Gui Mendes: De La Riva & X-Guard Variations in BJJ
When this Gui Mendes clip first ran on Jiu Jitsu Style in February 2015, the De La Riva and X-guard family was already the engine room of high-level competitive BJJ — but most academies were still…
Words: Jiu Jitsu Style
When this Gui Mendes clip first ran on Jiu Jitsu Style in February 2015, the De La Riva and X-guard family was already the engine room of high-level competitive BJJ — but most academies were still teaching the positions as separate islands. Gui's argument in the short video we put out was the same one he and his brother Rafa had been quietly proving on the IBJJF mats for the better part of a decade: De La Riva, reverse De La Riva and X-guard aren't a menu of options, they're one continuous system. A decade on, that idea has gone from competition curiosity to the way the modern guard is taught.
The shape of what Gui was showing matters more than any single sweep. He'd open with a clean De La Riva hook — the outside leg threaded around the standing partner's thigh, the inside foot biting the hip, the far sleeve or pant cuff trapped. From there he'd start moving the top player around like a fishing rod, off-balancing first and finishing second. When the partner stepped or rotated to kill the De La Riva, Gui let the position fold underneath him into an X-guard or a single-leg X — the same grips, the same hips, just a new floor of the same house. There was no panic, no scramble, no resetting back to closed guard. The Jiu Jitsu just flowed from one address to the next.
That style of guard play looked very specialised in 2015. In 2026 it is the default. Mikey Musumeci spends entire ADCC matches threading the same chain of hooks together, using De La Riva to set up leg entanglements that didn't even have names when Gui was filming that clip. Cole Abate, a product of the Mendes brothers' own Art of Jiu Jitsu academy, won his black belt world title using a guard that reads like an extension of Gui's notebook. Tainan Dalpra and Diego "Pato" Oliveira live in the same neighbourhood. On the no-gi side, the Ruotolo brothers fold X-guard and single-leg X entries into a system that ends in heel hooks more often than sweeps, and the underlying frames are the ones Gui was teaching back when leg locks were still treated like a separate sport.
What makes Gui's BJJ guard work — the connection
The thread running through all of it is connection. Gui's De La Riva isn't a hook you put in and wait behind. It's a four-point grip — sleeve or collar, pants, outside leg, inside foot — that lets him steer the top player's centre of gravity at all times. When connection breaks, he doesn't try to glue the original position back together. He follows the angle into the next one. X-guard appears because the top player tried to step out of the De La Riva and Gui let them step into something worse. Reverse De La Riva appears because the partner turned the corner. The position is whichever frame catches them.
That is the lesson that has aged best. The guard players who consistently win in modern Brazilian Jiu Jitsu aren't the ones with the most positions; they're the ones who can string two or three families of guard together without ever giving up the connection. Gui understood that in 2015. The rest of the sport spent the next ten years catching up.
Drilling the De La Riva / X-guard chain at your gym
For the rest of us, there has never been a better moment to actually study this material. Gui and Rafa put their whole jiu-jitsu system on the AOJ online platform years ago, BJJ Fanatics carries enough De La Riva and X-guard instructionals to fill a winter, and the YouTube and Instagram feeds of every serious competitor on the planet are stacked with usable footage. A purple belt in 2026 has access to more high-level guard tape in a single afternoon than Gui had in his entire blue-belt career.
What that doesn't replace is the drilling. Pick the De La Riva entry that fits your body, get a patient partner to step around you, and learn what each step gives you — the X-guard, the reverse De La Riva, the back take, the leg drag counter. Treat the families as one room with multiple doors, the way Gui does. Stop asking "which sweep should I hit?" and start asking "where did my partner just put their weight?" That single change of question is what separates a guard hobbyist from a guard player.
The technique in this clip is a decade old. The thinking behind it is the foundation of modern BJJ. See you on the mats.
Originally published in Jiu Jitsu Style, 24 February 2015. Refreshed for 2026.