Reverse de la Riva Guard
Also called: reverse daily hea, reverse de la riva, reverse dela, reverse delaha
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The chapter
Reverse De la Riva mostly isn't a guard you choose — it's the guard that appears when they blade a knee into your open guard to knee cut. Your inside leg hooks around that entering thigh, and the pass they started becomes a position you own.
The hook is the whole story. It doesn't submit anyone, but it controls their lead leg from the inside — which keeps their hips off you, and quietly sets up everything the position is known for, including the leg attacks.
It's a connector, not a destination. The corpus almost always shows it linked to something — half guard, spider, regular De la Riva — and the players who look comfortable here are the ones treating it as one stop on a circuit.
Playing bottom
First job is survival — hook and frames keep their hips off you while they try to knee cut — and the attacks all start from the same event: their weight coming off the hooked leg.
Curl your inside leg around their entering thigh until the hook bites, keep your other foot working, and frame with your hands so their chest can't connect to yours.
WhenThe moment their knee blades inside your guard — this is a race, and whoever finishes their structure first wins the knee cut exchange.
Kick the hooked leg up to float their weight forward, then slide underneath and behind the elevated leg until you're facing their back.
WhenYou lift the leg and they don't sit back down — their weight staying forward over you is the green light to keep the elevation and rotate under.
Invert or slide under the hooked leg and feed your foot through to the saddle, single leg X, or 50/50 — the reverse hook is already halfway inside their legs.
WhenThey open their stance wide to base against your sweeps — the space between their legs is exactly the room the entries need.
When they shut the hook down, keep your grips and swing the legs to the adjacent guard — spider if they're reaching, De la Riva or butterfly if they square back up.
WhenThey kill the hook or beat your knee line. Holding a dead reverse De la Riva is how you get passed; the position's real strength is how cheaply it trades into the next guard.
Also worth knowing
- Choy barWhenThey grab your collar from inside the guard — push the gripping arm over your shoulder and the armbar is already loaded.
- Guillotine when they duck inWhenTheir head drops low to pressure through your guard — slide the arm around the neck instead of accepting the smash.
Why you keep failing here
“They knee cut straight through my reverse De la Riva.”
WhyThe hook lost the height battle — once their knee rides over your hamstring, your leg is pinned under their pass instead of controlling it.
FixFight for the knee line before their weight drops: re-pummel the hook higher, and if their knee is already over your hamstring, bail to a neighboring guard instead of holding a losing shape.
“They drop their chest on me and I end up flattened in half guard.”
WhyFrames came up late. With no hands holding the gap, dropping chest weight into you converts your guard into their smash pass.
FixFrames go up the same moment the hook goes in — their chest closing distance is the one thing the position can't recover from, so it's the one thing you deny first.
“They pin my shins together and jump straight to knee on belly.”
WhyBoth legs got framed off to the same side — a shin staple across your legs means neither foot can get back between you and them.
FixNever let your two legs be controlled as one unit: the instant one leg gets pinned, the other one's job is to get back inside the space between your chest and theirs.
Your game
Where does Reverse de la Riva Guard show up in your rolls?
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The map
Connections describe what coaches teach across 2,044 indexed videos — not what's objectively best. A row backed by one video is weak evidence; ✓ marks connections taught by 2+ independent channels.