“ASHI-WAZA”: foot sweeping and tripping techniques.

Ashi-Waza is such a big element in the clinch, but it happens so fast it’s hard to see what’s happening. We made this video to slow it down and highlight exactly what’s going on with the feet, while showing one of our core drills we use to learn how to put it all together in the clinch.

This drill is a finisher after standard padwork to practice the unique interplay of knees, clinch grips, and sweeps that happens when both players are momentarily putting themselves on one leg in order to knee, block the knee with a check, sweep the other person, or putting a hook on their leg to block a takedown.
If we spend time in the position, we can learn to anticipate predictable situations and capitalize with timing-based sweeps.

I demonstrate the Judo-throw once in this round, but as I go I am creating a kuzushi-pattern where I’m trying to be in position to throw as much of the time as possible, or shuck them off-balance and change levels to a leg-takedown. And in that access point I’m firing off knee-strikes (not at full power due to light belly-pad) and when the pad-holder knees in return, I sweep while they are on one leg.

Again, I’m keeping in mind that at any point I could change levels to the legs – since I have touch-reference points in the clinch as a distance-gauge, I can use footwork-agility and knee steps hit the leg-entry with very high success, and the Judo-throws with very high success, in addition to the counter-sweeps, so this clinching position should be considered a potential submission-finishing pathway as well as an immediate striking-finishing position.

The thing that I should emphasize on this the energy efficiency of the counter-sweeps. We are fatigued from padwork and JiuJitsu rolls in this footage but I’m able to finish numerous sweeps through the round while keeping a good pace of knees.