Toreando Pass for Beginners: Grip, Angle, and Common Mistakes
TL;DR. The toreando (bullfighter) pass works when you control both pant legs at the knees, keep your hips back and head up, and move your partner's legs across your body before you move your body across theirs. Beginners usually fail by passing with their arms instead of their feet, keeping their hips too close, and chasing side control before the hips are pinned. Learn the grip, the angle, the pin, and three fixes for the mistakes that keep sending you back into guard.
If you train gi jiu-jitsu, you've seen the toreando — the "bullfighter" pass where the top player grabs both pant legs, swings the bottom player's legs to one side, and sprints around to side control. On YouTube it looks effortless. In your white or blue belt reality, you grip the pants, lunge sideways, and your partner's shin pops back into your bicep, their foot lands in your hip, and you're defending a sweep instead of pinning them.
The toreando isn't fast because the person doing it is athletic. It's fast because they've solved three specific problems: where to grip, what angle to work from, and when to drop their weight. This guide walks through those three things in a way a beginner can actually drill — plus the mistakes that are quietly costing you the pass every round.
Why this happens
The toreando feels frustrating for new grapplers for a predictable reason: it's an open-guard pass against a mobile pair of legs, but most beginners are drilled almost entirely on closed-guard scenarios. Your partner's hips can rotate freely, their feet can post, hook, lasso, or spider, and the pass has to deal with all of that in motion.
On top of that, the toreando looks like an arm-based pass — your hands are on the pants, so it feels like your arms are doing the work. They're not. The arms are a steering wheel. The actual pass is a footwork move: you step your feet into an angle their hips can't follow, then drop your hip onto their far hip. If your feet don't win the angle, your arms will not save the pass, no matter how strong your grip is.
Finally, beginners rush the finish. They think the pass ends when the knee lands on the mat. It ends when their partner's far hip is pinned and their shoulders are controlled. Everything before that is just travel. For more context on the overall journey from standing to pinning, our beginner's roadmap for passing the guard walks through where the toreando fits among other pass families.
A simple system (7 steps)
Here's a repeatable sequence to drill. Treat the first few sessions as choreography — speed and resistance come later.
- Establish posture before you grip. Stand with your partner on their back in open guard. Head up, back straight, feet about shoulder-width, knees soft. If your posture is broken forward, your grips won't matter.
- Take two pant grips at the knee. Hands wrap the fabric just above the kneecap, thumbs down, elbows pointing out. Grip the knee area, not the ankles — ankle grips give your partner too much leg to swing and let them lasso or spider you.
- Push the knees down toward their chest. Compress their legs so their hips come slightly off the mat. This is the key detail most beginners skip. Compressed knees mean their hips can't rotate freely, which is what sets up the angle change.
- Shove the legs to one side. Not up, not out — down and across their own body. Imagine wiping their shins across their belly to the far side. Your arms stay straight; the motion comes from your hips and a short step with your lead foot.
- Step your lead foot wide and deep. As the legs go across, your lead foot lands outside and slightly past their hip line, pointing toward their head. This is the angle. Your chest now faces the side of their body, not their feet.
- Drop your hip onto their far hip. Release the far pant grip, bring that hand onto their far shoulder or cross-face, and let your hip slide down to pin their hip to the mat. The near-side pant grip stays on until your weight is settled.
- Secure side control, then re-grip. Only after your chest-to-chest connection and head control are solid should you release the pant and establish your side control grips. If you let go early, they recover guard.
Remember. The toreando is a footwork pass that uses the hands to steer. If your feet aren't moving, the pass isn't happening.
Quick reference table
| Element | What to do | What beginners do instead |
|---|---|---|
| Grip location | Pants, just above the knee | Ankles or shins |
| Elbow position | Outside the knees, pointing out | Elbows in, tucked to ribs |
| Direction of leg push | Down and across the body | Up and out to the side |
| Lead foot | Steps wide, past the hip line | Steps short, next to the hip |
| Pass finishes at | Far hip pinned, chest connected | Knee touching the mat |
| Hand to release first | Far-side pant grip | Near-side grip (loses control) |
Common mistakes (and how to fix them)
1. Passing with your arms
Symptom: You yank the legs sideways, but your feet don't move, so your partner's hips simply follow their legs and face you again. You end up back in open guard, usually with their foot in your bicep.
Fix: Think of your hands as reins and your feet as the horse. The arms set direction; the step creates the pass. Drill it slowly: shove the legs, then step — not simultaneously, not before.
