You won't open yourself up for counter attacks if your are attacking the arm. The reason why is because of distance is greater. Don't wait until the long guard is touching your face. By that time it's too late and your defense has already been compromised.
In the pictures that I posted of me, you can see that I deal with the long guard before it reaches my face. This is the critical part. This way I can strike my opponents arm but he can not strike me. So if I were teaching you how to deal with the long guard, I would tell you.
1. Use a punch or a kick to strike the long guard with a punch or a kick. Strike with the intent to damage the arm.
2. Hide your advance when you strike the arm. The advance should occur at the same time you strike the long guard.
Here's why the above works. #1. damage that arm enough and they will pull stop pulling it back. If you think you can jam those fingers with a few punches then do so. Either way hit that arm with the goal of damaging it. The reason I showed the picture of the fists that I use, is because the gloves do not pad those knuckles which will allow those knuckles to ding into the flesh and muscle of the long guard.
Here's why the above works #2 People who want to use the long guard want to keep the guard directly in front of your face. Knocking that guard out of the way will force them to reset their long guard, by backing up or pulling their arm back to place it back in front of your face. This works to your advantage because while they are trying to reset their guard you can kick under the guard. Remember they aren't trying to defend against the kick, they are busy trying to place the long guard. All you have to do is kick under the long guard. Long guards are often used to set up a counter punch so the kicking lane should be open for you.
I think it's difficult for MMA practitioners because they don't use the TMA outward blocks and as a result they are always trying to dance around the long guard. At lot of people see those type of blocks as useless because they only think of them as a defensive tool and not an offensive one. They also see backfist as useless unless it's a spinning backfist.
When people see the photo below they only see a goofy block with a goofy stance. When I look at it, I see an outward block that I'll use to attack my opponents long guard.
Attacking a long guard should with an outside block should look the lady below. If someone is trying to use a long guard on you. You attack that long guard before it gets too close. It should look like the karate, TKD, or Kung Fu drills where the person punches but the punch is no where near the face. Instead of a punch defense think of using that block as an attack or disruption. If you want it to be an attack then you'll need to use your wrist to strike and not your fist, when using this block.
A snapping backfist would disrupt it with gloves on and cause damage with gloves off.
Another way to deal with the long guard is to lower your stance low enough to where you can side kick. Lowering your puts more distance between you and the long guard, but you'll have to use a bladed stance so you can fire that side kick in quickly.
