I often talk to my students about how little we as humans think about what our legs are doing. They are just there, and we take them for granted. John Danaher has spoken about it, and many others have covered the topic that one of the first hurdles in BJJ is shifting your reliance form your upper body to your lower body when accomplishing tasks. We are all relatively capable and conscious of what our hands are doing and how they help us at any given time, but in submission grappling our legs become primary.
To the topic at hand, when we play half guard our legs must do most of the work. More specifically we must engage the leg that is splitting the middle and must clamp our adversary’s leg in place by bending our knee toward the side that most of our body is on. This is the minimum of a rudimentary half guard and the base from which all other half guard positions branch off. Should you begin using the lockdown. butter half, RDLR, or other variations they will all begin with a solid fundamental bottom leg control half guard.