Team:

Excellent work tonight on the mats! We'd like to once again welcome purple belt Brandon to the team for a short period while he's in town for work, and also thank Adam for trying out the Academy tonight.

Instructor Scott covered some nice set-ups from the basic sit-up sweep. We started off with the simple drill of working the sweep and your partner then escapes out the back door using the elbow escape.

We then transitioned into thinking about the top person's perspective. When the sweep is being performed on you, attack the leg that's basing for the sweep and spin out to your opponent's back. The key element here is timing...anticipate the move and capitalize on it early.

After several rounds of practice, Scott then showed a few guard recoveries off the double-under guard pass. The first option dealt with an opponent who grabs your belt and attempts to either stack you to pass or pull you into them.

As soon as you feel their hands on your belt, make your legs heavy and place your palms on their knuckles. Walk your shoulders away as you extend your arms to break the grip. Once broken, maintain contact with their hands and work to replace guard.

If you're late and your opponent begins to lift your hips, level yourself by coming up onto your hands and lifting your hips. Again, your legs are heavy. Rehook your feet, trapping your opponent's arms. From here you have numerous options, including the basic cross-collar choke, the arm triangle, loop choke, etc.

Of course, preventative medicine always works best. When your opponent breaks your guard and begins to brings his arms under your legs, grab his wrists (or his sleeves) and hook your feet on the insides of his thighs. This will prevent the "lifting" of your legs and set-up some nice submissions such as the shoulder lock example Scott demonstrated.

We ended class with several rounds of free training. Keep up the excellent work! Again, welcome to Brandon and Adam.

See you all on the mat -- this Thursday!

P.S. -- here's the sit-up sweep in detail as shown by Master Pedro Sauer: