22/04/2016 - Teaching | Mount | Escape to Butterfly

Teaching #499
Artemis BJJ (MYGYM Bristol), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 20/04/2016

I went with the bump and frame to butterfly, a relatively basic technique tonight. This isn't an option I often go for, but I do regularly use some of the principles, as quite often I'll end up trying to dig my knee through.

First of all you need to get their hips in range. It is more difficult to land this escape if they're still upright, although in that case you would probably go for something else. Knock them forward with a straight up and down bridge, pressing your knee into their bum. As soon as they're horizontal, frame your arms into their hips and do a powerful bridge (heels as close to your bum as possible, pushing high, on your toes).

Stiff arm into both their hips, so that when you drop your hips back down, the space you created from your bridge is still there. Make sure that the power comes from your hips, not your arms. You arms are just meant to be there to support the weight, like a shelf, not provide the power. Bring both your knees through that gap: having been balanced on your arms, they are now balanced on your shins. You can then kick forward with both legs, using the momentum to also sit up. This should put you directly into butterfly guard, where you can immediately sweep them.

If they are still upright, you can still do it sloppily by jamming as much of your knees as you can into the space you create. It ends up being one or one and a half knees, knocking them off to the side at best. Still, that can work too, and will almost certainly be better than staying stuck under mount. It can also potentially give you a chance at moving into x-guard or something like that, circling your outside around to press your foot into their hip. A double-shin sweep could work from here too.
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Teaching Notes: It is tricky to get this one as pure leverage, as people will tend to try and benchpress, especially if they have a size advantage. I'd like to demonstrate this with a bigger person, though unfortunately tonight I still had a dodgy wrist and sore arms from the vaccination earlier in the week. Next time, I need to make sure I've got this technique smooth and accurate enough to try it on a big person, to demonstrate that it isn't about power. It could be an idea to get people to try it on bigger partners, but at the same time there's a safety issue: I don't want anybody hurting their wrists. Either way, something to play with at open mat some more before I teach it next time.

Having said that, it is still effective, just easy to turn into a power move rather than technique. It should set up the technical mount escape nicely, that I plan to teach next week, as that uses a similar stiff arm principle (or at least, one of the variations does, there are other ways you can do it).