Judo Up

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I was thinking about this question:

If you can wrestle up from the guard position, you should be able to judo up… right?

Especially with the gi on.

But practically speaking, somehow, it feels it would be more challenging to come up from some guard position and get into a position where you can execute a Judo throw effectively, at least compared with wrestling up.

Or perhaps it’s just my imagination not working hard enough.

But then…

I came across this Instagram post by Adam Wardzinski, who is known as one of the best butterfly guard players:

“Theres infinite possibilities in jiu jitsu and its truly amazing how can you connect concepts that seem to have nothing in common at first. I found out this connection between firemans carry and butterfly guard while I was learning some judo concepts from two time olympian Tomasz Adamiec at the camp here in Poland, two weeks ago…”

He connected the butterfly guard with kata guruma (shoulder wheel, a.k.a fireman’s carry in wrestling). See how he does it in his video.

It’s fascinating because people try to stand up and disengage from the butterfly guard like this, and now Adam could counter such a move by throwing his opponent with kata guruma. I bet not many people would ever expect kata guruma from this position.

Now I wonder if I could do something similar from the spider guard, whether it’s wrestling up or Judo-ing up.

This kind of experimentation is what makes learning BJJ fun.