It’s snowing, raining, and sleeting simultaneously in Minnesota and I had about seven near-death experiences on the icey roads driving to the Minnesota Martial Arts Academy. By the time I got there my nerves were frazzled and I was grinding my teeth so hard I gave myself a head ache. But I’m glad I made it because today Tom Schmitz taught us all manner of sweep and my head is spinning from all the stuff we learned. This class went by in the blink of an eye and I’m not sure I grok the techniques well so I preface this blog with my usual admonition that the following should not be considered even remotely instructional.

Butterfly Sweep

1. Posture up
2. Hip back so your head is in front of your butt - this way your opponent can’t just push you down onto your back
3. Grab your opponent’s near wrist while rotating your body so your arm is over your opponent’s arm
4. Reach down and scoop under your opponent’s far thigh
5. Hip in so your head is behind your butt and you can easily pull your opponent on top of you
6. Sweep your opponent over your shoulder without releasing control of his arm
7. Land in side control and mind your tail-side leg or your opponent will hook it and get half-guard

Half Guard Sweep
This is a cool move when you can’t get to your opponent’s back from half guard. The context is that you have an underhook and your opponent counters your transition by getting a whizzer on your underhook.

1. Break down the whizzer by surrendering the underhook and drawing your elbow into your torso. By doing this you maintain control of your opponent’s arm
2. Exert pressure on your opponent by hip-driving into his side. Your opponent will resist your hip drive which sets him up for the sweep
3. Quickly drop and scoop your opponent’s far thigh
4. Roll back and use your opponent’s momentum to sweep him over
5. Land in side control

Turtle Sweep
The context here is that your opponent is turtled up and you don’t have a good place to get a hook in. Tom explained that if you cross your opponent’s center line you are vulnerable to a sweep so it’s very important to maintain a strong position at his side, rather than directly over his back.

1. Reach across your opponent’s back and grab his kimono or armpit
2. Block your opponent’s ankle with your near knee
3. Pull his knee out from his side with your free hand
4. Put your head into the space you just created
5. Reach under and scoop your opponent’s far thigh
6. Roll back and sweep your opponent onto his side so you are behind him
7. Put your mat-side shin high on your opponent’s back
8. Pull your opponent onto his back
9. Establish heel hooks

Arm-Bar to Back
This sweep occurs in the context of a battle for arm-bar. You’re postured over your opponent trying to extend his arm for an armbar. However, he has his arm bent and you’re not able to isolate the arm. In this case, you can transition to back control and work for another submission.

1. With your head-side hand reach under your opponent’s head and grab his far armpit. It will look like you’re cradling his head. You now have very good control over his torso and it will be easy to lift him into your hooks.
2. Slide your head-side shin high on his shoulder
3. Pull him into back-control

I’ve only studied at Shawn’s school for a few months but I already have a much deeper appreciation for BJJ as an evolved science, and not just ass-kicking for no-neck troglodytes. Today we looked at side-control and a lot of the bio-mechanical tips Shawn taught emphasized the physics of “being heavy” on your opponent. Basically “being heavy” is about positioning your body to always exert downward pressure on your opponent. I’m a total science dork and I found this class fascinating. Here’s what I can remember from class:

• If you have your arm under your opponent’s head, your head-side palm should be facing down. If your palm is face up, you end up controlling your opponent by means of a bicep curl which is exhausting. Also a bicep curl vectors up and you really want to exert downward pressure.
• If your head is up in side control, that means your spine is angled up too. You really want your spine to be parallel to the mat. The way to ensure proper posture is to look down and tuck your chin into your opponent’s shoulder.
• If you need to transition to side-control on the other side of your opponent, do not splay your legs out and start walking around without first establishing control of his head and hip. As well as preventing an easy sweep, this ensures that you maintain heavy chest-on-chest downward pressure via the “parallel-spine” bio-mechanic discussed above.
• Keep your tail-side knee pressed against your opponent’s body. If you extend your tail-side leg your spine is angled up and you become “light”.

Side-control to North-South to Arm-Bar
This is a cool transition. Basically the scenario is that you are in side-control and your opponent bridges out of it and gets an underhook. So this transition neutralizes the danger from the underhook and sets you up for a submission.

1. You start in side-control with your head-side arm under your opponent’s head and your tail-side arm controlling your opponent’s far-arm. Remember to keep your tail-side knee pressed into your opponent’s hip.
2. Your opponent bridges out of side-control and gets an underhook
3. When you feel the underhook switch your hands so that your head-side arm is over your opponent’s head and you’re controlling his far-arm by pinching it into his body with your bicep
4. Move your tail-side arm to your opponent’s near hip and grab his hip or the butt of his gi
5. Splay your legs
6. Walk around to north-south while maintaining chest-on-chest pressure
7. Gather his elbows beween your biceps if you can
8. Slide your palm under your opponent’s underhook arm making sure your palm is facing up
9. With your legs drive straight towards your opponent’s crotch. If you drive to the side, you relieve downward-pressure on him and he’ll escape (i.e. be heavy)
10. While maintaining control of your opponent’s arm, kickstand up so your knee is against your opponent’s waist and and his head is under your crotch.
11. Get two-on-one control of your opponent’s arm.
12. Swing your trailing leg over your opponent’s head
13. Rotate your body so you are looking across your opponent’s chest
14. Lean back for the arm bar

Whew! That was a long seqence. The mistake I kept making when we drilled this was that as soon as I felt the underhook I started to walk out to north-south. Shawn coached me to switch my hands and establish far-arm and near-hip control before I started to walk my body around. I did this move while rolling with Somo but I’m not giving myself credit for it because I think Somo was just playing with me.

