Fundamentals 3 – Pendulum Sweep to Juji-Gatame

The Pendulum Sweep and Juji-Gatame (arm bar) attack combination offers one of our most powerful options from bottom. I consider this combination to be essential and indispensable to having a well rounded and dynamic game. The most interesting thing about the Juji-Gatame (cross arm bar) position is that it can be accessed by and connect together so many positions – it can be entered from a top position, from bottom, from the back, and can be used to sweep and transition to the back.
I consider Pendulum Sweep and Juji Gatame to be essentially the same technique, or two parts of the same technique, since the positions are so close together. I.e. if you are attacking an armbar on your opponent and they build up to defend it by getting on top and stacking their weight onto you, then you have to use the pendulum sweep to throw them back over and finish (or at least threaten the pendulum sweep and transition to a back attack.)
When you consider how important the pendulum sweep is as a backup system for Juji Gatame, it’s clear that you need to have a good pendulum sweep to be able to confidently go for an armbar attempt from top positions (such as spin-armbar from mount,) without losing the position too often to make it worth your while to go after the finish.
Obviously we want confident finishers in IPFS who are confident to risk top position to go after a finish, and attack with sweep-submission-backtake combinations off bottom. The Pendulum game is core to this philosophy in action.
Here you can see me executing it in live competition training against a much bigger, stronger MMA fighter who’s in training for a cage fight at this time. He was effectively smashing and holding down my students who were training that day, but it my case since I had a strong Pendulum Sweep I was able to deflect his weight and momentum off of me in a circular fashion to nullify his size and strength, then using the Juji position to pit all four of my limbs and back strength against his two arms – breaking his defending grips and forcing him to tap.