Passes: Steering Wheel

In this video I show a popular Butterfly Guard Pass called The Steering Wheel Pass.

This pass became popular about 6 or 7 years ago.  I remember the first time I saw it and we drilled the hell out of it.  It's very useful and I still use it today!  

This pass is fairly easy and doesn't have a lot of different steps.  The difficult problem is that you need your upper body and lower body to work simultaneously and in different directions which can take some practice.

I will be posting a 5 or 6 different Butterfly Passes and they all start the same way.  You need to keep the best posture you can with your back and squeeze your knees.  So many people miss this simple piece (squeezing your knees together).  The mere act of pinching your opponents ankles together can really cut down on their ability to move their hips.

Once you have gotten your base taken care of it is important that you start to thread your arm around the outside of your opponent's arm and to the inside of their knee. Make sure that you do not try to feed your arm to the inside of your arms.  It doesn't make sense that you would do this but for some reason my students had a really hard time implementing this important piece of technique.

Once you have set the first hand it is time to reach around your opponents back and control close to the armpit.  Where exactly you control will vary depending on how long your arms are.  Your goal is to take up all the slack between your arm and your opponents back.  This will give you the ability to "connect" your body to your opponents and make use of your hip power when you start to rotate.

Now is the tricky part.  You will use your arms to turn your opponents body.  He/she should be supported solely on their one butt cheek and make it very easy to spin to the side.  Simultaneously when you spin your opponent with your arms it is important to back step.  It feels weird on the spine to bind it this way but it can be highly effective and deceptively fast because your body is creating space in opposite directions at the same time.

Once you have cleared the legs it is important to switch leg/hand grips to dominate in Side Control or Knee on Belly.  

This is one of those passes that is going to take some practice before you use in sparring.  You will find that when you start to back step your opponents foot will get caught on the inside of your knee.  This is a product of you not back stepping high enough or your hands and legs are not working together.