Sweeping A Wrestler

[StayHumble]

I've been watching alot of DJ Jackson's competition matches, he seems to have a solid wrestling base that most guys find very hard to deal with and not many being able to get on top of the beast,I personally like Hip Bump sweeps but against a wrestler hes not letting you come up for nothing , I seen bernardo Faria hit a deep half guard sweep on DJ, besides that and micheal langi who swept him with an x guard type sweep and spider guard sweep, DJ seems to stay on top against great fighters, my question is what are the best sweeps against a wrestler? what are the best NOGI sweeps against a wrestler? in nogi I am beginning to think Deep Half might be the best answer, you could try coming to your knees in half guard but good wrestlers will put you right back under them, obviously any good wrestler is no picnic but ya what do you all think?

 

[Gfreak]

Not exactly a sweep, but armdrags and half guard/knee shield stuff.

 

[Shemhazai]

Create a dilemma where the best possible outcome for him is getting swept, then either take the sweep as he concedes it, or pursue the back take or submission instead.

To accomplish this vs. someone who's hard to sweep, I would either start the combo with a back take or sub attempt, or a sweep whose sole purpose is to make him expose a sub or back take. Simply going for broke on a sweep and expecting it to work vs. a wrestler without prior threats is foolish and a waste of energy IMO.

 

[Calibur]

Chain wrestling.

Basically you're not gonna sweep a good wrestler in one go. You initiate the sweep and use the gap in defense to pop to your knees and get a lightly advatantageous position. For instance I go:

1) scissor sweep
2) gas pedal sweep
3) come to my knees.
4) shoot the underhook
5) knee tap
6) shoulder shrug and take back

I replace step 2 with rolling armbars.

I replace 5 for single leg take downs.

I replace 6 for deep half entries.

The main thing is they have a good base. I can make them post but they're not going to just fall over like some limp wristed blue belt.

It helps to look at their base as something multi layerd as opposed to something just strong. Someone with bad base falls over in one layer. Someone with good base needs to have multiple layers knocked out and you only have split seconds to do it hence the chain wrestling.

While wrestling implies popping to your knees and hitting takedown combinations some people like to chain sweeps off their back which is much harder because a wrestler can readjust their weight to kill the second or third sweep. If you pop to your knees after you initiate the sweep you have the advantage since they are short a limb.

They are using their arm to post. Now you simply drive them over. When they base back into you you take their back. If they base hard you accept the energey and go back for the sweep.

Just chain wrestle.

 

[Higus]

Butterfly type moves are the most successful for me. You can really get under their center of gravity and use your leverage to reverse them. Use the Marcelo Garcia style sweep where you really have to straighten out your legs to complete the sweep.
Otherwise use the butterflies to transition to X-guard. No one ever stops an x-guard sweep once it's in.

 

[thegreenblender]

They're often more susceptible to the sub than the sweep, or more liable to do stupid things that let you take position while they're escaping them...also, guillotine is your friend.

 

[Panky Rang]

I have a lot of success with butterfly guard

 

[Calibur]

Even with butterfly guard it's not a quick fix. A clean butterfly sweep will be super rare against a natural wrestler with bjj experience. You can use butterfly to initiate movement but coming straight up and initiating a sweep or using it to set up a SOLID triangle choke is crucial.

In the end if you can't chain sweeps and you can't wrestle it might be best just to go for the back and pray.

In the end the better grappler will win.

 

[Higus]

Even with butterfly guard it's not a quick fix. A clean butterfly sweep will be super rare against a natural wrestler with bjj experience. You can use butterfly to initiate movement but coming straight up and initiating a sweep or using it to set up a SOLID triangle choke is crucial.

In the end if you can't chain sweeps and you can't wrestle it might be best just to go for the back and pray.

In the end the better grappler will win.

Yeah, I don't mean to imply that a butterfly sweep will be a quick fix. Sweeping a good wrestler is almost harder than pulling a submission in many cases.

 

[Thrawn33]

Yeah, I don't mean to imply that a butterfly sweep will be a quick fix. Sweeping a good wrestler is almost harder than pulling a submission in many cases.

Granted I'm a judoka and don't have the deep move set as my bjj cousins, but as a former wrestler myself: when working with ex wrestlers threatening a submission can often open them up to reversals

 

[Jagcorps_esq]

Even with butterfly guard it's not a quick fix. A clean butterfly sweep will be super rare against a natural wrestler with bjj experience. You can use butterfly to initiate movement but coming straight up and initiating a sweep or using it to set up a SOLID triangle choke is crucial.

In the end if you can't chain sweeps and you can't wrestle it might be best just to go for the back and pray.

In the end the better grappler will win.

Agreed. I've seen butterfly be successful, but it's not the cure. It's just part of the cure.

The way to sweep a wrestler is using their momentum against them, but whatever sweep does it. Wrestlers have great base, and they are used to reacting quickly. Their reactions are what give you the energy you need to complete a sweep, but that means your pockets have to be pretty deep when it comes to sweep options.

Nothing has taught me transitional attacking guard better than trying to sweep wrestlers.

As soon as I saw this threat title "Sweeping A Wrestler, " I immediately thought...."Sweeping a wrestler means you've got game!"

 

[Uchi Mata]

Butterfly type moves are the most successful for me. You can really get under their center of gravity and use your leverage to reverse them. Use the Marcelo Garcia style sweep where you really have to straighten out your legs to complete the sweep.
Otherwise use the butterflies to transition to X-guard. No one ever stops an x-guard sweep once it's in.

