Finish single leg takedown from half guard inspired by wrestler Cary Kolat

Learning how to finish the half guard takedown from wrestler Cary Kolat

What can half guard BJJ players learn from wrestlers? A lot, it turns out.

This is a new clip that Cary Kolat just posted:

‘Wrestling Moves KOLAT.COM Sweep Single Elbow Down’

Notice how Kolat uses his elbow on the mat to reap the opponent’s foot  outward, which prevents him from turning to face Kolat.

This is very similar to how Lucas Leite and others use their outside foot from half guard to reap the opponent’s foot outward, to prevent the opponent from turning to face them, as seen here by Leite:
leite1leite2
or here by Demian Maia:
maia_quarry
That’s why you usually want your outside foot to be on the inside between your opponent’s feet, as opposed to on the outside as seen here:
Standard-half-gi-UH-triangl

Another more subtle thing that most BJJ guys might miss: when Kolat does his takedown, he drops his right side(the side getting whizzered) really hard down to the mat, as though he’s actually falling to his side.   This is on purpose.   The whizzer rounds the shoulder forward and left.  By dropping his weight to the right and back, he negates the power of the whizzer.

This is explained in more depth here at about 1:48:
‘Single Leg Sweep to Whizzer Counter’ by West Ottawa Wrestling

For more on half guard, I recommend GambleDub’s excellent Lucas Leite breakdowns:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *