Deep Half Sweeps

Three times in one week! For the second week in the month! I've now trained 7 days this month, which is about equal to the number of times I trained all year up to this point.

Basic warmup, the right into deep-half sweeps. This is a position I've been working on for a while with limited success, so I was happy to get the chance to work it here.

First the basic entry to the deep-half, which I CONTINUALLY mess up. I frequently lead with my underhook on the leg, and leave my head behind, which results in me getting d'arced. You can't do that, you have to dive head and arm together, ear on their thigh, to avoid the d'arce.

Once you get there you gather up your opponents foot/leg with your halfguard and then pendulum to bring their weight forward and get control of the leg.

First sweep was a basic waiter sweep. You have rocked them forward, they post to avoid you simply ducking out to the back, so you underhook their ankle and pendulum again. A detail I need to pay attention to is making sure that I sweep my penduluming leg under me as I come up so that it doesn't get tangled up when I take top.
Now you control their ankle until you get your knee on the mat and pinch their leg, then you can complete your pass.


Second sweep was the same entry, but this time when you attempt to underhook the leg for the sweep you can't reach it. You pinch their leg (I usually scoop it with my inside leg instead) and insert your outside legs shin into the crook of their knee. Now execute exactly the same pendulum and come up on top. If you get bogged down trying to complete the pass on the inside for some reason you can switch and pass to the clear side.


Third sweep, same setup, but this time when you try to sweep them over they move and post with their arms. You loosen the underhook on the leg, swim over their posting arm and around the head, then plant your inside foot and backwards roll to top.

I need drill all of these more, but just getting to drill the entry with Head + Arm instead of leading with the arm helped a LOT once we started rolling.


Rolled with the idea of working towards the deep half and was able to execute some version of the waiter sweep multiple times against varying partners. Not as often as I would have liked, but enough for me to feel like I made some progress cleaning the technique up. I also dealt with way fewer D'arce attempts since my head was in tight the whole time.

The rounds were super long, I have no idea how long, but pretty sure it was longer than 6 minutes, and I stuck around an extra 20 mins or so to roll since I didn't have to be at work as early today. That meant I rolled for somewhere around an hour with very small breaks. I feel good about my cardio recovery so far based on my improving performance rolling.

My philosophical ramblings are still cementing themselves, so that post will probably come together some time in the next few days since I want to make sure that I'm saying exactly what I mean when I write it.