Building My Butterfly Guard

It seems like these days "butterfly guard" increasingly refers to butterflying your legs, but allowing your back to be on the mat. What used to be called "butterfly guard" is now more often than not is referred to as "sitting guard."

Butterfly guard. Sitting guard. Cobra guard. Whatever. It's what I need to integrate into my guard game in 2008.

Paul Greenhill of The Wise Grappler talks about how you need to divide the moves you see in instructional videos into YES, NO, and NOT NOW categories. I'm going to take that approach with Kesting's butterfly guard DVD.
In terms of training, I modify all of that a little with an additional category: ALREADY. "Already" is something that I've been relying on, but not really perfecting or working to make an almost unstoppable part of my game. It's where my bread and butter (or these days, my meat, fruit and vegetables) are.

So right now, my guard plan looks like this:

ALREADY: Half guard, King Crimson
YES: Butterfly/Sitting/Cobra guard, Rap Star
NOT NOW: X-guard
NO: Traditional closed guard

This weekend, probably Saturday night, I want to spend some time picking out three sweeps from Kesting's butterfly guard DVD that I think I can incorporate into my game immediately, per Greenhill. The basic side sweep from the butterfly guard is going to the top of the list, in all likelihood. And there are at least two others that I have in mind. But only three for now. And I I'll need to work on these three every single time I spar or do specific drills.

I'm having a hard time attacking from the butterfly guard. I'm thinking that by focusing on just three sweeps, I can figure out what set-ups and attacks will work best. The biggest problem with my guard is that it is too defensively-oriented. And the more I open my guard, the bigger a problem that defensive aspect will be.