Today I rolled with Somo. Somo is visiting the country from Japan. I don’t speak Japanese and he doesn’t speak English so we don’t do a lot of talking. I think Somo has been training for a while because he’s really good. Anyway I give myself a C+ for today’s rolling. I tried a lot of new things but also made a lot of mistakes.

Good

• Fought for an arm triangle. I’ve never tried to get an arm triangle before so I’m giving myself credit for this, even though it’s kind of trivial.
• Tried out the hip crank mount setup Sean Flannery taught back on November 27. I’m trying to do different things because my game is really predictable. Usually I just do the head crank Greg Nelson taught me on my very first day at Minnesota Martial Arts Academy. I actually got the hip-crank setup to work which surprised me a little as it requires more athleticism than the head crank.
• Tried the cross-choke from knee-on-belly and remembered to stabilize myself on my foot rather than my knee.

Bad

• Couldn’t finish the cross-choke from knee-on-belly. I got the inside collar grip deep and then I went for another inside grip with the cross hand. I fought for this grip for a while because I forgot the actual finish which is grip on the outside of the kimono at the back of the collar. I couldn’t calm myself down so then I really started to spaz out and tried for the baseball choke even though Somo’s head was on the “wrong” side for a baseball choke. I frickin hate myself when I flail like this.
• Couldn’t transition to back control from side control. I even fought for the underhook on the “right” side and then I just got stuck. I still don’t quite know what happened here. I should have just powered through but I blanked out.
• Couldn’t escape Somo’s mount. First I tried an uppa and failed. Then I tried an overhook sweep and failed. Then Somo transitioned to side control and I was stuck defending submissions until the whistle blew.
• Got swept when I tried a no-hand pass. My balance was off and I became light on Somo for a split second and then suddenly found myself on my back.

I’ll be bummed when Somo goes back to Japan. I like watching him roll because he’s crazy athletic and his game is more about finesse unlike mine which is grinding and methodical.

Today Sean Flannery taught us some more armbar defenses. There was some new stuff that we didn’t see in the other class this week. Sean gave some interesting tips that I would like to remember:

• A very good way to isolate the arm when you start your armbar is to grab your opponent’s wrist and then shift onto your side a little so you can weave your free hand over your opponent’s arm (sort of like an overhook) and then grab your own bicep. When you lean back your arms are in an X across your chest and you have the wrist in an incredibly tight vise.
• If you “give up” your arm when escaping an arm bar when you come back up into position 0 keep your hand next to your face. This is because when you are scrambling for position 0 your head and arm are probably still between your opponent’s legs and you’re vulnerable to a triangle, so you need to come up with your free arm cocked to fight off the triangle.
• If for some reason your head is outside of your opponent’s thighs then you have already passed his guard, so forget about fighting off a triangle. Just press the side of your face into the outside of your opponent’s thigh and transition to side control directly.
• An alternate way to reverse an armbar is to bridge towards your opponent’s crotch and take BIG step over so your opponent is forced into a painful shoulder roll. When you finish you have your opponent stacked and you can start to jerk your arm out and get side control.
• When you have your opponent stacked and want to attain side control, a useful biomechanic is to look straight into your opponent’s face. This turns your head into his thigh and helps you “turn the corner” around your opponent’s rear.

All of this armbar defense curriculum was extremely helpful. I tried out a couple of defenses when I got stuck in armbars while rolling this week and it helped me avoid submissions, although I didn’t manage to do any of the techniques correctly from a technical standpoint.

Today Shawn taught us a sequence from knee-on-belly. I like knee-on-belly because it works to my strengths. Namely, I weigh a ton and I have knees the size of bowling balls. I had a bad size-match with my training partner today and I imagined I could feel his ribs folding when I put my weight down. I felt pretty bad, but he’s hella tough and it was probably no big deal for him.

Side Control to Knee-on-Belly

• With your head-side hand grab the gi under your opponent’s armpit
• When your opponent counters by pushing his knee into your side, use your tail-side arm to drive his knee down and make space for your shin
• Slide your shin across your opponent’s belly and make sure to hook his belt line with your foot
• Get your other knee off the mat and plant your foot to the side
• Elevate your opponent’s head by prying it underneath the base of his skull and levering up (so he can’t bridge)

Cross Choke Variation 1

• From knee-on-belly, use your hand farthest from your opponent to grasp his collar and pull his shoulders up off the mat
• Slide your other hand deep into his collar.
• Reach across his neck and grasp the fabric of his kimono as close to your other hand as you can manage. You don’t need to get your hand inside the kimono
• Transition to mount by swinging the belly leg over
• Lean forward and try to touch your head to the mat on the side of your opponent’s head opposite the collar grab while drawing your elbows to your beltline

Cross Choke Variation 2 (Baseball Choke)
Shawn calls this the baseball choke because you hold onto your opponent’s collar with the palms of your hands facing in, the same way you grab a baseball bat. I had a hard time with this one.

• When you try to sink in the inside-grab to start the collar choke, sometimes your opponent will duck his head under your forearm so your grip is on the far side of his head and his neck is out of danger
• With an overhand grip grab your opponent’s collar on the near side of his head.
• Straighten your arms out
• Isolate your opponent’s near arm by sliding your knee against it while leaning back against his body
• Without releasing your grips or bending your arms transition to a north-south type position with your knees on either side of your opponent’s head so that you end up facing his feet
• Lean forward and try to touch your head to the mat next to his hip on the side where you have the overhand grip.
• Clear as mud?

Knee-on-Belly Defense
This is a cool reversal and if you do it right you end up in half-guard.

• Bridge
• With the V between your thumb and forefinger lift your opponent’s ankle to loosen his belt-line hook
• Hook his ankle with the leg closest to your opponent
• Hip out so you’re off to the side and drive the captured leg down if you need to tighten the half guard
• Pummel for an underhook and grab your opponent’s gi high up on his collar