HEADQUARTERS PASS (HQ)

The Headquarters pass — typically abbreviated HQ — is a hybrid passing technique in which the passer establishes a knee-on-the-floor position next to the bottom player's thigh, with one shin pressing down on the opponent's near leg and the other knee pinning the far leg. From this "headquarters" position the passer can flow into a knee cut, leg drag, or stack depending on the bottom player's reaction, making the position itself a decision-tree node rather than a specific pass.

The HQ entry is established when the bottom player has dropped from an active open guard into a flatter defensive position, or when a sweep attempt has been defended and the bottom player's hips are momentarily compromised. The passer drops the near knee to the floor on the outside of the bottom player's thigh, slides the shin down onto the leg to pin it, and posts the other knee or foot to control the far leg. The pass is completed by reading the bottom player's defense and flowing into the appropriate finishing pass.

The technique was refined by André Galvão and the Atos team in the late 2000s as part of their systematic approach to open-guard passing, and it has become a fixture of every modern competitive passing system. Where the knee cut and torreando work in specific scenarios, the HQ works as a transitional waystation that holds the position while the passer chooses the appropriate finishing technique. Tainan Dalpra and Mica Galvao have continued the Atos HQ tradition into the 2020s, using it as the natural arrival point after disrupting any of the modern open guards.

Defensively the HQ is escaped by recovering hip mobility — hip-escaping out from underneath the pinned leg, inserting a frame against the passer's chest before they commit to a finishing pass, or rolling forward into turtle as a controlled retreat. The position is one of the most technically dense in modern BJJ and is typically introduced at purple belt or later.