We cant be taken to the ground

Sissor take down.

Thai sweep.
Hip bump or vingativa.
The Thai sweep wouldn't, but the others would anything that lifts my root from behind like that or causes me to bend forward or backward on the stance would break it with no problem.

the sweeps don't work well because I can let my leg flow over the sweep.
 
The Thai sweep wouldn't, but the others would anything that lifts my root from behind like that or causes me to bend forward or backward on the stance would break it with no problem.

the sweeps don't work well because I can let my leg flow over the sweep.
Part of the skill set for people who are good at that sort of sweep is to either pick a moment when your foot is planted and you can't lift it out of the way or else to force you into a position where your foot is planted and you can't lift it out of the way in time.

I'm not very good at those sweeps primarily because I haven't developed that timing, but that's what makes it work for those people who are good at them.

(Actually, the people who are really, really good at those sweeps will get you as you are stepping and your weight is just coming down on your foot. It's not an easy skill to master.)
 
Part of the skill set for people who are good at that sort of sweep is to either pick a moment when your foot is planted and you can't lift it out of the way or else to force you into a position where your foot is planted and you can't lift it out of the way in time.
Agree! Timing is important when you apply "sweep". Sometime you may need extra "set up". Here are 2 examples.


 
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Part of the skill set for people who are good at that sort of sweep is to either pick a moment when your foot is planted and you can't lift it out of the way or else to force you into a position where your foot is planted and you can't lift it out of the way in time.

I'm not very good at those sweeps primarily because I haven't developed that timing, but that's what makes it work for those people who are good at them.

(Actually, the people who are really, really good at those sweeps will get you as you are stepping and your weight is just coming down on your foot. It's not an easy skill to master.)
Sweeps are my specialty so I'm hyper-sensitive to any opportunities that open up for a sweep. This has also helps with defending against sweeps as well. The best thing about a sweep is that the lower your stance is the less effective and less damaging the sweep will be. When you see videos of people getting swept it's usually when they are standing tall or in a high stance. Here are a few videos of guys getting laid out by sweeps. Punches and kicks are awesome but there's nothing in the world that feels like hitting the ground.

 
Sweeps are my specialty so I'm hyper-sensitive to any opportunities that open up for a sweep. This has also helps with defending against sweeps as well. The best thing about a sweep is that the lower your stance is the less effective and less damaging the sweep will be. When you see videos of people getting swept it's usually when they are standing tall or in a high stance. Here are a few videos of guys getting laid out by sweeps. Punches and kicks are awesome but there's nothing in the world that feels like hitting the ground.

In the first video guy swept the other guys rear weighted leg. Notice guy in white shirt failed his sweep of front leg which wasn't weighted? Then guy with blue shirt swept weighted leg successfully? Second video is drunken kungfu where these rules may not apply. In Karate Kid 3 Daniel Son received a book on sweeps from Master Terry Silver. All this info is in that book. Tournament guys are suckers for the sweep.
 
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Just like throws if I can trap and sweep both legs it's even better. Way more devastating and harder to counter. In other words weight you one way to set up taking both legs the other way.
 
Oh yeah, problem I see with sinking and widening your stance is loosing mobility. In a way you're weighting yourself and making it easier to be taken down. Unless it's a sprawl :)
 

See weighted at the :34 mark and again at 2:14. Beautiful throw And mount! Even a 4 year old understands the basics.
 
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Sweeps are my specialty so I'm hyper-sensitive to any opportunities that open up for a sweep. This has also helps with defending against sweeps as well. The best thing about a sweep is that the lower your stance is the less effective and less damaging the sweep will be. When you see videos of people getting swept it's usually when they are standing tall or in a high stance. Here are a few videos of guys getting laid out by sweeps. Punches and kicks are awesome but there's nothing in the world that feels like hitting the ground.


Capoeira has a lot of sweeps because their stance is low.
 
Oh yeah, problem I see with sinking and widening your stance is loosing mobility. In a way you're weighting yourself and making it easier to be taken down. Unless it's a sprawl :)

Aything pulling because if that leg gets shifted the other leg is too far away to take up the balance.
 
Sweeps, like throws, work best when foot being swept is weighted like Tony said.
Sweeping the weighted leg is the most common method, not the easiest. I do both of these sweeps all the time. If you are walking and I prevent your lead foot from landing to receive the weight then you will fall and it will take less energy and effort to make that happen. If you are retreating from me and I sweep you so that your feet cannot move backwards then you will fall. In both cases this occurs because the non-weighted leg can not land. If I crank the sweep then you will fly.

It takes less effort and less power to move a leg that's not rooted than it does to move a leg that is rooted. The only way anyone will know this is if someone tells them or if that person is always doing sweeps and sweeping more than just the weighted leg.
 
Sweeps, like throws, work best when foot being swept is weighted like Tony said.
Here's a picture of me sweeping the non rooted leg
From let to right.
Frame 1: The front leg is rooted.
Frame 2: The front leg is no longer rooted (View the shadow differences that the heel makes.
Frame 3: The front leg begins to move at this moment the majority of his weight is on his back leg.
Had I swept his weighted leg his body position would have changed dramatically, but in the photos you can clearly see that it hasn't. He was actually able to stay rooted on that leg right up until the point that front leg crossed his rooted leg.
nonroot.jpg


Sorry about the bad quality of this next picture (below)
The first picture shows me sweeping his unrooted leg. He lifts his leg to avoid a low sweep. In this picture the goal wasn't to seep the rooted leg because it would have caused injury, so I swept the unrooted leg. My opponent was expecting my leg to pass under his in which he could plant the unrooted leg. The problem is he's not able to because I'm redirecting that unrooted leg with my sweep. As you can see he's about to hit the ground and he would have had I actually did the sweep with any force. The sweep wasn't even fast it was just a tap which was more than enough to disrupt his intentions of planting that foot.

highsweep.jpg


The majority of the schools if not all of them teach to sweep the rooted leg because it's the easiest to identify and the timing required to sweep the rooted leg is more forgiving. Sweeping the unrooted leg takes a little more timing because you have such a short window. You can see me fail at a sweep attempt in the video here at the :027 mark. I tried to knock his leg out of the way right before he plants it. My timing was off and he was almost able to take me down because if it. Had I not been as low as I was he would have.
 
