So far, we’ve been emphasizing the mechanics of sweeping from the butterfly guard, but in order to use those skills, we’ll need to establish the right positioning. A hinderance to my adoption of butterfly guard has generally been the lack of control I feel when I approach someone with the mindset to enter butterfly rather than establishing a different guard. My legs get grabbed, hopped over, or danced around before I get anything going. Pulling half guard generally reduces the movements and encourages my opponent to perform a more high-contact guard pass, which I prefer. I’d rather be smashed than have to chase someone.
My preference for slow control makes Marcelo Garcia’s approach problematic for me. He replaces physical control with an onslaught of attacks. He doesn’t need so much control if his opponent is always on the defensive. It obviously works for him, but his instructional is about nogi where grips are not so powerful. Wardziński seems to drag people into butterfly with collar and sleeve grips. That’s a bit closer to my comfort zone, but the sleeve grips are not a natural move for me yet. What else is there?
Saulo doesn’t seem to like a direct entry into butterfly either. He shows how to move from a full guard position into butterfly. One point of emphasis that I took away from this video is the priority of pushing into the opponent first. It’s more important to post with a hand behind you and get your hook deep underneath them than to start worrying about their posting arm for the sweep defense.
I already live that half guard life, so maybe butterfly is a place to go but not to start. We worked on a version of this back in the half guard unit:
Maybe you don’t like being smashed so much and like knee shields more than I do. There’s a good reminder here that although there’s some visual similarity between half butterfly and a knee shield, they work differently. Your butterfly hook needs to go outside, it cannot go inside the way the knee shield does:
This next one doesn’t necessarily belong in this post, but it’s something that I watched while I was pondering the other resources. Gordon explains the necessity of combining multiple guard systems: