Improving Your Butterfly SweepWith 1 Simple Change
Whether you’re doing a butterfly sweep from an open guard or a closed one, as a novice, you’re bound to make many mistakes.
You may think that you’re doing it right. But, trust me, you’re not and you shouldn’t take offense from this. Instead, take delight in the fact that someone’s actually trying to tell you that no matter how good you think you are with your butterfly sweep right now, it’s not as good as you think it is.
Put it simply, you need to improve.
For starters, one thing that you need to improve on is leverage. Archimedes once said, “Give me a big enough lever, and I can move the world”. And leverage is exactly what will allow you, as a fighter, to put to the ground bigger and much stronger opponents.
If I asked you right now,which would be easier to finish an arm bar, do you pull on your opponent’s elbow or his hand? How about a knee bar, are you going to pull on the back your opponent’s ankle or his calf?
If you answered the first one, then you’re right as doing so will help increase leverage as you apply force.
What does this have to do with the butterfly sweep? Well, everything and many beginners fail to remember that JiuJitsu relies much on leverage for smaller guys to be able to take out much more powerful baddies.
A good example of a common mistake among many novices is that they try to kick their opponents in the groin. While this may “look good”, it doesn’treally allow for a lot of leverage and it makes it near impossible to force an opponent to move his legs or hips.
If the scenario sounds familiar, then I’m pretty sure your butterfly sweep is flawed. But no biggie, that’s something we can fix.
To remedy this common problem, all you need to do is move your butterfly hook down to your opponent’s knee. A simple change this may be, it actually gives you a whole lot more leverage than aiming at the groin.
Try practicing it right now, both at half speed and at full speed and you could see exactly how much leverage the small change gives you.
Remember, the big lesson in all of this is something that you read earlier already and it’s that leverage is always good. The more leverage, the easier the sweep and the more likely you’ll be able to do more damage to your opponent.
Leverage may not be what BJJ is all about, but it’s a huge part of it all.
You’ll need to understand angles and how they work, as well as how simple changes like moving from the groin to the knee can help you make a better butterfly sweep from, let’s say, an open guard. Even more important for you to understand is that it takes time to learn the proper execution of techniques and you should be patient when learning them.
As a novice, you should be as observant as possible and take in all the knowledge you can get. Improvement will come, so don’t be hasty.
