Getting High Percentage Leg LocksFiled Under: Instruction
Leg locks are an alluring, harsh mistress. Even though they can be high percentage moves, a number of them are banned in BJJ competitions. Good instruction is often rare or elusive. In some jujitsu circles, teaching leg locks to beginners is strictly taboo.
I remember learning my first ankle lock and tapping out almost all the guys at my level with it. Opportunities to try it out popped up everywhere. I’d roll with a guy and two or three minutes in, I’d slap it on and get the tap. Personally, I’d love to seem more submissions in MMA via leg locks. Yes, they’re dangerous – but so are dozens of other moves! Train under proper guidance and be cautious. It’s better to lose the submission in practice than ruin your partners knee for 18 months.
That being said, I’m going to put up several posts concerning the topic.
For starters, this video is very illustrative, as your first step to getting the submissions is avoiding the mishaps.
So if those (see video) are the 4 most common leg lock mistakes, what are the solutions?
The upcoming posts will explore most of the technical issues, but these are the basic answers:
- Don’t telegraph – practice stacking guard and immediately going into it, or distract opponent’s awareness by attacking/feigning elsewhere as a setup.
- When applying the ankle lock, get your radius (long bone of the thumb-side forearm) under opponents Achilles tendon, past the calf muscles.
- Learn the correct leg and foot positioning for each submission.
- Accept the fact that there will be some scrapping for position, and learn how to relentlessly attack. Theoretically, every attack should be one of a potential combination of moves. Just like kickboxing – jab, cross, hook, knee. Jujitsu attack chains are great for this.
Other posts you may enjoy:
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- BartB
- 2 Sep 2008 8:27 PM
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