No-Gi BJJ Guard Passing with Rafael Mendes
When we sat Rafael Mendes down to walk us through his no-gi guard passing, the interesting thing wasn't the moves — it was how little changed when the grips came off. Rafa built his name in the gi…
Words: Jiu Jitsu Style
When we sat Rafael Mendes down to walk us through his no-gi guard passing, the interesting thing wasn't the moves, it was how little changed when the grips came off. Rafa built his name in the gi as one of the most decorated featherweights in BJJ history, a multiple-time world champion and one half of the Mendes brothers who reshaped how a generation of Jiu Jitsu players think about the guard. Take the fabric away and the passing looks almost identical: same angles, same relentless attention to the legs, same refusal to force anything. Ten years on, that footage still holds up as one of the cleanest lessons in no-gi passing you can find.
Watch it: Rafa Mendes passing the guard no-gi at Art of Jiu Jitsu.
Control the legs before the body
The first thing Rafa keeps returning to is control the legs before you control the body. In no-gi there are no lapels and no pant grips to slow the guard player down, so the temptation is to move fast and hope. Mendes does the opposite, he wants to pin a leg, staple a knee, and kill one hook before he ever thinks about clearing the hips. His leg-drag game, the one he and Gui exported to Atos and that half the sport now runs, is built on exactly this idea: take the legs off the board first, and the pass finishes itself. Watch the best no-gi passers in 2026, the Ruotolo brothers marching through people off the body lock, Gordon Ryan smothering a guard until it stops moving, and the constant isn't speed, it's the leg being neutralized before anything else happens.
Why Rafa Mendes' no-gi passing still travels
The second concept is angle over muscle. Rafa is not a big man, and he never tried to bench-press his way through a guard. Instead he passes on a diagonal, cutting the corner, stepping his hips off-line, arriving where the guard player can't reload their frames rather than where they're strongest. That's the whole point of the leg drag: you don't beat the legs head-on, you slide them across your body and step around them. It's a lesson that reads even louder in modern Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, where every guard player has a thousand recoveries in their phone. The passer who charges straight into the guard gets inverted on; the one who takes the angle, like Mendes, collects the pass on the side the guard can't see.
Speed is a decision, not a default
The third idea is speed is a decision, not a default. People remember Rafa as a fast, flashy competitor, and he was, but the speed always came after the control, never instead of it. He'll settle, kill the frames, find his angle, and only then accelerate through the gap before the guard can catch up. Beginners get this backwards, sprinting around a live guard and getting recovered on every single time. Mendes earns the right to be quick first. That sequencing, pin, angle, then explode, is the difference between a highlight-reel pass and a pass that works on someone actively fighting you.
Passing and guard are the same conversation
And underneath all of it is the quietest lesson in the footage: passing and guard are the same conversation, seen from opposite sides. Nobody understood the modern guard better than the Mendes brothers, which is precisely why Rafa could dismantle one so cleanly. He knew which hook was load-bearing and which was a bluff, exactly when a De La Riva hook turned from a weapon into a liability, because he'd spent years living on the other end of it. The passers in this generation with the most complete top games are all players who put serious mat time into the very guards they learned to break, in the gi and out of it.
You don't need a seminar or a plane ticket to study any of this anymore. Rafa's clips are a tap away, sitting in an app on the phone in your gym bag next to every other no-gi passing system on the planet. Borrow the thinking, kill the leg first, take the angle, earn your speed, and drill the chains until they're yours. The concepts are timeless. Your reps are what bring them to life.
See you on the mats.
Originally published by Jiu Jitsu Style (May 2016). Refreshed for 2026.