Quick Sweep from Lasso Guard

By Ismail Safi, March 11, 2019

One of the most intricate and cool looking positions in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is spider guard. In spider guard, the guard player dominates their opponent’s upper body using their legs. There are many forms of spider guard one can play with. The traditional butterfly guard is when the attacker grips both sleeves and uses their feet on their opponent’s biceps to maneuver them around.

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The most popular modification to spider guard is using lassos, which has resulted in a position known as lasso guard. A lasso is when the attacker wraps their leg around the defenders arm and places their foot behind the top player’s back. This modification does two things that make it so useful, first, the lassos allow the guard player to have better control of the top player’s upper body. The second thing the lassos do is make grip breaking very tough.

A lot of the same attacks used in spider guard can be used in lasso guard. Lasso guard itself also has its own set of sweeps and attacks. One of the most popular submission attacks from lasso guard is an omoplata attack. This because the attacker essentially already has the arm wrapped up and only needs to get the arm a little deeper and get the correct bend.

Because lasso guard is so off balancing for the top player, sweeping is a great option. In the following video by BJJ Fanatics, you will see a lasso leg hook sweep you can use from this guard when the top player enters a combat base. See below:

Anytime you are playing spider guard or lasso guard, you should make it your priority to continuously dominate the top player’s posture. This needs to be established when you enter the guard but also maintained throughout the position. Giving up posture will only make passing your guard way easier.

The interesting thing about this sweep in particular is that the guard player isn’t in a traditional lasso guard. Instead, if you pay attention to the legs just before the sweep, the guard player is in a modified reverse de la riva guard. This is the great thing about lassos, you can use them in de la riva and reverse de la riva to create better sweeps.