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:
or here by Demian Maia:
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:
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:
In its classical form, it starts from knee-shield half guard, aka, Z-guard or 93 guard. It’s a great alternative for situations where you can’t play the common underhook half guard game for whatever reason.
I would approach it like this: Whenever you have your knee shield guard and you feel that trying for the underhook is a bad idea, cross grab the sleeve and attempt something like a scissor sweep, back and to the side of the sleeve you’re grabbing.
See 2:15 of this clip:
Mendes Bros ‘bottom 393 knee shield back roll sweep’
If the opponent doesn’t want to get scissor-swept, then they have to push back in towards you. That’s when you have the momentum to perform the Shaolin sweep in the opposite direction. So we’re setting up a double attack: if they don’t want to get scissor swept, they have to drive towards you and to one side. If they don’t want to get Shaolin swept, they have to drop their weight back and to the other side. The defense for one sets up the other.
This sweep is also great to use in a situation where you’re in a reverse scarf hold style half guard, like this:
You can use essentially the same move, but you don’t have the double attack because the scissor sweep isn’t there. In this case, you need to focus more on pulling your knees to your chest to off balance the opponent to your north direction. See the James Foster clip below for an example of this.
More Shaolin sweep clips:
Here is Shaolin himself demonstrating it (‘Shaolin teaches the ‘Shaolin Sweep’ from Half Guard’):
‘Shaolin sweep half guard’ by Bruno Dias:
‘Half guard back roll sweep’ by Gerry Young:
‘The Roll Over Sweep from Half Guard with James Foster’
‘Amanda Loewen back roll sweep from half guard’
https://www.facebook.com/AmandaLoewenSBG/videos/687099881367830/
‘roll over shoulder sweep from half guard’ by Carnage BJJ
‘Yuri Simoes Belt Grip Backroll Sweep from Half Guard | BJJ LIBRARY’
Bernardo Faria vs Leandro Lo Pan Ams 2015 Lapel choke from side control with your own lapel
This choke is one of my favorites. You can see the finish (blurrily) in this clip: Leandro Lo vs Bernardo Faria Pan AMs 2015 Open Finals:
Here’s a breakdown from Renato Tavares, “Bernardo Faria x Leandro Lo Pan Ams Choke”. At 1:30, Tavares brings up an important point of moving your own shoulder south onto their neck, instead of the chin, to make that side tighter.
Here’s a breakdown of the choke from Professor Buck, “How Bernardo Faria finished Leandro Lo”.
Bjj AfterForty has a variation called it the “ninja roll choke” which involves doing a roll:
Marcos Barros of Gracia Barra shows a very similar move here, ‘
BJJ Technique – Learn How to Apply 2 Lapel Chokes From Side Mount Control’:
Ricardo Cavalcanti shows a similar choke here, with a different roll, ‘
Jiu Jitsu Techniques – How To Use Your Own Lapel For Lapel Choke’:
Update: Some time after I originally posted this, Bernardo Faria himself released a video explaining the choke. Interestingly, in his version, he uses both hands for the finish.
‘Pan Am Scarf Choke with both hands’ by Bernardo Faria: https://player.vimeo.com/video/156126898
I like to set this choke up myself from reverse scarf hold, the reason being that when you’re on top of reverse scarf hold, the opponent can’t see what you’re doing, so they can’t see your lapel coming over their neck until it’s too late. The reason this choke works so well is that once you throw your own lapel near the opponent’s neck, they have 2 choices.
They can ignore it, in which case you do the choke.
They can try to grab it or otherwise block it, but if they do that, then they’re opening their arms up for attack.
So once you put your own lapel near their neck, it’s like you have 3 arms (your two arms, plus your lapel) attacking their neck, and they can only defend with their two arms.
CarnageBJJ shows an example of a similar attack from reverse scarf hold here:
‘Daily BJJ: Near-Side Lapel Gi Choke from Side Control’
and
‘Exclusive Jiu-Jitsu – Lapel Choke from the Side Control – Essence Of Jiu-Jitsu’
