General advice for sweeps from bottom positions?

[skribs]

I'm looking at my game, and right now I think the biggest hole is in my bottom guard game, although I can see advice here helping with bottom control positions as well. I don't really have any attacks from guard that I'm confident in (either sweeps or submissions), so whenever I get into a bottom guard position, it's mainly seeing how long I can avoid being passed.

I really would like to get good at sweeps. I'm more comfortable when I'm on top. It's to the point I'd rather be in top guard than bottom guard, because I'm more confident in my ability to pass from top than to sweep or submit from bottom. I would like to change that, both to be comfortable on bottom, and to have the ability to get on top when I want.

What are some general pieces of advice you could give on making sweeps work? Maybe some "lightbulb moments" you had, some fundamental principles that I might be missing, or just some common mistakes you see in newbies that I'm also probably making?

 

[dunc]

Do you have a particular guard you tend to use? Maybe we can help with some specifics
There are so many sweeps and so many guards it’s kinda hard to over generalise

Having said that I think you’re looking to find/create the moment when a) their centre of gravity is closer to one of their bases and b) you have control of the limb they need to move to prevent the sweep. Then use your hips or legs to move their centre of gravity beyond their base

 

[drop bear]

Here are some ideas for upa sweeps that helped me.

And it is basically the mechanics of getting good structure going over your shoulder. Rather than to the side

Side control.

 

[skribs]

Do you have a particular guard you tend to use?

Position of the week

Lately it's been knee shield, but now that I'm deep into the rabbit hole of "knee shield sweep videos" I have a suspicion we're going to be doing open guards starting next week.

There are so many sweeps and so many guards it’s kinda hard to over generalise

I've heard from both Tony on here, and from the brown belt at my gym, that while there's a lot of techniques and positions in BJJ, most of them boil down to a handful of principles. My school is more technique-focused than concept-focused, so I was hoping to pick the brain of folks who know the concepts.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

A lot of the general principles for sweeps from bottom of guard are the same as for standing throws:

1) Before executing the sweep or throw, you need to compromise your opponent's structure and balance in some way (without compromising your own structure in the process). At low levels, your sparring partners will often unwittingly compromise their own position and you just have to recognize the opportunity. But at higher levels your partners will usually know how to maintain good base, posture, and structure, so you will have to work to break those.

2) Grip fighting is a huge part of being able to get the controls you need for breaking your opponent's position. When I'm sparring with another black belt in guard, we'll often spend a long time just fighting for grips before someone gets enough of an advantage to make a serious attempt at sweeping or passing.

3) Threatening a single technique at a time is unlikely to work unless you have a substantial advantage in skill or physical attributes. You need to constantly be creating dilemmas for your opponent, where they have to defend against multiple threats at once. This greatly increases your chance of being able to get them out of position long enough to attempt your sweep with a good possibility of success.

I'll add a couple of corollaries to #3 which apply more to guard sweeps than to throws:

3a) Combine your submission threats with your sweep threats. Defending one will often leave your opponent open for the other.

3b) Don't forget about just getting up. If you are content to just lay on the bottom of guard, then an opponent with a good base who is playing conservatively can be very hard to sweep. But if you seize every opportunity to scramble back to your feet, then they have to give you more committed pressure in order to keep you down. That pressure gives you more opportunities to sweep and submit from the bottom.

 

[skribs]

3) Threatening a single technique at a time is unlikely to work unless you have a substantial advantage in skill or physical attributes. You need to constantly be creating dilemmas for your opponent, where they have to defend against multiple threats at once. This greatly increases your chance of being able to get them out of position long enough to attempt your sweep with a good possibility of success.

I think this kind of goes into a chat I had with the purple belt I've mentioned in the other thread. He keeps criticizing me for "telegraphing" when I only know one move from the position anyway and I've only drilled it a dozen times.

I'd like to note I'm not saying you're doing the same thing he was. I just think this might be currently out of reach until I can get better with multiple attacks.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

I think this kind of goes into a chat I had with the purple belt I've mentioned in the other thread. He keeps criticizing me for "telegraphing" when I only know one move from the position anyway and I've only drilled it a dozen times.

I'd like to note I'm not saying you're doing the same thing he was. I just think this might be currently out of reach until I can get better with multiple attacks.

Just keep the concept in mind as you learn more techniques from the same position. You’ll find that the hand fighting and the structure breaking that you used to set up technique A also allows you to threaten technique B and technique C.

I need to get back to posting new videos. If I have a chance, I’ll try to record something this week on the subject.

 

[dunc]

One additional idea to keep in mind is that most of the time with experienced folk you need to move their centre of gravity past yours while you’re preventing their ability to put a limb (or some equivalent body part) onto the part of the floor that your moving them to
Most people when they start out concentrate on moving the opponent, but actually you get better results by moving your centre of gravity under and past theirs

 

[wab25]

Just like in striking arts.... use combinations. It not the first one that gets them, its the 3rd or 4rth one that gets them.... but 3 and 4 are set up by 1 and 2. In TKD sparring.... I would not be able to stand there and then just round house kick you in the head. I would have to set it up, get your focus on something else, get your guard compromised..... Same thing applies here. You can't just try sweep A, when that doesn't work then try submission B.

I like Tony's use of the word dilemma. If you use one technique at a time.... then you are presenting problems, which have solutions. However, if you present a technique, knowing what the solution will be, and also knowing how to counter the solution.... now you are getting somewhere. In grappling, there are multiple ways out of a technique... Which is why flow charts work. I try A, if they do this I go to B, if they do that I go to C.

Here is a combo / flow chart that I have had success with. First off, it relies on context. I am not a BJJ guy.... I train in one of those "other" Jujitsu type arts.... So, when I get to guard, I act a lot like the BJJ guys expect... I focus mostly on trying to maintain a closed guard and keeping their head down... with some rudimentary half attempts at trying a little of this and a little of that. These are shut down immediately... which is fine, I want them to feel completely in control (not hard for me to accomplish... they usually are ) Then, I will surprise them by going all out for an arm bar from guard. This is a fully committed, completely all in, blast to the arm bar from guard. I have occasionally got this arm bar, from shear surprise... they thought I was giving up, or starting to get demoralized that my "other" Jujitsu type art was failing.... and bang, I am going for an arm bar, full tilt. The thing is I know its embarrassing to be caught in an arm bar from guard by the guest newbie. Which means they are going to immediately counter that arm bar. My hope is that by surprising them with the arm bar attempt, that they will over do their counter / defense. That is where I want to start. Depending on what they do in response, I can swing into uma plata on their other arm, I can switch to a triangle choke or sweep them. Those are the techniques I get. (right before the pummeling I get for the rest of the time I roll with these guys)

The first thing I did, was choose to work the arm bar from guard... I liked that move and it was easier at the beginning that some of the others, for me. I tried it a lot... and got stuffed, countered, defended, ..... But, I started to pay attention. I would ask for tips on how to close the holes they were exploiting, which made my arm bar better. I paid attention to what they were doing, so I would know what to try when I was defending that move. I also started learning and getting used to what the common counters and defenses were to my attack. It does matter at this point if you can do anything else... but just start recognizing what they are going to do sooner and sooner.... by how they move their weight, what angles are they creating, are they getting me to focus here so that they can go there.... The better you can start to recognize where and what they are doing... the better off you will be. First, you will pick the most common responses to your attack.... and look for moves that attack that counter. Your instructor should be able to give you ideas (best bet is to start here). When you have that move down, look at either the counter to the most common response to that or start on the second most common response to you first attack.

I find that learning 2 responses is the easiest way to learn. I do A, then depending on what you do, I do B or C. If I remember right, you have some programming experience.... I look at this as an if else statement. I do A. If you do this specific thing, then I do B. Else, no matter what else... as long as it is not the first specific thing.... I do C. So, my higher probability response, the one that works in most cases goes into C, my else case. The one I would really like to hit goes into B. Whatever sets up B, is what goes into A. The one I explained above, I did backwards, by starting with A... but I was new, and did not know any better. The flows I have put together since.... I start by finding B, A is the setup for B, and C is the else case for the response to A.

The other thing to remember when putting these flows together is that it is an exercise in humility. It will fail on you a lot more than it works for you. Especially when training with the same people. Thats ok. That is actually expected. If you keep working at the same things, you should keep improving them. They should work much easier on other people that are not familiar with your habits. Nothing feels more satisfying than hitting your flow and getting it to work on someone you regularly train with.... as it took a lot of work to get there. And then they improve, and shut it down the next time....

 

[skribs]

Just keep the concept in mind as you learn more techniques from the same position. You’ll find that the hand fighting and the structure breaking that you used to set up technique A also allows you to threaten technique B and technique C.

