09/11/2022 - Teaching | Leglocks | Basic kneebars

Teaching #Evening
Artemis BJJ (7 Easton Rd), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 09/11/2022


The first basic kneebar I ever taught was one I learned from Seymour. You approach the guard as if you are going for a pass, meaning you are in a crouching posture, shuffling forward. Face straight ahead (don't look down), pressing your shin into the back of their leg. Rather than passing, you're instead going to backstep to the outside, so that you are now looking towards their foot.

Sit on them, securing their knee by wrapping your arm. Drop to the side, using their foot as pillow. Cross your arms, triangle your legs, driving the hips through. Make sure their foot is under your head, not above it, You don't want them to be able to rotate, as that facilitates their escape.

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Second option from Charles Harriott. This time, do everything the same as before, until you get to the part where you are sat on them and securing their leg with your arm. Instead, grab both legs. As before, drop to the side, but you need to make sure the leg you are attacking is on top. Bring your elbow over the top while still holding their leg (Charles calls his a snapdown guillotine motion), to put their foot in your armpit.

That underarm finish requires their leg to be on the side of your head that is away from the floor. That way is stronger, as your arm and leg can clamp their leg more effectively in place. If you are going underarm with your bottom arm, it would be easier for them to turn their leg.

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I'll also keep adding in my safety video, as I don't think this gets emphasised when teaching leglocks nearly enough. Really important: for twisting leglocks (which can happen accidentally, in the not uncommon event that the person being footlocked tries to explosively spin to free their leg), tap to pressure, not to pain.

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Teaching Notes: I could probably do two, as it is essentially just a slight variation rather than a whole new technique. Though yeah, if I want to spread things out, it didn't feel sparse doing just the one variation across two lessons. Then again, if I did put them together, then I could do this on a Monday, followed by the vs knee shield style on a Wednesday (adding in a bit about how spinning through with the knee across, like on the knee shield version, works for lots of entries).

07/11/2022 - Teaching | Leglocks | Escaping seated single leg x

Teaching #Evening
Artemis BJJ (7 Easton Rd), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 07/11/2022


First reaction for escaping footlocks is to 'put the boot on', where you shove your heel forwards to tense up your calves. That should make it harder for them to push on your toes, which tends to be part of most straight ankle locks. Angling your toes away from them is also a good habit, as that helps to hide your heel and make it harder for them to therefore go for a heel hook.

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The other big part of escaping this position is pushing their foot off your hip. You can then move forwards, which is a great way to prevent any further footlock attempts. The simple way to push the foot off is to bring your hips up, in order to expose their foot and reduce their ability to maintain pressure and grip on your hip. Once you have push it off, you can either come over the top of the foot, or better, land on their foot. With your weight on their leg, again their opportunities to continue footlock attempts are reduced.

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In order to get to the mount when moving forward, you may need to remove the obstacle of their knee. It is common for that to end up stuck between your legs. You can shove that down with your free arm, then pop over the top. To help with that, you'll want your posting arm relatively close, or be able to adjust it quickly. You may well not land in a perfect mount, but as long as you quickly remove any space, that's good enough. Leaving space is almost always a mistake, as they could then either escape, or worse, set up some other attack.

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Posting on your hand in order to create the angle to push their foot off your hip is a useful option. However, it does occupy both your hands. An alternative is to instead grab the upper part of their foot, near the toes, then shove that towards them. This can be enough to remove their foot from your hip, whereupon you can then shove it down and proceed as before. That uses only one hand, leaving your other hand free to grab their collar (or potentially head, in nogi) and pull them towards you. This both prevents them leaning back to finish a footlock and makes it much easier to move yourself on top into mount.

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I'll also keep adding in my safety video, as I don't think this gets emphasised when teaching leglocks nearly enough. Really important: for twisting leglocks (which can happen accidentally, in the not uncommon event that the person being footlocked tries to explosively spin to free their leg), tap to pressure, not to pain.

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Teaching Notes: I split this into three, I may not need all those options. The third one, where you push the foot forward and down, is definitely superior I reckon. Having that hand free to grab their collar or head makes a big difference. The other thing I want to do better next time is moving through to mount. Is there a way to more smoothly get to technical mount, making sure your knee gets into that gap by their shoulder you create with the collar pull?

