This week has been “sweeps week”—meaning that we worked strictly on sweeps from the guard. I trained Monday night and Wednesday afternoon since they were doing construction Wednesday night. The alternative was to drive to Bellevue for class on Wednesday—which I just didn’t feel like doing on a weeknight.
There were three sweeps—actually there was a fourth added Wednesday afternoon that reminded me a lot of the Pe de Pano cross guard stuff I had been looking at recently. The first sweep is the one I called “Rodrigo’s Cradle,” though now I know it was pretty much a windmill/pendulum/flower sweep. I’ve known this one for awhile, though I’ve only recently started trying it when sparring. The detail, which I remember Rodrigo emphasizing over and over again, is that you don’t need the guy’s arm to move all the way across your body. If that happens, it makes more sense to take his back than to try the flower sweep.
Instead, Rodrigo recommended bridging up with the arm and then, as you are coming back down, nudge the elbow in toward the center. You just need enough room to be able to reach behind the shoulder of the arm you trap.
Another detail in this step. When you are coming back down from the bridge, that should be when you sit-up and reach behind the guy’s shoulder. If you wait, and try to break it down into three distinct steps, it looks like it would be harder to keep the guy’s arm trapped. So, bridge up/sit-up might be the best way to think of the set up for the flower sweep.
From there, I pretty much remember the basics. Reach behind the shoulder. Underhook the leg with the other hand (or grab the pants by the knee). Kick your trap side leg back, then scissor the legs and roll over your trapped side shoulder. The sweep should be virtually effortless.
The next two sweeps were a little trickier, and came out of the open guard. In both cases, the guy has put a knee up as if going to stand to pass your guard. Also in both cases you want to do two things: (1) get a cross grip so that you are controlling the sleeve opposite the knee up with your hand on the knee up side, and (2) hipscape in the direction of the knee up.
A last detail in the set-up is to grab the pants at the knee on the “down side.”
From here you are ready to go. The first of these two sweeps had you put a hook underneath the guy’s knee up leg. To sweep: pull on the cross sleeve, lift with the hook and (I think) push off on the pants grab at the knee. The guy should be swept away from his knee up leg.
The second version has you start from that same “cross guard” type position. Here, you put the hook in, but you are going to use it to push the guy away rather than lift him. I’m not sure about the next step, but I think you release the cross grip and grab the ankle of the knee up leg. From here, press the knee of your hook leg against the guy’s leg, lift with the pants grab on the other leg and pull with the hand on the ankle. The guy should be swept straight backward.
One detail here is that you want the knee on your hook leg to be pointed outward. Otherwise it is too easy for him to push the knee down and continue working to pass your guard.
