Last night during our no gi team Training we covered how grappling without the kimono changes need to adjust your hand positioning inorder to break the closed guard from the standing position. Without the jiu-jitsu gi for grips we can not use the same hand positions to control our training partners movements.
Once we are able to stand effectively without being off balanced we covered two options for breaking the closed guard and discuss when each one should be used. Without the Gi the bottom player is much more mobile making consolidating the position more difficult if you are used to relying on gi-grips. For this reason we worked intergrating submission attempts with our pass attempts to force the bottom player to be more aware of how they are moving. The main submission we used in this class to implement this strategy was the darce. The darce choke is a modified head and arm choke which requires the bottom player to be on their side, while consolidating side control requires them to be flat on their back. This strategy of using these two attacks together allows you a higher success rate of getting one.