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Chokes From Butterfly Guard
The butterfly guard is a fantastic asset for anyone that likes to play the open guard game. And its use has been well documented by its effective use in high level competition. While it is known mainly for its effective sweeps to get on top of an opponent, or to set up X Guard, there are some really neat choking techniques from butterfly guard. These are techniques you might have passed up, or perhaps did not realize that they were possibly from there. But chokes are available there, and they work nicely. There are three main chokes you can use from butterfly guard.
Collar Choke
This is a pretty fun choke that you can get from butterfly guard. It is actually set up from going for a cross collar choke from butterfly. While you can tap some people out with the cross collar from here, it is hard to do against more experienced fighters. But it sets up this interesting choke. As the opponent uses his hand to defend, you keep your dominant hand in and use your other hand to pull his arm across his body by his sleeve. Then you shrimp your hips out slightly, and put your attacking shoulder and chest on your opponent’s shoulder. Pull and finish. It is a cool collar choke that opponents won’t see coming!
Baseball Bat Choke
I’m a huge fan of the baseball bat choke. From side control and knee on belly, it works like a charm. It also works great from butterfly guard as well. Start off with how you always attack with a baseball bat choke, same side grip, with four fingers inside and high on the collar. You can start to fall to your side of which arm you are initiating the choke with. As you fall, get a thumb in grip with your other hand, on the collar by the back of his neck. While you complete the fall, turn your back to your opponent and finish the choke.
Darce Choke
The darce is one of the most easily set up chokes from butterfly. To start off the choke, you go after an arm drag on your opponent. Pull him with the drag to your hip. Usually after an arm drag, you would use your outside arm to grab the opponent’s far part of his back or armpit to take his back. Instead of that, your outside arm shoots underneath his dragged arm, and you get your wrist right against the opponent’s neck. Use the arm that you used to drag, to push down his head and lock up a darce. You could possibly finish it from there, or you can force your opponent into side control and finish from there.
While we can know what a guard’s specialty is, we should never stop trying to be creative and going for techniques that are there for us. People can make the mistake of putting certain positions into a box, and forget the totality of what is available. Don’t let that happen. Travis Stevens is one that knows about the power of chokes from butterfly guard. If you want to learn about the power of chokes from there, check out Chokes by Stevens.
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