BJJ / Grappling Techniques: Butterfly Guard Fundamental Positioning

Not too long ago I posted about butterfly sweeps and one of the questions that came in was about getting flattened. I never try to do anything from a flattened butterfly guard except reset to a position of better leverage. I start all my butterfly sweeps and submissions from the same single hook platform. I am fully aware of legends like Terere and Cobrina who can pull off some fantastic sweeps from that position and of course Marcelo Garcia has a great system of arm drags off the double butterfly position, but as a Part Time Grappler I simply prefer to have a very narrow gameplan plus a number of reliable ways to get back to it, rather than a large number of techniques from every position.

Hopefully in the future, when I am actually any good at fundamental grappling, I will start adding more branches to my BJJ and grappling game plan, but for the time being, I focus on this approach.

In this video, I show a nice drill where you partner up with a friend, get into the correct posture (under or overhook, head in the pocket, single hook with pressure, hand behind you for mobility, head in front of hips..etc.) and then add some pressures (motion and energy in different directions. From here you will start seeing possibilities for different sweeps or even submission attacks from the butterfly guard.

Techniques are awesome, but they are not the beginning. They are the consequence of correct positioning (postures) combined with alive energy (from real pressures).



Have fun with it and let me know how it goes.

Liam "The Part Time Grappler" Wandi

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2 comments:

graham cooke said...

Hey Liam,

Thanks so much for doing this mate. Had a watch yesterday before training and immediately put it into practice. Pulled butterfly guard in all my rolls and using some of the principles you showed I had a lot more success in terms of not staying flattened for long and my guard was much harder to pass. Still need to work a lot on really becoming familiar with the correct pressures in order to hit sweeps from there regularly. BUt this video is an excellent starting point.

Thanks again

Liam H Wandi said...

Not at all Graham. As I mentioned before, it's things like this that make the blog worth writing :)

Butterfly is a beautiful position to play from and the pressures will come with time, but you need to get into the right postures :)

Make sure you DRILL this with a partner and let us know more on how it goes buddy.