Mindmapping My Takedowns: Footsweep MiniMasterclass

“You need to find ONE THING that you’re good at or that you’re interested in.”

I’ve been having this conversation a lot with my students lately.

I think back to the days when I was a blue belt. I was excelling at single leg X and X guard. There was an incident where I heel-hooked a blue belt (with gi on lol) and my professor suggested that maybe it was time I started focusing on “fundamentals”. So I did.

I left the world of leg entanglements and guillotines to focus on positional defense, closed guard and spider guard (which I was terrible at).

I wonder what could have been, especially given that this was before (10 years ago) the leglock trend… I could have been ahead of that trend and ran with it! The trend, after all, is your friend.

No less, here I am, still playing X guard and working leg entanglements after returning to them late in my brown belt years. Now, it’s about all I play. I have tunnel vision and that’s ok. I know when to play other games but every other game is primarily focused on getting me BACK to my positions of strength.

So to in your jiu-jitsu, you need to figure out how to get to your positions of strength so you can be effective in your practice.

If you’ve been following along over the last few weeks, I’ve talked about how foot sweeps were my “position of strength” from standing. Therefore, whenever I engage in the standing position, I am almost singularly focused on getting to my foot sweeps (namely the Kosoto, Kouchi and the De Ashi). I also love the Hiza but admittedly, it’s not the FIRST thing I’m looking for when standing.

In the last email, I talked about how to “mind-map” your stand up. The email was prompted by a recent private lesson as well as some other wrestling classes where we talked ad naseam about picking a takedown that you love or are good at and running with it. You need to have a good takedown for each parameter of engagement.

Are you disengaged? Try the “contactless kosoto and kouchi” (in the link above)

Are you engaged right on right? Kouchi

Are you engaged right on left? Kosoto

Are you engaged right on right but your opponent is moving? De Ashi or Hiza Guruma

Are you engaged in an uncomfortable position? Grip fight and get back to “reset”

You should get the idea now.

In today’s email, I’m going to take everything I’ve discussed over the last few weeks.

By the end of this email, with about 15 minutes of your time, you’ll start to understand how quickly and efficiently you can become better at your takedowns by understanding the simple concepts of HOW I set up my takedowns. For extra refresher, you can also check this email out which shows you exactly HOW I get positional advantage with my grips [You’ll see these concepts throughout this sparring narration today].

Lastly, in the PS, you’ll get to ask any questions you might have so I can help coach you through it as best I can.

Let’s dive in!