I wanted to share with you an open-guard sweep that I have been using recently. I learned this sweep by watching Kurt Osiander’s move of the week series on YouTube. So far this sweep has been a great addition to my open guard game. It’s easy to do and highly effective!

The video below shows this sweep in a gi setting. Even though Kurt shows this move in a gi, it is easily adaptable to a no-gi setting.I have found that instead of grabbing the gi that you can perform this sweep by overhooking the posted leg. When overhooking it is important to make sure that you pull the knee in tightly to your chest. By doing this you gain more control of the leg you are attacking.

What I really like about this sweep is that you attack one of your opponent’s limbs with two of your limbs. When I used to teach sweeps in my fundamentals class I always used a table analogy. In a traditional table there are four table legs. Think of these table legs as your opponent’s arms and legs. If you take a table leg away from the table the table becomes less stable. Take away two or more table legs and the table falls over. With this sweep you take away one table leg of the table.

This sweep also uses the high/low and push/pull ideas to sweep. By tucking your bottom leg in towards your own butt and sitting up you end up pulling low and pushing high. Doing this literally sweeps his base out from under him. Unless he has crazy balance on his free knee chances are he is going over.

If you are not familiar with Kurt you may want to put in some headphones prior to watching the video. Enjoy!