New problem: by the time I learn technique C, I've forgotten how to properly do A. And my transitions from B to C are slow enough it's not a combination anymore.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

New problem: by the time I learn technique C, I've forgotten how to properly do A. And my transitions from B to C are slow enough it's not a combination anymore.

Yeah, that's all part of the normal process. What helps is when you start to see the commonalities in the techniques and connections between them. For example ...

For technique A I want to have my partner's posture broken down with one of their hands on the floor.
For technique B I want to have my partner's posture broken down with a deep grip in their collar
For technique C I want to have my partner's posture broken down with one of their arms across my centerline
For technique D I also want to have my partner's posture broken down with one of their arms across my centerline
For technique E I also want to have my partner's posture broken down with one of their arms across my centerline
For technique F I want to have my partner's posture broken down and have a strong overhook while I get my body off at an angle
For technique G I also want to have my partner's posture broken down and have a strong overhook while I get my body off at an angle
For technique H I also want to have my partner's posture broken down and have a strong overhook while I get my body off at an angle
For technique I I want to have my partner's posture broken down and have a strong underhook
For technique J I want to have my partner posturing up while I have a cross sleeve control
For technique K I want to have my partner posturing up while I'm sitting up with a frame on their neck
For technique L I also want to have my partner posturing up while I'm sitting up with a frame on their neck
For technique M I want to have my partner posturing up while I'm sitting up with a cross grip on their elbow
etc, etc, etc

Bear in mind, this isn't just a matter of memorizing those setup requirements for each technique. It's more a matter of understanding how and why each position makes your partner more vulnerable to certain attacks and not others, so you start to get an intuition for how the whole process works.

Once you have that sort of understanding, then you can start to put together game plans like so ...

I know that most of my best attacks from guard work when my opponent's posture is broken down ...
But when I just try to pull him down, he posts his hands on my chest and belly to block me doing so ...
So I need to hand fight and clear his posts while I pull him down with my legs ...
As I get his posture broken down, I seem to have my best options if I can get a cross grip on his arm and pull it across my centerline...
But he recognizes the danger there and pulls his arm hard to the outside ...
Which gives me the possibility of getting his arm on the floor or getting an underhook or overhook control ...
But he recognizes the danger of all of those and fights hard to posture back up ...
So I recognize that I can't hold him down and sit up myself as he postures back up, adding extra momentum to make him lean back, thereby setting up several potential techniques ...
But he doesn't like the feel of that, so he pushes me back down ...
Which helps me use his momentum to pull him back down and start the process over again

You'll notice that at no point in this cycle was I trying for any specific technique. (At least in the sense of a sweep or submission - you could argue that all the little elements of hand fighting, adjusting body angles, etc could be classified as techniques in themselves.) All I'm trying to do is get some sort of positional advantage, from which various techniques could potentially flow.

BTW - the examples I gave above are all from full guard, just because I find it a convenient position to illustrate general principles. You can develop an equivalent process for half guard, De La Riva guard, etc.

 

[marvin8]

Excerpt from "Let John Danaher Fix Your Open Guard With This One Simple Principle:"

Open Guard "Double Directionality Principle"

He starts by explaining that, yes: the Open Guard is a very complex position. However, there are a few underlying principles to it, that are fairly easy to understand and follow.

One of them is the idea of double directionality, which – in this case – denotes that when sweeping an opponent, you want to push one part of their body into one direction and get the other part of their body into the other direction. This creates rotational torque, which makes your sweeps much more effective.

 

[skribs]

And just my luck, I watched a bunch of videos on knee shield today, and it looks like we're switching to spider guard!

 

[Tony Dismukes]

And just my luck, I watched a bunch of videos on knee shield today, and it looks like we're switching to spider guard!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write down every underlying principle you can deduce from the knee shield techniques you have seen so far. Then as you learn moves from spider guard, try to identify as many as possible of the same underlying ideas. The applications will look very different, but you should be able to find many of the same underlying concepts.

 

[skribs]

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write down every underlying principle you can deduce from the knee shield techniques you have seen so far.

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Task failed successfully.

 

[drop bear]

Think of bringing them on top of you.

Here are some ideas for upa sweeps that helped me.

And it is basically the mechanics of getting good structure going over your shoulder. Rather than to the side

Side control.

https://www.facebook.com/100064479980938/posts/pfbid036C5YqEy1Mcuzh8s4vaDwJDnsWrAxrcd12bpTVQACLpETwfJPyWwYMiXn8zsiLT2ql

More along this bridging concept. Getting that power in to your structure.