Butterfly Hook Entry to Knee Bar

Posted by Fanatics Authors on July 10, 2018

Firas Zahabi of Tristar gym in Montreal is one of the most sought after MMA coaches in the world. Training the likes of Georges St. Pierre and Rory McDonald amongst a stable of other students, Zahabi's combat coaching experience is second to none. He also happens to be a John Danaher black belt and often hosts members of the Danaher Death Squad as they travel back and forth between NYC and Canada.

Butterfly guard, or the use of the feet as hooks, can be a great way to keep an opponent's weight displaced and set up sweeps and reversals. When you are just starting out in BJJ, the butterfly guard can be a great guard to play with as you begin to become more comfortable outside of the zone of comfort that closed guard provides. The butterfly sweep is usually learned relatively early and can help build a newer student's confidence and sweeping repertoire. A well-placed butterfly hook can get you out of a lot of jams and help keep the opponent's weight displaced without too much effort.

As you begin to progress beyond the mere use of the hooks as a tool to try to delay the guard pass, you will begin to see that the butterfly hooks can also help unbalance an opponent creating a wide variety of entries to leg submissions. In the video below Firas Zahabi uses the butterfly hooks coupled with strong double under hooks to unbalance the opponent, keeping the hips light while making a great deal of space to set up the leg attack entry. He finishes with a tight knee bar.

In this case, he uses his far side arm frame to push the opponent over to that side, while maintaining a near side under hook grip on the bottom of the opponent's leg. This gives him the mobility to invert, driving his hips up to secure the leg and attack the knee bar by holding onto the shin and foot in the crook of his bicep. Watch the video here and pay close attention to the details that Coach Zahabi shares.

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