theirs before they can re-guard.

Why it works for beginners: it keeps you standing, which makes it harder for them to hit sweeps or submissions. You're not putting your weight into them prematurely. You're controlling the frame and moving around it.

Common mistakes with the torreando: moving too slow after you control the legs (they'll just replace guard), or not getting your hips low enough when you establish side control at the finish. Pass the legs, then flatten immediately.

Over-Under Pass

This one's for when you're already on the ground in their guard. You thread one arm under their leg and one arm over the other leg, chest to their hips. Then you pressure and work to clear the bottom leg.

Why it works: it's a pressure pass. When you load your weight into someone's hips correctly, their options get limited fast. It's less explosive than the torreando but it smothers their guard and sets up a clear path to side control.

The IBJJF's ruleset has rewarded pressure passing at every major competition for good reason — it's effective, it's positional, and it scales. The IBJJF's competition rules and position scoring exist partly because guard passing is the primary driver of positional advantage in jiu-jitsu.

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Ready to drill these with actual hands-on feedback? Book a private lesson and we'll work your specific guard passing problems from the ground up.

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How Pressure Passing Works (And Why You Can't Skip It)

Pressure passing isn't just heavy. It's structured weight distribution combined with movement that limits the guard player's options. When you do it right, you're not grinding someone down through sheer force. You're making a specific position uncomfortable enough that they have to move, and when they move, you pass.

Marcus, a blue belt from Sheepshead Bay, came to a private session frustrated because he kept getting stuck when he tried to pass. He'd shoot for the pass and immediately hit resistance. His problem wasn't the technique. He was passing with zero pressure and a lot of speed. The guard player just had to be patient and reset.

We spent 45 minutes on a single drill: establish the over-under, load your chest into the hip, and just hold. Breathe. Let the weight settle. Then start working the knee clear. Marcus kept wanting to rush the finish. I made him hold the pressure position until it was obvious the guard player's options were gone. By the end of the session he was finishing the pass because he stopped racing and started smothering. That's what pressure passing actually means.

Opening the Closed Guard Before You Pass

You can't pass closed guard if it's still closed. This sounds obvious but a ton of people skip this step and try to force their way through.

The most reliable guard opener from the knees: post one hand on their hip, one on their knee, stand to a staggered base. Your weight going through their legs breaks the guard open. Once it's open you're passing into open guard, which is where your torreando and over-under live.

The guard opener from standing inside closed guard: break their ankle lock first by pushing your hips through, then stand. Either way, your hips have to be active. Standing up with a broken base is how you get swept before the pass even starts.

One thing worth drilling specifically: what happens after you open the guard but before you pass. That transition is where most white and blue belts lose the position. The guard player re-guards while you're still figuring out your grips. The answer is to have a grip already established on the legs before you move your hips. Control the frame, then move.

This connects directly to what makes BJJ private lessons more useful than group classes for this kind of problem. In group class, you get two minutes of instruction on a pass and then you're drilling it. In a private, you can slow down the specific moment where you're losing the position and actually fix it.

Reading the Guard: What the Guard Player Wants

Guard passing is easier when you understand what you're defending against. The guard player wants four things: off-balance you, submit you, sweep you, or re-guard when you're close to passing.

When you recognize which of those four they're going for, your response gets cleaner. They start pushing on your knee to create space? They're re-guarding. Keep your hips heavy and close the distance. They grab your sleeve and start pulling you forward? They're setting up a sweep or an arm attack. Don't follow your arm. Step your base out and reset your posture.

Carlos, a recreational grappler who trains 2-3x a week, came to a session wanting to work his torreando because it "wasn't connecting" in rolling. We did the pass for about 20 minutes, and it looked solid technically. Then we did a drill where I was actively trying to stop the pass using different guard retention tactics. Carlos fell apart. He'd only ever drilled against a static partner.

Once we introduced real resistance and I started showing him specifically what I was doing to stop the pass, his reactions improved fast. He started catching the hip movement that meant I was about to re-guard. He started reading the hand fight. By the end of the session his torreando was landing consistently because he understood what he was passing through, not just what he was doing. Real guard passing is a conversation.

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If your passes are getting stuffed consistently in rolling, one session usually shows you exactly why. Check the pricing here — it's $100 solo, $50 each if you bring a training partner.

