Jeff’s Half Guard Sweeps

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Jeff’s Half Guard Sweeps

13 July 2007 691 views 3 Comments

Back in the days of MMALibrary.com, Jeff Rockwell had put up a series of half guard sweeps. He taught

starting from a sitting guard and diving in deep as a counter to combat base. I’ve used my internet

sleuthing to recover them so I could add them to my notes here. I’m currently focusing on half guard and

want to work on these.

It’s all Jeff below:

Sweep #1

I got the first of these from watching Shaolin Ribero and the last two from watching the Noguiera brothers

in the last Pride. When you put them all together, it is a formidable series of sweeps and reversals, I’ve

been having a lot of success with them recently. While the main place I’ve been applying them is vs.

Combat Base (knee up inside guard), there are LOTS of places to aquire this position from, ie. escaping

mount, escaping quarter mount, escaping backmount, etc.

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s Half Guard Sweeps | Jiu-jitsu Techniques | Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu | A... http://www.aesopian.com/173/jeffs-half-guard-sweeps/

13 08/06/2009 14:51



Alright, here I am facing an opponent who has taken a “Combat Base” posture (knee up inside my guard),

to defend against standard attacks. As you can see, I am sitting up, not laying flat on my back, and my

right hand is on the ground for base. My left hand checks his shoulder to moniter his movement. In this

picture, there is a lot of space between his knee and his butt for me to work with; however, even if there is

only a few inches of space, I have still found this entry to work.

My right leg is going to shoot inside the space between his right leg and his butt. Sometimes I will

momentarily grab his right leg with my left hand to hold it in place. Here I am starting to dive my right leg

in between his right calf and his butt. It is important that I dive DEEPLY, no half-hearted moves here. Myright hand leaves its based-out position and follows my right leg…


13 08/06/2009 14:51



...also diving between his legs, and coming to rest as an underhook beneath his left leg. Even if he is sitting

his weight back on his left leg, it is hard for him to resist this, as I am rocking all my bodyweight up

underneath him.

This is the “Seated Half Guard” starting position. My head should be tight against his left hip, and I am so

far under his body that we are almost facing the same direction. My ankles are crossed and my legs are

squeezing to control his right leg.

Here is an important detail: if at any time, he is able to put his right knee down on the ground, I simply putmy left knee in front of his right hip and back out into a normal half-guard position. I don’t want to stay

crunched up under him if his knee goes down, as he will be able to crossface me and kill my game. The

knee in front is pretty easy to get here, though, so if you have a good normal half-guard game, this will

won’t be too much of a concern.


13 08/06/2009 14:51



Now for the first sweep, this is a really nice one. My left hand stays tight to my body, and reaches for his

right ankle.

Now I rock back to get some momentum, then rock forward and extend my left leg and lever forward,

pushing on the top of his right thigh with my left hamstring, while pulling on his right ankle with my left

hand.

I follow him up, keeping control of both legs…


13 08/06/2009 14:51



...as I start to sprawl downward, underhooking his left thigh with my right arm and overhooking his right

thigh with my left arm…

..and capturing his right ankle with with the crook of my right knee. Keeping the under/over grip, I lean to

a 45 degreee angle, keeping tight control of his hips, and extend my hips for the kneebar submission. If he

bends his leg to avoid the tap, I get an easy guard pass.

Sweep #2

You can see this sweep attempted several times in the Pride fight where Rogerio Noguierra faces Shogun

Rua. Though Shogun counters by repeatedly standing and running out of it, I have found it very effective.

Enjoy!


13 08/06/2009 14:51



So you have attemped sweep number one from the initial sitting half guard position, but you aren’t able to

grab his foot. So instead of underhooking his left leg, my right arm now underhooks his RIGHT leg, and

my left arm joins it. Both hands are clasped together palm to palm over top of his right leg. This is a weird

position at first, but there is not too much the top guy can do to you here. He can’t put much weight on

you, can’t attack your arms, your legs, or your neck. The Noguierra brothers have used this position

successfully in MMA, but I haven’t tried it in that scenario myself. I wouldn’t want to stay here long if

someone was punching me in the face, but that’s just me. It does seem that it keeps the guy pretty off

balance, not much power in his punches if you keep rocking. In any case…

...my first direction is out the back door. I have a lot of control over his leg here, and I rock my body hard

to my left…


13 08/06/2009 14:51



...extending my legs as I bring his weight forward and pop my head out from under his leg…

...coming out the back door like so.


13 08/06/2009 14:51



If the opponent stays low, I look to block his left knee with my right hand, come to either back control or

side control. Shogun showed us that this can be countered by standing up and twisting out of it, though, so

be ready to follow with a single or double leg if he stands.

Sweep #3

The last sweep in this series. For now.

Here I have acquired the same position at the start of the previous sweep, and I am rocking my body hardto my left, attempting to come out the back door.


13 08/06/2009 14:51



My opponent knows my intentions, however, and sits his weight down hard back toward his butt to

counter.

Keeping my arms gripped tight on his leg, I twist back to my right, following his momentum and turning

upward…


13 08/06/2009 14:51



(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

..to finish with a “single leg” type reversal. Minotauro hit this nicely in the first exchange of the Pride fight

with the Polish judo champ.

Like many of the other sweeps so far, it leaves you in perfect position to once again hit the over/under –

kneebar submission/guard pass.

3 Comments »

blanko said:


f 13 08/06/2009 14:51



Hey that’s my half guard game :P!!! I use all all of those sweeps and i love them. The only

difference is that i trap his arm with the leg when i sweep. This prevents him from posting his arm

when i sweep him AND it makes it harder for him to kimura me when he is in my halfguard. The

only other thing i do different is sweep #1 i use an uppercut motion and try to hook his heel with my

bicep instead of grabbign it.

# 17 July 2007 at 11:12 am

deryk said:

Good stuff Aesopian. I tried working with these during training last night, and although I wasn’t

able to get them down exactly as shown, I got a lot of usage out of the concepts.

My only problem though is the initial shooting in with the leg into halfguard. A lot of times, I end up

in half guard with the guy’s knee down already or in some quarter-guard position. How do you

manage to get in position for the first sweep? Seems really hard to do if the other guy doesn’t stay

still.

# 17 July 2007 at 3:49 pm

bjjeh said:

Hi Aesopian,

Great stuff. I think some of these sweeps are in video here (maybe helpful for some people—see

vids 4/5):

http://bjjeh.blogspot.com/2007/11/bjj-techniques-sweep-from-closed-guard.html

# 30 November 2007 at 3:04 pm

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