DLR Pass Defense: 3 sweep

Storytime: I’m starting this new blog off with a series of de la Riva moves for one obvious reason—de la Riva is pretty much my entire guard game. JT Torres often trains up at my school in New York, especially during the winter. On one fateful day, there was a massive snowstorm and only 3 people showed up for daytime training—myself, a purple belt, and JT Torres. JT had us do 7-10 minute round for an entire training session, all starting from the feet, all high intensity. This proved to be a pretty pivotal moment in my jiu jitsu career, as I was 100% a top game player prior to that day. After having my pathetic guard sliced through and realizing that I didn’t know jack shit about stand-up, I resolved to become a guard player and asked JT to teach me one DLR sweep to get started. That became the timber sweep (although he didn’t have a name for it at the time) and my open guard game was born. I’ve spent the last ~7 months focusing on open guard, and while I technically feel like I know very little outside of DLR, my pass prevention/guard retention has skyrocketed and I feel totally comfortable there. I know my guard is hard to pass and my movement off my back is good, I just need to add moves to the repertoire.

That starts here with some defenses off of DLR passes that I've recently learned or am not comfortable with. I'm systematically building my guard game one piece at a time, linking moves and counters. Here, the Bruno Frazatto sweep feeds into reverse DLR guard and the stuff pass sweeps lead well into deep half or x-guard. All will be important additions to my game, as it is important to get offensive minded with your defense.



A. Bruno Frazatto reverse de la Riva sweep against cut pass
This sweep is, to put it succinctly, fucking dirty. I was told to check it out on http://blackbeltsweepsecrets.com/ where if you register you can watch the sweep explained by the man who made it up (I highly recommend doing so). If you don’t mind giving Lloyd Irvin your e-mail address, it looks like there are some really cool advanced sweeps up there, but this is the only one I’m going to work on for now. The situation—someone starts to cut pass your DLR guard and you slide the RDLR hook in, but they are still driving forward to pass.
1. establish the RDLR hook and with the free (left) leg, point your toes into opponent’s hip
2. with your right hand, get a grip on the far collar, not super high but probably near the collarbone
3. with your left hand, grab the opponent’s far (left) wrist; Bruno says you need to grab the wrist, JT and the brown belt who taught it to me said a secure sleeve grip is fine
4. Simultaneously pull the opponent’s upper body towards you with the collar grip, push his wrist between his legs with the wrist/sleeve grip, and extend his lower body slightly with the RDLR hook so that he is stretched out and essentially balanced on top of you
5. Execute a back roll and, once you are going, extend your legs to come up on top

Those are the main points, but this is a complicated sweep that will require some drilling. Note at the beginning of the Frazatto videos, he does some subtle adjusting before beginning the sweep—grabbing the ankle then pushing back with the hook, pulling Reis slightly to unbalance him etc. That will take some time and drilling repetitions to figure out as there is much more going on there than I can distill into 5 steps.

The BBSS video is a pain to navigate, so here you can check out JT hitting this sweep on Lucas Lepri this year starting at 9:05. Beautiful.


B. Defending Stuff Pass, Sweep 1
-opponent usually backsteps, drives your free leg down between his legs and then pressures into you before working a pass. First step—if he is grabbing at your free leg, that’s an opportunity to sit up and work the sit-up sweeps. If you are past that point, here are 2 options (hooking leg is the left)
1. Swing your body to the right and underhook opponent’s left leg with your right arm, ideally pulling him close and clamping down on his knee for extra control
2. When you swing to the right and underhook the leg, your free leg will slide right behind opponent’s right leg—get your shin right behind the knee
3. Grab opponent’s right ankle with your left hand
4A. Now you have some options. The most standard is to leave your legs unlocked, kick with the shin (maybe using the free leg for momentum) as you sit up with your upper body and pull on the ankle to sweep. If your body is aligned directly under your opponent’s, you will be sweeping in the direction your body is pointing i.e. right towards his right food. If you can lift the opponent off the ground a bit as you start the sweep you’ll have the most power
4B. As you slide underneath opponent, also thread your left shin behind opponents knee. This is harder to get the lower your opponent is to the ground, but is more powerful
4c. Transition into x-guard (not my game)
-It’s important to be fast and aggressive on this sweep. Set it up before he has really started his pass and hit it hard. Otherwise, best case scenario you are in deep half, worst case you are shrimping like mad after your sweep fails

Defending Stuff Pass, Sweep 2
1. You’ve swung underneath like in steps 1 and 2 above.
2. Slot your knee in right behind opponent’s knee. This was described to me as fitting the small groove below your kneecap directly onto the inner tendon on the back of the opponent’s knee for a perfect fit
3. Cross your legs with your right leg on top
4. Get up onto your side facing away from opponent
5. Extend your legs to split your opponent’s base out really wide
6. Pull opponent’s knee inwards like an x-guard set-up
7a. Sweep opponent onto his back by rolling onto your back; if you were on your side and his legs are wide apart, the amount of space you have to roll will force him over
7b. If he bases/falls forward to avoid the sweet, come out the back door with control of at least one leg
-this will feel like a cross between a deep halfguard sweep (with the rolling motion) and an x-guard sweep (with the leg positioning).