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Common Guard Passing Mistakes That Are Killing Your Game

These are the things I see constantly, especially in the one to three year range:

Passing with your head down. Your head gets guillotined, your posture breaks, and now you're defending a submission instead of passing. Head up, always.

Not committing to the direction. You start going left, they react, and you hesitate. Hesitation is what gets you swept. Pick a direction and go. If you get stopped, reset and go again. You don't have to fake people out if you have pressure.

Celebrating too early. You get past the legs and immediately loosen up because you feel like you're past. They re-guard while you're relaxing. The pass isn't finished until you have side control and your weight is fully settled.

Trying to pass against a grip you haven't broken. If they have a collar grip or a sleeve grip, it's limiting your movement. Break the grip first. Passing against an active grip is like trying to drive with the parking brake on.

Relying on speed instead of structure. Speed matters but structure matters more. If your body position is wrong, going faster just means you fail faster.

These apply whether you're training gi or no-gi. A broader look at grappling training in Brooklyn, including which format makes sense at what stage, is worth a read over at grappling lessons in Brooklyn.

Drilling Guard Passes Without a Partner

You've got limited mat time. Here's how to build guard passing skill between sessions.

Shadow drilling the torreando. Set up the grip position in the air, practice pivoting your hips, dropping your weight to the side, and finishing to a low base. You're training the movement pattern. Your nervous system doesn't fully care that there's no one there.

Hip movement drills. Running man, granby rolls, base switches. Guard passing lives and dies on hip mobility and base. Work it solo.

Mental reps. This sounds soft but it works. If you know what your pass is supposed to feel like when it connects, visualize it running correctly. Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic have studied how mental rehearsal activates similar neural pathways to actual physical practice. Athletes use it. You should too.

Drilling with a training partner. If you have someone you can get reps with outside of class, drill the specific transition that's failing you. Not the full pass. Just the broken piece.

Drilling in private sessions. I'm obviously biased here, but for guard passing specifically, having someone create the right resistance and adjust your mechanics in real time accelerates the learning curve significantly. If you're training 2-3 times a week and your passes aren't landing, one focused session can tell you more than three months of group class. Read more about what goes into finding the right BJJ instructor in Brooklyn if you're at that point.

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Want to work your guard passing with live feedback and actual drilling time? Book a session at Darfight Martial Arts in Brighton Beach and we'll fix the specific piece that's stalling your game.

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Guard Passing for Beginners vs. Intermediate Grapplers

If you're brand new, your whole focus should be on posture and the torreando. Nothing else. Don't watch YouTube compilations of berimbolo counters and fancy leg drags. Get your base right. Get two passes that you can drill confidently and recognize when to use. That's your job for the first year.

If you've been training one to two years and your passes are still getting stopped, you've got a gap in the fundamentals. Usually it's one of three things: your grips are wrong, your timing is off, or your pressure is non-existent. Any of those can feel like a technique problem but it's usually mechanical. One focused drilling session will find it fast.

For beginners in Brooklyn who are still figuring out where to even start, the breakdown at BJJ beginner Brooklyn has a full walkthrough of what to prioritize in the early months.

What to Work On Next

Guard passing doesn't exist in isolation. Once you're landing passes consistently, the next layer is understanding guard retention (so you can feel what you're trying to stop when you're on bottom) and learning how to chain passes. When a guard player stops your torreando by re-guarding, you should have an immediate response — usually a leg drag or a knee slice depending on how they react.

But don't get there too fast. The number one thing killing guard passing games in Brooklyn rolling rooms is the same as everywhere else: people trying to run before they can walk. Get posture. Get base. Learn two passes. Drill them until they're boring. Then add the next layer.

Guard passing is a grind. It's probably the hardest thing to develop in BJJ because you're always working against active resistance from a purpose-built system. But when it clicks, it's one of the most satisfying parts of the game. You go from being stuck in the guard to controlling where the roll goes. That's the whole game right there.

I've been training and competing for seven years under Eugene Sakirski, who earned his black belt from Renzo Gracie with 30 years on the mat. The way I was taught emphasizes pressure and fundamentals over complexity. That approach shapes how I teach guard passing, and it's the same approach that's going to make yours work. Read more about the lineage and teaching approach if you want to know what to expect.

If your guard passing is a weak point, don't wait for it to fix itself in group class. It won't. Book a private lesson and let's actually work it.