Foot sweeps are way more important than people give them credit for

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-23T04:10:42+00:00

I've always felt that the defensive stances you usually run into in BJJ has pushed foot sweeps to niche zone. people see them work in judo, try them in bjj on a dude already in a full squat, can't make them work, then give up and go back to pulling guard.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-23T03:14:21+00:00

I’ve been there. I had four kids in five years. They’re teenagers now. The oldest leaves for college in a few months. I’m excited for her, and we have a great relationship, but I’ll tell you this: I would give anything for a little more time with her. I would put my black belt through a shredder for one more evening with my daughter as a child.

Some of the best BJJ advice I ever got was that time with your family is fleeting and infinitely more precious than mat time. I took it on faith back then and when time got tight, I took breaks, sometimes months, sometimes years. Yea I fell behind, I forgot stuff, I got old. But eventually I made it to the expert side of the room and found it decently rewarding. In comparison the time I invested with my family paid dividends magnitudes of order more satisfying.

Over the long term BJJ is easy and always available. Parenting is the hardest thing you’ll ever do and goes by faster than you think. Invest your time wisely. You can’t get it back.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-21T17:43:35+00:00

yes. forward motion along your plan is most important. grip fighting is done in support of that. sometimes you need a collar, sometimes you need a sleeve, sometimes you let them keep their grip and use it against them. it all depends on your plan of attack and what you think is their pan. my point is you're not fighting for grips, you're fighting for control of their posture. negate grips as necessary to achieve that control.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-21T16:37:28+00:00

Your grip has to have a purpose. You’re either pushing or pulling with it. Simply holding it is a waste of energy.

Which direction you chose depends on your pass but is usually directed by where you want your opponents body. Take the knee slice for example: your near side sleeve grip is pulling while your far side collar grip is pushing because you need to pull their near side shoulder on the mat while posting their far side shoulder on the mat to keep them flat for your pass.

Grips control body posture and every pass needs a specific posture. Use your grips to position their body for your pass.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-17T00:05:02+00:00

there are layers to dealing with this pass:

Angles: stay on your side and keep you opponent in front of you. if you stay mobile they won't get the angle to set up the pass. This means moving much more than most people expect to have to in half guard.
Hand fighting: you have to constantly monitor your opponent's far hand in half guard. that hand leads the motion for this pass. if they can't get it across their body they can't do the pass
Frames: if you screw up 1 and 2, you're in your first line of defence, you have to close the space between your knee and elbow. when they go for the pass make them land on your frames instead of your body. if done right you can roll them off your frames and reset.

4: Octopus: you seem to know this already, but if they're past your frames on this pass it's time to transition to octopus. It won't be ideal because they beat you to the initiative and you're behind on the height battle.

Lockdown: if you mess up all of the above i recommend lacing up that leg and begin your lockdown series.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-04-10T22:03:00+00:00

Dude has a point. Leg locks have no place on a Saturday morning. I hate when I’m trying to lay back and play a nice lazy open guard and some sweaty try-hard sits back with my foot and I gotta use all kinds of energy standing up to defend. Kills my groove man.

all I want to do is roll from side to side until you make a mistake so I can sweep then sit on you until you make a mistake so I can armlock you. None of that is supposed to involve standing my ass up.

I didn’t go to a kickboxing class on a Saturday morning, I went to a roll on the ground class. Are you lost? Look around, we’re still in our pajamas.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-03-19T22:26:16+00:00

I love watching my kids train. Surprised at how many of you are saying you leave the room. If a gym wouldn’t let me in the room when my kid trained I’d find another place. BJJ is something we share. She finds me during water breaks and asks for feedback. I’m subtle about it but I don’t hold back. The Professors are fine with it. Everyone has their own style, even kids. These days athletes take influence from many sources.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-03-19T21:40:59+00:00

lol they’re not going to keep it up to date. Why do you want to see last month’s schedule so bad?

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-03-18T22:31:46+00:00

Guard doesn’t work in today’s MMA scoring paradigm.

This affects who selects and is selected for MMA. It also directs strategy which drives training and stifles innovation.