2. Standing too close
Symptom: Their heels keep landing on your hips. You can't push their knees down because their legs are already folded against you.
Fix: Stand far enough away that their legs are extended toward you, not bent. If their feet reach your belt, you're in sweep and submission range. Hip back, weight on your heels, chest forward. A good distance check: can your partner put a lasso in? If yes, you're too close.
3. Chasing side control too early
Symptom: You throw the legs, sprint around, and get caught in half guard or re-guarded as you try to settle.
Fix: The pin comes before the pass. As your lead foot lands, your hip has to drop onto their hip, not past it. Think of landing on their waistband, not past it toward their shoulder. Once the hip is pinned, then you work for chest connection and crossface.
Remember. Side control is earned by weight on the far hip. Running past that pin point is why intermediate players still get re-guarded.
4. Leaving an elbow inside the knee
Symptom: Your partner catches a triangle, omoplata, or armbar on the pass. Painful. Avoidable.
Fix: Both elbows stay outside their knees throughout. If you feel their knee slide inside your elbow, release that grip, re-pummel, and reset. Never pass with a trapped arm.
5. Fighting lasso and spider instead of breaking the grip first
Symptom: You try to toreando while they already have a sleeve-and-knee lasso set. You spin, they sweep.
Fix: Before you can toreando, you need clean pant grips with no sleeve control on you. If they've already established spider or lasso guard, break the sleeve grip first — rip your arm free, then re-grip the pants. Trying to toreando through an active lasso is a free sweep for your partner.
Where BJJ Memo fits in
The toreando is a classic example of a technique you half-remember after class. You drill it, it clicks for ten minutes, and by next week the step sequence is fuzzy and you're back to lunging with your arms. That's not a willpower problem — it's a review problem.
If you watch a toreando breakdown on YouTube (there are great ones from pass specialists), paste the video into BJJ Memo. The app turns it into a structured technique card with the steps, key details, and timestamps you can tap back to. Review the card the morning of your next class and the sequence stays sharp. For more on why this works, see why you forget BJJ techniques and how spaced revision fixes it.
Frequently asked questions
Is the toreando pass legal in no-gi?
The toreando's grip-driven version is a gi pass — you need pant fabric to steer the legs. In no-gi, grapplers use a similar concept with cross-face control on the shins and ankles, often called a leg-drag entry or shin-pin variation. The angle principle is the same, but the grips are completely different.
What belt should I be at before I use the toreando in rolling?
Any belt can drill it, but you'll land it in live rolls more reliably once you've already built comfort with standing posture in open guard. Most white belts start getting consistent passes in their later months of training. Don't wait for permission — drill it slowly in positional sparring from day one.
Why do my partners keep inverting under me?
Inversion is a common counter to the toreando because when you shove the legs across, the bottom player can roll with that momentum and come up on the far side. The counter is to drop your weight sooner — the moment the legs cross their body, your hip should be pinning theirs. If you're still running, they have time to invert.
Should I always finish in side control, or can I take mount?
Side control first. It's the stable pin. From there you can transition to mount, knee-on-belly, or north-south depending on how they react. Trying to skip side control and sprint to mount is how beginners end up in half guard or getting rolled.
How do I defend when I'm the one in open guard?
If your partner is setting up a toreando, your two best responses are to invert away from the push or to re-engage with a shin or sleeve grip before they get to the angle. Preventing clean pant grips in the first place is better than fighting them off once they're set. If they do break through, our guide to recovering from the knee cut pass covers principles that transfer to toreando defense once you're already losing the angle.
How often should I drill the toreando to actually keep it?
Short, frequent reps beat long occasional sessions. A few minutes of focused drilling each training week, plus a review of your technique notes before class, is more productive than a one-off hour of toreando-only drilling once a month.
Next steps on the mat
The toreando pass isn't about being faster than your partner. It's about controlling three variables — grip, angle, pin — in the right order. If you can slow down enough to lock those three in during drilling, your live passes will start to feel inevitable instead of lucky.
Next time you watch a toreando breakdown on YouTube, save it as a technique card in BJJ Memo so the steps, grips, and finish details are there when you're warming up before your next class. Build the pass once in your head, then review it the day you roll — and let the mat take care of the rest.
For real feedback and safety, train the technique at a legit academy with a qualified coach — BJJ Memo helps you remember and revise, it doesn't replace mat time or coaching. The app is available on iOS and Android — start with one technique card and build from there.
Last updated 2026-10-23.