Butterfly Guard
Seated guard built on hooks inside the thighs, where the legs carry weight rather than merely holding position.
Butterfly guard when they drive forward
When a passer drives forward into butterfly guard the hooks either become the lever that lifts them or the thing you are flattened over, and the difference is whether your seat is still under you when the weight arrives.
Intermediate · No-gi firstThe butterfly hook as a lever
A butterfly hook only produces a sweep when it is loaded with the opponent's weight first, which is why the position rewards connection and posture rather than a fast kick of the leg.
Foundational · Gi and no-giThe butterfly sweep and the missing post
A butterfly sweep works in the direction where the top player has nothing to put on the mat, so the work is removing a post and tipping them over it, not lifting harder.
Foundational · Gi and no-gi
Reading connected to this area
Journal
- Seated guard and supine guard are two different jobs
Sitting up and lying back are usually taught as preferences. Treat them as two different control problems with different failure modes and the choice between them stops being a matter of taste.
Influential Figures
- Marcelo Garcia
He won at the top of no-gi grappling with a deliberately small set of positions, and then taught that set in public, which changed what a competitive game is expected to look like.