BJJ Saarbrücken: Leglocks

Leglocks are a general term used to describe attacking the joints and muscles of the leg. For example a leg lock could attack the foot for a variety of ankle locks / heel hooks / knee bars / toe holds. A leglock can also define attacking the knee joint with a knee bar or even with the heel hook. Some attack the large joints of the knee or hip and involve utilizing leverage to counteract the larger muscle groups, while others directly attack ligaments in the knee or the smaller joint of the ankle. Some leg attacks also crush muscles, like the calf crush.

Leglocks have been around a long time and varied history; you can find them in old Japanese Jujutsu, Catch Wrestling and Sambo books. Leg locks were used by many of the traditional Jujutsu schools in Samurai Japan, Pre WW2 Judo and Catch Wrestling. And then... it started fading away. Japanese Jujitsu lost it's popularity to BJJ, Judo banned leg locks from competition, Catch Wrestling lost its popularity, and BJJ looked at leglocks as dirty techniques.

But they have experienced a strong surge in popularity over the past few years. Most of this is due to a combination of new submission only grappling events, and the innovative approach to leg locks by Dean Lister, John Danaher, and others.

New entries, approaches and leg attacks have been "discovered" and the positions for how to get leglocks have become more defined. There's actually systems around attacking the leglocks, while before they were just a submission.

The key component of a leg lock is isolating your opponent's foot or knee, as well as controlling your opponents movement by "locking" into the hip as well. As with other joint locks, leglocks are more effective with full body leverage.

Leglocks can also make a great controlling position / attacking position for other techniques. For example, 50/50 Guard and Single Leg X, are essentially leg lock positions. In fact, the more you look for leglock attacks, the more you see that they are EVERYWHERE.

What makes leglocks so effective, is that they don't require the strength and size that some upperbody submissions might require. For example, have you ever tried to apply and arm lock or arm bar against a larger, stronger opponent? It's nearly impossible. How about a triangle choke or guillotine choke. It can be quite difficult to choke a larger opponent with no gi chokes.

But - leglocks are the great equalizer! Size and strength don't matter against the joints of the foot.

What also makes leg locks all the rage right now, is that you don't need to be a top level BJJ expert to pull them off. In fact, most seasoned IBJJF Black Belts are still blue belts in the leg lock game. They understand the concepts, but don't know how to attack them as a seasoned no gi submission grapplers.

Leglocks are found in a variety of different grappling styles including Catch Wrestling, Sambo, Judo / Japanese Jujitsu, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Though in many BJJ tournaments, there are a lot of restrictions on leglocks, and heel hooks are completely illegal.

This debate over if IBJJF should allow heel hooks or expand their rules for leg locks is an ongoing one. What's cool is that other events such as ADCC, EBI, Kasai, Etc are starting to gain more popularity, and showcasing more grappling styles than just BJJ.

Currently leg locks are all the rage in the jiu-jitsu / grappling world, and there a few reasons why. First, as mentioned above, the limited rule-sets in IBJJF have allowed other grappling competitions to start taking the spotlight due to their favorable rules for submissions. IBJJF fighters tend the play the point game, while submissions based events create more opportunities for submission finishes. Leg locks have become the number one options for quick finishes in submission grappling.

Note: it's funny, not even 5 years ago, most jiu jitsu schools frowned upon using leg locks. They were considered "cheating" and dirty fighting. Not anymore!

Another reason is that leglocks are powerful. You can quickly find success with them in your dojo or competition. You don't need to go through elaborate sequences such as sweeping, passing, establishing control, etc. Now, the leglock attacks can be found everywhere and quickly end the fight.

Be weary though in training / sparring. When you are learning leglocks, you should attacking them in a slow controlled manner. We tend to establish a grip and solid control position, and then slowly finish the technique while waiting for the tap. There's no reason to be a hero when training leg locks. You WILL tap a lot. That's part of the leg lock game. In order to learn the leglock game, you must tap a lot. 

Source Article: Leglocks – BJJ Fanatics

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