Big Time Butterfly Guard

Watching Jeff Joslin work the butterfly guard against former all-American wrestler Josh Koscheck last night on Ultimate Fight Night was pretty impressive. Even though Koscheck came away with the decision win, Joslin’s jiu jitsu was fun to watch. And his work in keeping Koscheck off balance with textbook butterfly guard play was a big part of that entertainment.

So I peeked at the Abhaya videos on Google Video to get some tips and details about the butterfly guard from Abhaya purple belt Rowan Cunningham. He does a really good job of breaking moves down into basic steps—and having him on video doesn’t exactly hurt, either.

First, you only need your feet hooked under the guy’s thighs to start. In fact, you don’t want to be any deeper than that. Cindy pointed out one time a few weeks back when we were working together that you want your hook to be as close to the knee as possible to get the best leverage when you lift and roll.

Second, keep your hips back. A lot of guys make the mistake of getting their hips too close to the other guy. That makes it easy for the other guy to push them down on their backs. From there, the butterfly guard is much easier to pass and sweeps from the bottom are that much harder to pull off.

One tip is that your head should be over your knees or slightly behind them. If your head is closer to the guy than your knees are—when you start—then you are probably too close.

Third is hand position. You want to get a nice deep underhook with one arm. With the other arm—and this is a nice detail I don’t recall too many people highlighting—you want to stuff it in between you. It is sort of like the arm stuff move with the arm stuff triangle. So grab the wrist or the sleeve by the cuff and stuff that arm!

You’ll want to go into the sweep almost immediately afterwards. Don’t expect the guy’s arm to “stay stuffed”. He’ll try to bring it back out and, when he realizes that you are trying to roll to that side, use that arm to post or defend. So “stuff ‘n’ go” is probably the way to think of it. You can stop and jockey for position with the underhook. But the stuff, sweep and hook have to be pretty 1-2-3.

So, fourth, you want to roll over onto the “stuff-side” shoulder. Stephen Kesting at GrappleArts.com makes a good point that you can go to your side or over your shoulder to do this sweep—just don’t go straight back.

Fifth, you want to lift up with the hook on the opposite side of the sweep. Remember Cindy’s point: your hook should be as close to the knee as possible.

Sixth and last, roll the guy over and move into side control.