Butterfly Sweep

Yesterday I cruised up to Axis with Steve and Henry for our normal Wednesday training session.

Technique

The tech part of the class was a modified butterfly sweep, as seen HERE.

It was modified because instead of getting the simple underhook, you'd grab the gi behind their back. I didn't really understand why we were doing this, until at teh end the instructor added a little wrist trap with the gi to set up a wrist lock. I don't really play with submissions using my opponents' gi, but based on how many times I'm submitted in some form with my own gi, it certainly is worth looking into. Either way the butterfly sweep works beautifully with no-gi too, and since I'm very comfortable on my back and play a lot with two hooks inside the legs (I love x-guard), I get into this spot a lot and have been pretty successful using it against people who are around my same level. As with most of our tech portions of class, we did a counter-to-the-counter, which is where the opponent puts one leg up to avoid the sweep. In that case, you hip out a little, hook your bicep underneath their thigh, and dump them. It's very intuitive. (I'm not sure if this makes sense -- I'm pretty visual and sometimes have problems picturing moves when people explain them.)

Rolling:

I got 4 rolls in during the 25 minutes or so of rolling after tech.

First Roll:
This was against a Japanese white belt named Yusuke (I think). I hadn't seen him in over a year and we were talking when sparring started, so we went ahead and kicked it off. This is an interesting sport because some people just don't get it. And I'm not saying that because I'm a prodigy or because they're stupid, but maybe it doesn't make as much sense to some people as it does others? I'm slow to pick up on things sometimes too and I'm sure the same has been said about me, so I'm not trying to sound judgemental. Anyway, it was nice to roll with him because I could go easy and work pretty much anything I wanted to work, namely:

- Knee on belly
- Triangle from the spider guard
- Sweep from closed guard
- Sweep from spider guard
- Transitioning to his back
- Transitioning from mount, side, knee on belly, north south, etc

Second Roll:
Another Japanese white belt, who came right up to me on the mat and asked me if I wanted to go. At risk of sounding paranoid (and Henry can back me up here), whenever this happens it means they are going to take it to you hard and want to prove themselves. I like relaxed rolls and I'm not afraid to tap, but these guys make me a little nervous because if they get an arm, they're gonna spaz on it and I don't really want to get hurt.

Anyway, this guy seemed to have some other rolling experience -- maybe judo (based on how he was trying to sweep me) or he'd been a white belt for a while, and he had some sneaky go-to moves that he kept trying, but he was relying on strength entirely too much. After he tried to do some "get the opponent to move by hurting him" moves, I made the rest of his 6 minutes with me completely miserable. It was fun though because I was able to work on the same stuff I worked on with the first guy, only against a little more resistance and spazzyness, so it was a little more difficult. The guy was a definite spaz though and needs to chill.

Third Roll:
Against Phil. He's our British friend who is a bit of a phenom (got his purple in 2 years) and, well, I really don't have an answer to anything he does. Even higher level people marvel at his ability to constantly attack, attack, attack relentlessly, and he gives even the more experienced brown belts at our school a run for their money (I once saw him tap one of them 4 times in 6 minutes). Another guy we train with said that rolling with Phil is like being on an amusement park ride -- you just kinda fly around and don't have any control where you're going. I know he goes easy on me and tries stuff out, and he gives me a lot of pointers when I roll with him.

Fourth Roll:
Against Henry. I like rolling with Henry at the end because we're both pretty tired and I know I can relax without having someone spazzing out on me and trying to rip my arm off. I think Henry said "75%, working on smooth transitions." We both agree that "light rolling" is way more useful than people give it credit for.

In the last post's comments, Tony had a question, so I'll answer it here (and I'd like Henry to give an answer in the comments !). Here was his question:

Paul, I've got a question for you to think about. I spar on a regular basis with a close friend of mine named Ian who has kind of a unique style. He's short and thick, doesn't have much of a neck and he's amazingly powerful. He was a good wrestler in highschool and played college football at Stanford. He prides himself on his power and he can't really past the mental block in his head to quit relying on it.

The trouble is that I haven't been able to figure out a good strategy as to what to do with him. He basically sits in my guard and tries to work against my neck to tire me out and he just kind of holds me down. His balance is incredible because of his low center of gravity so all of my guard sweeps are pretty much useless.

I thought it was just me but last year he competed at NAGA and none of the purple belts he was competing with could really sweep him either. Submitting him is pretty much out of the question most of the time too, until he gets really tired that is. He's just got too much power to get caught up in tradition guard submissions and whenever anyone tries one he just stacks them up and uses it as a pass. His stack is very hard to deal with and it what I meant when I said he works against my neck the whole time.

Just wondering if you've ever had to deal with this style of grappling and if you had an answer for it.

I'm not sure if this would work in no-gi, but when I roll against Steve (who is also a bull), I'll let him make the first move from my closed guard and then work off that (i,e. I don't try and force anything). If he stands up I'll try and work an x-guard/sweep, and if not I'll start playing my normal open guard or spider guard game. I guess the latter wouldn't really work with no-gi. Another thing that you might want to try is disengaging and standing up, then trying to work something? I don't always have an answer for it either, because Steve does the same thing to me all the time. I'm not sure if he'll go for this one, but it's worth a try:

From closed guard:

- Hook your left arm underneath his right arm pit
- Open up your guard; put your right knee on the ground and keep your left leg over his back
- If he takes the bait, he'll step over your right leg with his left leg
- Bring your right leg in and hook him while propping yourself up on your right elbow (You're basically in half guard now)
- Swing around underneath his arm while pushing him fowardish and take his back

That's one technique that might work once if at all..? If it doesnt work on him, it's still fun to work on new folks, and you practice the ultra-important fundamental move of "sliding out the back door" from half guard, which I have done to me all the time.

I guess the only person that can de-strengthify your friend is your friend. Either way, if he forces himself not to use strength and focus on techniques and staying light, he will be all the more stronger.