02/11/2022 - Teaching | Leglocks | Maintaining seated single leg x

Teaching #Evening
Artemis BJJ (7 Easton Rd), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 02/11/2022

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Seated single leg x, also (rather pretentiously and unhelpfully, IMO, unless you happen to be training in Japan) known as ashi garami, is the entry level leg lock position. Typically you'll get there from a sweep, or possibly off an escape from mount, but in order to get the basics, I tend to teach it from both people sitting down, facing eachother. Get your legs on the inside of theirs, then grab their ankle. Holster that to your hip, while simultaneously kicking your same side leg forwards. Put the foot of your leg on their hip. With your other hand, grab their knee (still on that side, so opposite to your hand), then fire your hips as close to theirs as you can.

You want to be turned towards the side where you have your foot on their hip. With your other knee, cover that foot as much as your can. The foot should be curled around their hip bone, as tight to them as you can, toes facing outwards. Your same side hand wraps up their leg, ready to take one of multiple grips. The basic one is to encirlce their ankle with that arm, while your other hand maintains hold of their knee. This is good for preventing their ability to extract that leg.

Alternatively, you can move into a figure four. The hand of the arm encircling their leg grabs the wrist of your other arm, grasping their shin with your free hand. This is useful for preventing them rotating. You can also move directly into a (fairly weak) straight leglock from their, driving your hips into their leg. It's less effective, as your arm is flat, so the sharp radius isn't pressing into the meat of their leg or their achilles (depending how high you have your grip).

A third grip option is to keep their same side leg encircled with your arm, then do the same thing with your arm on the other side. This is best used when they are attempting to stand up. By controlling both feet, that makes standing up impossible: they have to break your grips first.

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I'll also keep adding in my safety video, as I don't think this gets emphasised when teaching leglocks nearly enough. Really important: for twisting leglocks (which can happen accidentally, in the not uncommon event that the person being footlocked tries to explosively spin to free their leg), tap to pressure, not to pain.

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Teaching Notes: I could potentially try and cram this into the initial drilling class, but I think it makes sense to separate it out. At the moment, leglocks are still very new to most people at the club, so taking it really slow and avoiding overwhelming makes sense. In future, when leglocks are less confusing for students, I could probably add in some other details. Especially because at this stage time will be eaten up a bit, as I still want to add in the safety chat. If people remember nothing else, I want to make 10000% sure they've all experienced the knee sensation so they know to tap to pressure, not to pain.

26/10/2022 - Teaching | Leglocks | Basic seated single leg x/ashi garami drills

Teaching #Evening
Artemis BJJ (7 Easton Rd), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 26/10/2022

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In preparation for the first ever leglock month at Artemis BJJ in November, I ran through some of the basic drills that I learned from Charles Harriott (which you can also find on his excellent Leglocks 101 instructional). Sit facing your partner, legs in front of you , feet on the ground, knees up. Start with one leg inside theirs. When you say 'left', both of you move your left leg to the inside. When you say 'right', put the right leg in.

Next do the same again, this time grabbing the heel of the outside foot each time. Then we play a game, where the goal is to get both you feet inside, also grabbing both their heels. That covers off the first chunk of drills, after which we can move into the actual footlock position, which is single leg x. John Danaher insists on calling this ashi garami, because he likes to sound fancy. But it is just single leg x, on the ground. ;)

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To enter into this position, get inside control with your feet. Grab the heel of their outside leg, pulling it up to your hip, like you have a holster there. At the same time, kick your leg out straight. Put the foot of your outside leg on their hip bone, curling it around so there is as little space as possible. With your free hand, hold their knee, then shoot your hips forward as close as you can. Bring the knee of your inside leg over your hip foot, trying to cover it, in order to make it harder for them to push it off their hip. The foot of your inside leg is hooking under their butt cheek.

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You can then turn this into a continuous drill, where you enter into that position, they push your foot off their hip. You use your inside foot to hook their leg and keep it in range, then repeat the footlock entry on the other side. The MOST IMPORTANT part of the class is highlighting the danger of your knee getting twisted (e.g., by heel hooks and toeholds). I don't want people playing with heel hooks at this stage, but getting everybody to go into that seated single leg x and then hooking the heel demonstrates how it feels. As Charles puts it, tap to pressure, not to pain. Therefore eveyrbody needs to be able to recognise that pressure.

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Teaching Notes: I went through the drills multiple times across several classes, keeping things very simple. Next time I can experiment with a bit more info. The marching drill is useful. So far, I start with that, then add in grabbing the heel and tucking your foot under their butt, until the third drill on getting inside leg control. I could probably have people grabbing the heel and holster? That might be worth a try as the middle drill.

This first attempt, I didn't get to the continuous drill, as I didn't want to confuse people by also showing the escape. I could test trying that next time. The key thing will be making sure I run through the warm-up drills, so as I did this time, replace the normal warm up with the marching drill, heel holster, then inside control.