How to do the Reverse Butterfly Sweep

22 Mar, 2016

I talk a lot about the butterfly guard around here; it’s one of my very favourite guard positions. It’s powerful, it’s mobile, and it’s fun.

There’s no doubt that the workhorse of the butterfly guard is the ‘basic’ butterfly sweep. It’s a tool that newcomers to jiu-jitsu can learn quickly, but is still being used by the top BJJ competitors on the planet.

Now there’s a move called the reverse butterfly sweep that works very well in combination with the regular butterfly sweep…

In the regular butterfly sweep you might use your right foot to kick your opponent over to your left.

In the reverse butterfly sweep you use the same right foot as before, but now take your opponent the other way instead (i.e. to your right).

Combining the regular and the reverse butterfly sweep gives you the ability to kick your opponent over to either side. This bilateral style of attack means that he can’t simply shift all his weight to the opposite direction of your dominant attack: you can sweep either way that that means there’s no safe place for him to hide from your attacks.

To show you how to do the reverse butterfly sweep I shot a quick video with my friend and training partner Denis Kang. Pay attention to the gripping and the weight shifting details – they’re really the key to making this technique work.

Here’s the video…