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my many faces
My name is Romeo Barnes. I'm an author and a BJJ black belt with cerebral palsy. This blog is about my life balancing existence in two worlds. My latest book, My World is now available Amazon.com. Glad you're here, enjoy the journey.

my discovery

In the entry "Balance" I stated that I hate passing guard, especially guards that extend me or attack my balance outright. Butterfly guard is one of those guards that attacks your balance outright. When you face a guy with a good butterfly guard it's pretty horrible becuause you're flying across the room at his will. It's like being on a rollercoaster full of loops that keeps crashing. The crash being you ending up on the bottom usually in mount; so naturally, it gave me issues.

Well, thursday I didn't train so I mentally review some DVDs I had seen recently, something I always do when I'm not training(I usually watch said DVD but I didn't really feel like looking so yea) and the match between Marcelo Garcia and Pablo Popavitch crossed mind as we trained butterfly sweeps in Wensday's class and Marcelo played butterfly most of the match then, I remembered something one of the Shawn's said(don't remember if it was Williams or Flannery) they were commenting on how good Marcelo's butterfly is(and it's damn good) Shawn commented that Marcelo uses his butterfly guard to set up arm drags a lot or he sometimes uses said armdrags to set up a back take or get underneath his opponent for sweep. "It's like seated wrestling" was the statement. And then it hit me that's absolutely 100% true.
What do college wrestlers do after they clear the hands? Armdrag
What does the armdrag lead to? Takedown/Back take
What does the butterfly guy do after he clears the hands? Armdrag
What does the armdrag lead to? Sweep/ Back take

After all a sweep is nothing more than an inverted takedown.
Even the defenses are the same.
Even if he's in on my legs against the cage he can't take me down if I lower my base(squat)
The butterfly player can't sweep me either from there you work for underhooks to improve your position.
If I keep his hips back he can't get in to take me down.

You're saying how do we control the butterfly player's hips, Romeo? He's sitting down. The answer is control his feet. If I'm dragging feet across my body his hips become useless because he can't get his hooks inside.

If he gets his hooks inside you then put his back on the floor(using your head) and glue his feet to his butt. That position is the same as wrapping your arms around the leg for a single leg without having your hips underneath you.

Now that I understand the principles of the position it's time to drill the techniques which will nullify the offense while creating passing oppurtunities for me.

I'm going to drill my weaknesses and you should too.

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