Aything pulling because if that leg gets shifted the other leg is too far away to take up the balance.
Yes but only if the stance is too wide like what Jake Mace was doing in the picture of him in a super wide horse stance.
Here are the numerous ways to deal with that. (All will work if the pulling is done with a leg.)
1. lift the front leg
2. lift the front leg and deliver a front kick
3. lift the front leg and deliver a side kick
4. Shift into cat.
5. Shuffle forward.
6. Jump back
7. Move into bow stance.
8. Pull their leg with your foot right before their foot hooks being your ankle
9. Jump forward with a knee.

Many of these options are only available when in a low stance. The key is that you have to be aware of what's going on around your feet. None of these will work if you are totally focused on or sensitive to only the action that happens above the waist.
 
Sweeping a leg with at least 50% of your opponent's weight on it is best. WT guys like to keep the weight off the front leg and on their back leg though. Therefore one way to set up a lead leg sweep to be more high percentage is by first trapping / wrapping up their upper body / neck in such a way their weight comes forward and down milliseconds before the sweep. I'll post a video link if I can find a good example.

Another classic is setting up the sweep by circling into their stance, nearly displacing their lead leg with yours while simultaneously stepping on their back foot. Its hard to stay standing up when one leg is being swept and the other is stuck in place. This requires even less actual sweeping of the leg, more force of leverage vs force being used.

Now, when I say "setting up", I don't mean to imply the goal is to set up a sweep or a particular technique. Trying to execute multiple-step maneuvers assuming you aren't going to be countered would be both foolish and bad Wing Chun.
 
I said it before, and I'll say it again;

If you're worried about the takedown, or you're afraid that you're dead meat once you hit the ground, learn ground fighting and grappling. No stance, no special move, no 300-year old hidden technique is going to stop gravity.

There's a good reason professional MMA fighters learn ground fighting and grappling ALONG with take down defense.
 
Sweeping a leg with at least 50% of your opponent's weight on it is best. WT guys like to keep the weight off the front leg and on their back leg though. Therefore one way to set up a lead leg sweep to be more high percentage is by first trapping / wrapping up their upper body / neck in such a way their weight comes forward and down milliseconds before the sweep. I'll post a video link if I can find a good example.

Another classic is setting up the sweep by circling into their stance, nearly displacing their lead leg with yours while simultaneously stepping on their back foot. Its hard to stay standing up when one leg is being swept and the other is stuck in place. This requires even less actual sweeping of the leg, more force of leverage vs force being used.

Now, when I say "setting up", I don't mean to imply the goal is to set up a sweep or a particular technique. Trying to execute multiple-step maneuvers assuming you aren't going to be countered would be both foolish and bad Wing Chun.
I think Wing Chun is limited on the types of sweeps that they do within the system, there are a lot of sweeps that I do that aren't in the Wing Chun fighting system "as far as I can tell" The higher you stance the more limited you'll be with the types of sweeps that you'll be able to do. Sweeping a leg with at least 50% of your opponent's weight on it may be the only option because of the structure of the fighting system.
 
Here's a picture of me sweeping the non rooted leg
From let to right.
Frame 1: The front leg is rooted.
Frame 2: The front leg is no longer rooted (View the shadow differences that the heel makes.
Frame 3: The front leg begins to move at this moment the majority of his weight is on his back leg.
Had I swept his weighted leg his body position would have changed dramatically, but in the photos you can clearly see that it hasn't. He was actually able to stay rooted on that leg right up until the point that front leg crossed his rooted leg.
nonroot.jpg


Sorry about the bad quality of this next picture (below)
The first picture shows me sweeping his unrooted leg. He lifts his leg to avoid a low sweep. In this picture the goal wasn't to seep the rooted leg because it would have caused injury, so I swept the unrooted leg. My opponent was expecting my leg to pass under his in which he could plant the unrooted leg. The problem is he's not able to because I'm redirecting that unrooted leg with my sweep. As you can see he's about to hit the ground and he would have had I actually did the sweep with any force. The sweep wasn't even fast it was just a tap which was more than enough to disrupt his intentions of planting that foot.

highsweep.jpg


The majority of the schools if not all of them teach to sweep the rooted leg because it's the easiest to identify and the timing required to sweep the rooted leg is more forgiving. Sweeping the unrooted leg takes a little more timing because you have such a short window. You can see me fail at a sweep attempt in the video here at the :027 mark. I tried to knock his leg out of the way right before he plants it. My timing was off and he was almost able to take me down because if it. Had I not been as low as I was he would have.
Sounds like you're saying the probability of sweeping A unrooted leg is less? I like to keep my odds in the higher percentile. In your other post about widening your stance you gave s bunch of different options that might work. But again I prefer doing stuff that's proven and might always work. Look at the 4 year olds in my video. They aren't in a crouching tiger stance. Actually, watch any straight jujitsu tournament they stay pretty upright. My guess is for mobility and not committing there weight one way or the other? They're always trying to sweep each other's legs out. I think there's points for that? Either way same principles apply.
 

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