Pressure Passing: Weight, Angles, and Patience

A pressure pass has two phases that beginners tend to collapse into one. The first is control: pinning the legs, flattening the hips and removing the frames your partner would otherwise use to recover. The second is the pass itself, which should feel almost uneventful once the first phase is genuinely complete. Weight travels through your chest and shoulders into their torso rather than through your arms, and your own hips stay low so there is nothing to sweep.

Key points

• Flatten the hips first, because a partner who can still turn onto their side has a guard no matter where your knee is.
• Deliver weight through your chest and shoulder into their upper body, keeping your arms for control instead of for support.
• Stay low with your own hips, since a passer standing tall over a guard is a passer waiting to be swept.
• Clear the knee line before stepping through; arriving early reopens the guard behind you and returns the exchange to the start.
• Advance one increment at a time and consolidate each new inch, because pressure passing is a sequence of small held gains.

Common mistakes

• Hurrying past the legs before the hips are flat, which usually deposits you back inside the guard with your base already compromised.
• Leaning on your partner with locked arms, which hands them a frame to push against and lifts weight off their torso.
• Holding a strong position and stalling indefinitely, which teaches you nothing and lets a rested partner reset on their own terms.

Put it into practice