Part 3 of the Ten Sec Techs series brings us…Shin to Shin!

I started playing with this after watching a lot of womens black belt matches at the worlds one year, and the non-stop aggressive attacks from Michelle NIcolini. She uses primarily a spider/shin hybrid to great effect, sweeping and submitting with high percentages.

I love love love this style of guard. It’s so incredibly versatile, and can be used with almost every other Open Guard position. Probably if I had to choose a favourite default guard to play, I would go with a Reverse De La Riva/Shin hybrid. It’s a beautiful blend of the (relatively) passive-structural-strength-hedgehog-you-can’t-pass-a-ball’s-guard nature of the RDLR, and the constant off balancing and undermining of base of the Shin to Shin hook.

The collection of movements in this post will show the Shin hook blending with a variety of gi guards.

First up, my most loved (read:people clicked the little heart lots) Instagram #tensectech. This one really shows both how great the shin guard blends with other guards, and how easily it picks up legs. It also shows how I like best to use the Open Guard, which is to say, I’ll switch guards as often as I have to to give me the right angle to advance my position.

Up next is another example of going from spider, to spider/RDLR, to RDLR/shin and then under the elevated leg through deep half to come out the back door, and using this fun little grip switch to control the arm.

Next up is going from RDLR to RDLR/shin to pop the leg up to X guard. This is one of my highest percentage transitions, though now I usually sweep them back to their butt, and come up in heavy pressure. I’ll try to film that one soon. Works great, once I get my shin elevating that leg, I know I’ll get to X guard, and if i get to X guard, I know I’ll get the sweep, and if the sweep, then the pass. It’s a fantastic chain that’s very hard to stop.

Ok, here’s Michelle Nicolini’s triangle. Fan-freaking-tastic. Going from spider to spider/shin, stripping their base and snapping up the triangle with the underhooking leg trapping their back first to keep their posture broken, using the spider hook as a stepping stone, and switching the hips to hit the choke. Michelle Nicolini is so rad.

Hope you enjoyed Part 3!

You can find Part 2, “4 Inverting Back Escapes and Attack Transitions” here

Part 1, “7 Reverse Triangles” (there’s a shin attack in there!) here

And of course, if you want to see these as they pop up, you can follow my find my Instagram account here

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more!

-Andrew