Here are my initial notes on the tackles from the moth guard. After Rodrigo and I rolled for about 15-20 minutes (one hell of a way to start Warm-Up Week after a three-week layoff), I asked him about possibilities for tackle-type sweeps from the moth guard. This is what I remember:
Moth Guard Tackles:
It looks like the cross grip is crucial to getting tackles out of the moth guard.
The leg momentum can come from a couple of different ways. From my typical left side forward moth guard, you can:
1. Kick straight up with your left leg (slipping the arm), and kick into side of his torso with the shin of your right leg.
2. Bring your left leg inside as if in quarter guard. Kick into the side of his torso with the left leg while kicking your right leg backward (side scissors). The motion is similar to back-to-belly, only starting with the outside leg up)
I'm having a hard time remembering if the cross grip was important in both. A part of me feels as if Rodrigo showed me a version that didn't require the cross grip - version #1, because how else are you slipping the arm with your left leg if you don't still have it? - but the ones with the cross grip are the ones I remember, especially version 2.
These are going to take some drilling. Not a lot, though. A part of the problem is that I don't feel the sweep yet, which would probably be solved with just a few sets of 10 between now and the end of the week. After that, it would just be a matter of consistent practice and visualization.
I feel like I should have started writing this as soon as I walked in the door. But I know the one sweep with the cross grip makes sense. That one I almost do feel and will probably be the one that I end up drilling the most.
Rei Diogo's Grappling magazine article still is out there, though, insisting that you can tackle sweep from the moth guard without a cross grip. I'll stick to developing one with a cross grip until I figure how exactly how to effectively sweep without it.
