New techniques, drills and sparring made for a pretty well-rounded training Tuesday night.
The techniques were sweeps from the open guard, a double sleeve control "heel 'n' hook" guard where you control both sleeves at the wrists and have your lead foot (heel first) in the hip and your lower foot hooking behind the guy's knee.
The idea is that you've got the hands controlled - a must if you are in an open sitting guard - and one foot in the hip to keep him back, with one foot hooking behind the leg to keep him from getting away.
We did three different sweeps from this position. To make sure I get it right, I'm just going to talk about the sweeps from one side.
I led with my left. In the first sweep, you switch grips and use your left hand to hook the ankle. Pull on the ankle, push on the hip and lift with the hook.
As you come up, make sure to keep the grip on the ankle. His leg should be between your legs, and you should still have a cross grip on his sleeve.
The second sweep helps deal with the guy if he steps out of your hook. Rather than chase him with your hook, swing your leg around so that your hook (right) foot is now on his hip/abdomen. You are facing outward, and you want to swing your other (left) leg under and scissor out the heel of the leg that you had tried to hook.
Basically, I go from on my back to my left side as I roll to, essentially, switch legs/hip pressure and get a new "trap" for that far leg.
The third sweep itself had a few variations. But this is the main sweep. Again, the guy steps out to avoid your hook. This time, swing your hook leg (right) over the guy's sleeve control arm on your left side (you've got the cross grip with your right hand) and hook your foot under his thigh. Pull tight on the sleeve to maximize control of the arm.
Depending on how deep the arm is, you'll either get an armlock or the sweep. What you want to do here is get a tight grapevine on the arm, then switch your grip to your outside hand (left for me usually) and underhook the guy's near foot.
You put so much pressure on the shoulder and arm that the guy either (a) taps from the submission, (b) falls flat from the pressure allowing you to do a sort of modified single leg takedown to the back, or (c) does a front roll to relieve the pressure.
To get the sweep, pull on the arm, lift up with the grapevine and the underhook. One key is to move your hips to the outside to get the good leverage and angle.
Rodrigo showed me a couple of variations after class when I was asking about the hip placement in this sweep. But I'm going to stick with these three moves for the time being. They don't really fit into my guard game at this point. But they are excellent against standing opponents, which I deal with in my Cobra guard all the time. So it will be worth my while to see if I can get a few of these sweeps to stick.
