Some resolutions and stray thoughts following Tuesday night’s training …
I’ve got three seconds from the moment I get into half guard to start executing a sweep—and to continue executing sweeps until I am (a) in a dominant position, (b) back to neutral after scramble or, (c) with the guy in full guard—closed or open.
I need to treat being on the bottom in half guard like being on the bottom in side control or something. There aren’t very many good submissions from the half, and I’m tired of being on the bottom in half guard and just defending the pass. I’ve got to focus on specifically what I want to do from the bottom in half guard. Underhook? Old School or take the back. Overhook? Tommy Sweep or the Slip.
I should also consider putting in the butterfly hook and trying the Rickson sweep, also. But the point is that I need an “agenda” when I’m on the bottom in half guard, the same way that I built “agendas” for closed guard (i.e., King Crimson, The Widow, Scissorhands, H. Rap Brown, etc.)
I should break it down into specific actions, like the unplugged. Even though I’m not hitting the arm drag like I’d like, for example, drawing up the unplugged version means that when I don’t hit the arm drag, it is NOT because I don’t know what to do. I’m just too fazy (my neologism of fatigue and lazy) to get it down.
The old school sweep is a good example. I know that sweep like the back of my hand. Yet I’ve not been coming up on the inside elbow. If I don’t do that, then I’m just wasting time—and more importantly, wasting energy. Old school. Get the underhook. Come up on the elbow. Come up on the knee. Grab the far foot. Pull and tackle. Backstep to avoid his guard and move into side control.
It’s that fucking simple. Yet I might do it properly once a week, if that.
Tommy Sweep—which needs to be renamed. Get the overhook. Dip your shoulder down and inside to get small. Hook the guy’s inside leg with your inside leg. Reach down and grab his outside leg pants at the knee. With your inside foot planted, pivot your hips inside like a hip throw/goshi and lift the guy’s outside knee up and over. Backstep to avoid his guard and move into side control.
I’ve been missing the Tommy Sweep in large part because I’ve been so committed to trapping the guy’s inside leg with my outside leg. Then, when I go to pivot, I inevitably release that trap as I pivot on my hip. That allows the guy to pull his leg out and hop right into side control. It happened again last night.
Looking for some details on the Tommy Sweep, I came across some notes from Eric Dalhberg about taking the back from half-guard that I want to look at. Those notes were based on the underhook. I’ve also got some notes for taking the back when you’ve got the overhook.
And of course there’s that great functional half-guard tutorial I’ve got on Google Video, the one that showed how to regain the underhook from the “double paw” position. The paw has been working wonderfully. But again, I’ve been using it mostly as a defensive tool, not as a tool to help me set up a sweep. That has got to change.
Bottom line: I like the half guard. But I need to make it an offensive weapon and not just a defensive one. I can use the lockdown to freeze a guy when either first getting into half guard or after a failed sweep attempt. But three seconds is all I’m giving myself after I’ve clamped that lockdown. Time to go. Time to move. Time to sweep.