This is the key to me. Wrestlers are incredibly good at not letting you twist them to put their backs on the mat, which makes things like scissor sweeps and hip bump sweeps really hard to pull off. But because wrestling penalizes people being on their backs, they've never really had to deal with people getting all the way under them and taking away their base that way. I find that X guard and deep half sweeps work really well against wrestlers, because they'll often let you get under them in a way a more experienced BJJ guy wouldn't. And then the sweep is much easier.

 

[dmwalking]

For anyone with a good base ideally it's best to get under their legs. Take their base away. So deep half, x guard, Popovitch deep half.

However, the other posts made about chaining moves together is honestly the best approach in general, not just against wrestlers.

One example that I can think of is how Galvao took Sonnen's back in Metamoris. I learned that position as "dogfight" from my old 10th planet school. From that position, a guy is forced to make decisions while you open up options. In Chael's case, either he gives up the sweep or he gives up his back or he fights both and gives up another sweep. It's a losing situation for him.

 

[dmwalking]

Shemhazai and Calibur, good posts. Thanks.

 

[Allan san]

As many people have mentioned: Transitions and chains.

I value our gym's heavy wrestler-based grapplers. Even the white belt ones pose one of the harder challenges when sweeping. I use triangle threats to get me some space and go into the basic butterfly sweep (which they base out on) and go straight underneath to x-guard. From there if they like to step over, I take the back. Otherwise, it becomes sweep city.

Often times the heavy forward pressure affords me the arm drag almost seamlessly.

 

[sb413197]

I don't have a solution to this, just here to sympathesize haha. I'm a top game guy (newer purple belt) and train with a lot of former wrestlers, and it's touh going for me a lot of the time. My game on bottom is designed around sweeping to top position where I can use my passing and side-control attacks, and I am sometimes shut down against wrestlers - even experienced whitebelt and newer bluebelt guys with wrestling backgrounds can be real tough. Combine that with the high pace they set, generally high strength, and it's rough going - I have gotten very tired out by rolls with them. They rarely are able to hold a dominant position but I often spend several minutes it bottom half-guard (really working on that right now so not the worst thing I gues) and am happy when the time runs out haha.

I think I need to be more relaxed when training with wrestlers TBH. I don't like getting super tired. Like others have said, I have the most success when going for the back - their base makes it darn hard to move them but sometimes moving around them to their back is an option.

I've been hitting kimuras at various angles against wrestlers. They sometimes are so gung-ho on keeping their base that it opens up sub attempts. Not the easiest thing there either though, because they are generally very strong - sometimes they will give up a sweep when threatened though.

 

[HockeyBjj]

Oddly enough, I have a decent amount of success with a good ole fashioned scissor sweep against guys my Bjj expereince but have that damned wrestling base

Other than that, I really like half guard back takes on them (not technically a sweep), or digging for a kimura setup from guard and using that threat to get something

I've struggled getting wrestlers with my butterfly hook sweeps, they sit back low and heavy and I just end up moving us with each attempt, not getting enough twist

 

[fanboysareevil]

I think grouping all "wrestlers" into a homogeneous entity is disingenuous. HOW is your opponent basing out? I've had good wrestlers react in very different ways to the same sweep, and naturally the solution was very different.

 

[jack36767]

Former wrestler chipping in,
Most of the things mentioned the most have given me trouble so far (arm drags, hip bumps to kimura's/omoplata's and chain wrestling). I personally haven't had trouble defending Deep Half Guard and X-Guard overall (don't get me wrong I still get swept occasionally but overall I defend it usually). I think this is due to wrestling in college and having to learn "funk" or "scrambling" or get beat. which is actually very similar to DHG and X-Guard in that good scramblers get underneath you and take your base and try to score. Also modern "funk" and scrambling in American Folkstyle wrestling doesn't care if you go to or expose your back in the process of defending the takedown or scoring because back-points aren't an issue till control is established.

So whenever people have gotten underneath me I just stay calm and "wrestle through the position" and float through and use my good "wrestling base" as a tool not my only way of defending. I've had alright success (50/50 success) defending Berimbolos by attacking "or wrestling through the position" rather than just trying to outmuscle it. Because of this usuallyit takes Chain Wrestling to sweep me.

TLDR: Coming from a college wrestling background with the prevalence of modern scrambling it usually takes chain wrestling to sweep me

 

[Dirty Holt]

Being a fairly successful wrestler, and now pulling guard against everyone, which in practice is a high level of very good wrestlers, I am going to disagree with most of the posts here.

Trying to chain wrestle against a wrestler is usually going to be much more advantageous for a wrestler than a mainly BJJ athlete. Wrestlers train this their entire life, on a daily basis, and their hips and base are usually going to be much stronger. Anytime I am having problems on top, and the bottom guy starts trying to initiate chain wrestling and scrambles, my life gets infinitely easier in terms of passing.

What I have found with wrestles, is that they are much easier to sweep when you go underneath (x guard, deep half, reaping, spiral guard, etc) or when you threaten leg/foot locks.

You learn a rule in wrestling when you start getting advanced in tactics and it holds true with BJJ as well: Against tough guys, you need to put them in a position where they have to make a choice, and you have the answers to that choice. Force them into a position where you know the outcomes and your transitions to those outcomes have been trained, and you will have the upper hand.