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’
