The ‘basic’ butterfly guard sweep is one of the most strongest sweeps in grappling. That’s why it shows up again and again at the highest levels of competition. It’s powerful, reliable, and works for a wide range of body types. It works with and without the gi, on bigger people, smaller people, wrestlers, and judoka.
This combination of power and versatility makes the butterfly guard sweep one of my favorite go-to moves of all time!
But sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men can go awry. And even the best sweep of all time – the butterfly guard sweep – can get shut down by a savvy opponent who knows how to counter it.
If you don’t have an answer for the sweep not working then you’re gonna get crushed. Shmushed. Annihilated.
You don’t want your whole game to shut down as soon as you run into a roadblock. Which is why you need to have counters to your opponent’s butterfly guard counters, followups, or what I call ‘recounters.’ (Of course you need recounters for every technique, not just the butterfly guard sweep.)
Here is one of the highest percentage butterfly guard sweep recounters, demonstrated by Emily Kwok (this video is excerpted from our best-selling No Gi Guard Sweeps and Submissions app).
It’s really simple: if you have any aspirations at all to become good at the butterfly guard you have to learn this technique.
And just for the record, if I had to choose only one recounter for the butterfly guard sweep to work on for the rest of my grappling career, this would be that technique (click here to see it on Youtube instead)!
P.S. If you found that useful and would like more, then check out the How to Defeat the Bigger, Stronger Opponent in No Gi instructional set by Grapplearts which is available both as a series of mobile apps and as a 5 DVD set.