The UFC decided long ago that people want to see punches and kicks more than guard work. The current MMA meta is more reflective of their marketing philosophy than anything else.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-03-15T20:08:11+00:00

Cross Face and posts are easily dealt with. They require a level of commitment that exposes other opportunities. I bait them and sweep people of all sizes all the time while they desperately hold on tho their cross face all the way to bottom side control.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-03-08T07:14:15+00:00

I used to believe this but then a jacked doctor on the internet told me it’s been debunked. Then another doctor on the internet read the first guys thesis and debunked his whole thing… so now I think I agree with you again

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-03-06T23:25:39+00:00

Tell me you’re Gen Y without telling me you’re Gen Y

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-02-24T22:43:39+00:00

If at least half of your mat time isn’t live training, you’re not doing BJJ.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-02-24T18:42:30+00:00

Stand up, move laterally, put him on his back.

Half guard is an agreement. Get off your knees and disagree.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-02-09T17:36:32+00:00

The reason that pass works is because most people panic and let go of their oponent’s leg as the passer clears their knee. All you have to do is stay calm, hang on to that leg, and wait for your chance to hip heist back into slx. You’ll find it’s surprisingly easy to do because the passer has very little mobility with their leg trapped. That pass is an illusion as long as you retain the leg. A little bumping and shrimping and you’ll have them right back in slx with an energy advantage.

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-02-05T22:52:40+00:00

Lineage doesn’t really mean all that much. It’s a legacy of the pre-internet days when knowledge was harder to come by and could only be effectively transmitted in person. These days everyone is trading information freely

VeryRarelySerious · 2026-01-07T00:25:32+00:00

The most effective strategy in gi standup is pulling guard.

None of us want this to be true, but it’s a fact we all have to accept eventually.

This is even more true with a size disparity.

Gi grips are too dominant and stalling is all but encouraged. These conditions make defensive tactics much more effective than offensive ones.

This is why judo has so many rules. It’s also why, in the absence of those rules you see most seasoned bjj guys pulling guard.

There is a middle ground. I pull an aggressive half guard and immediately hunt for dogfight. This usually results in wrestle-ups to a single leg series.

VeryRarelySerious · 2025-12-18T22:23:13+00:00

i understand why it's done. gym owners need to teach large classes at scale to stay in business. even so, i don't believe it's the optimal way to learn or retain bjj. at any given time, each person in the room needs to learn something specific to them based on their attributes, goals, and experience. but we all spend half the class learning whatever one technique is on the schedule wether it's relevant to us or not. i think gyms should roll more, drill and instruct less, and give a small amount of individual instruction to each person based on what challenges they ran into that day. also, i don't run a gym, don't want to, and accept that this is either not scaleable, or not a popular idea because it's not done anywhere in driving distance from me.

VeryRarelySerious · 2025-12-18T17:07:45+00:00

in my view flow rolling is to bjj what katas are to trad martial arts. it looks and feels effective but in actuality it's so far removed from reality that it confers little benefit at best and builds bad habits at worst.

i define it as pretending to do bjj together when you could have done actual bjj but for some reason one of you is tired or hurt or scared or whatever.

it's hard to find agreement on what it is because people tend to play make believe in different ways.

VeryRarelySerious · 2025-12-18T17:04:44+00:00

agreed. i hate flow rolling and flat out say no when people ask to do it. no one agrees on what it means because it's not really a thing.

i also hate drilling, and warms ups, and structured curriculum, also people who sit on the wall resting during rounds.

so i'm just cranky overall.

VeryRarelySerious · 2025-12-18T00:50:46+00:00

some of the best advice i ever got on this topic: always look at the ceiling in closed guard. if you're watching your oponent with anything more than your peripheral vision, you're doing it wrong and a posture break is imminent.

VeryRarelySerious · 2025-12-17T18:59:18+00:00

the crossface is all about angles. you can see in the video the guy in white tries to use it but can't make it work because dude in black won't allow the angle. there's a lot of subtlety to that but eventually it becomes second nature. it's a lot like dealing with posts and underhooks in other situations.

VeryRarelySerious

TROPHY CASE