Adults: No Gi Flower Sweep
Warm-up
Hands to the Mat/Knee Tap
Player A
Starting with hand fighting. With this, we’re going to have two ways to score, each is 1 point, and you’re trying to get to 3 points first. If you get to 3 points, your partner has to do 3 burpees, and then continue. Starting from neutral, we can score in two different ways.
- Getting our partners’ hands to touch the mat. This could be via a snap, an arm drag, etc.
- Touching the back of our partner’s knee.
Player B
Win Condition(s)
Once someone gets 3 points, their opponent has to do three burpees, then reset.
Posture Break/Scoop
Player A
Player A starts on the bottom, in closed guard, with a two-on-one grip. To win, you need to be chest-to-chest, and you need to have a scoop grip on a leg. So, break their posture, scoop a leg.
Player B
Player B, you’re on top in closed guard, trying to maintain your posture. To win, you need to pop open the closed guard and get to neutral OR disengage.
Win Condition(s)
If Player A gets chest-to-chest and a scoop grip OR Player B pops open the guard and gets to neutral, switch.
Mount Arm Isolation
Player A
Player A is on the bottom, in the mount. Player A starts with a lap bar frame on the hip. Their objective is to escape mount.
Player B
Player B is on top, in mount. Your objective is to clear frames and get one arm to touch their head. So, you can go under the arm or get a gift wrap. Whatever you can do to get their arm to touch their head.
Win Condition(s)
If Player A escapes the mount or Player B gets an arm to touch the head, switch. By the way, 3/4 mount does not mean you’ve escaped. Your knee has to be above their knee.
Main Class
The Sweep
We’ve worked on attacking an arm from the guard position. And doing that is necessary. We always want to be aggressive within guard, not allowing our opponent to try to shut us down. To attack, we’ve worked on dragging the arm across and also stuffing it under our arm. Dragging the arm across allows us to access the back because we get behind their elbows, and dragging it under our arm allows us to start isolating the arm with an overhook, so we can get into clamp guard and attack straight armlocks, choibars, triangles, omoplatas, etc.
But sometimes, our opponent, in order to resist, they anchor their elbow down into our hip. So, now it’s hard for me to drag across or pull the arm out to go under my armpit. So, we use what we have. From here, instead of pulling out the elbow, we’re going to push their wrist down to our legs and pin it there. I’m then going to get my butt overtop of their knee.
To attack from here, we can start scooping under their leg. And this can be a dangerous position for them, because we do have options to armlock, triangle, and omoplata, depending on what they do with their upper body. There are also more advanced guards, like K-guard, which we can use to sweep or start entering into the legs. Today, though, we’re in countering mode. We’re going to go for a scoop grip, but they’re going to sprawl their leg back.
From here, we’re going to go for a flower sweep. To do this, we need to make sure they can’t circle toward our scoop grip arm. So, we’re going to get a self-frame to help our leg, on the scoop grip side, stay up. We still have their hand trapped. We’re going to put our foot down on the opposite side, next to their knee, and we’re going to kick them over.
From here, we end in mount with a good base and good control.
Countering the Counters
Two counters to the sweep, and we’re going to address them. Counter number #1 is if they flare their trapped arm elbow and base it on the mat, to stop the sweep. To counter this, we’re going to change this into an almost hip bump sweep style. So, our far arm is going to reach over their head and to their elbow. Our hand that was trapping their hand, is going to base on the mat, as we look to build height. From here, we bump, with our hips, up and over.
The second counter is if they take their far arm and base across on the mat. Like our counter to the first option, we’re going to reach with our non-trapping hand, and grab their based wrist. From here, we rotate our hips out and we have options to either get on the back, or attack the armlock.