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.

31/10/2022 - Teaching | Mount | Heel drag escape

Teaching #Evening
Artemis BJJ (7 Easton Rd), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 31/10/2022




Short Version:

• Get one leg flat on the floor, other knee raised
• Turn slightly on your side, just lifting your shoulder
• Step your raised-knee leg over both your flat leg and their leg
• Using your elbow to help pry their leg up, drag their foot over your leg with your heel, also bringing your flat leg knee up
• Turn your hips out to the flat leg side: you can then go to half guard, or shrimp to full guard

Full Version: My personal favourite mount escape is the heel drag, by far the highest percentage way for me to get out from under mount. It's also quite simple, another reason I like it so much. You're in mount, your elbows in a good place for defence, down by their knees. For this escape to work, you need to have one of your legs out flat, just like before. Again, you also need to get on your side: a slight bridging motion will help.



The big danger at this point is that the person on top will switch to technical mount. I recommend just lifting your shoulder slightly, rather than turning all the way on your side: that prevents exposing your back too much. Make sure that your neck is safe if you mess up and they do manage to start turning to technical mount. You also don't want to let them settle into technical mount: immediately prepare your frames to start escaping before they secure the position. You may even be able to disrupt them as they try to shift, using that window of opportunity as they're adjusting their base to enter into your escape.

If they don't get to technical mount (or you're able to work back to the previous position where you'll slightly on your side), wedge an elbow inside their knee. You can either make a frame against their hips, or if you're concerned about your neck, adjust so that you can still pry your elbow under their knee while protecting your collar with your hands (I prefer the latter). As well as chokes, you also need to be wary of their cross-face. If they can control your head, they can flatten you back out, which will make the escape less effective. Use a combination of your elbow and shrimping to shove their knee backwards, on your flat leg side.



Bring your other foot over both your flat leg and the leg they have next to it. That means you can use the heel of that foot to drag their leg over your flat leg. As soon as you get it over, lock half guard and shrimp towards their trapped leg. In half guard, you want to get onto your side as quickly as possible: if you stay flat on your back, you've already done their work for them, as they will want to flatten you out in order to pass half guard. If you're comfortable in half guard, you could stay there and work your attacks.

Alternatively, keep shrimping in the other direction, in order to free your other leg, just like you would with an elbow escape. It's also worth noting that some people, like Roy Dean, recommend just pinching your knees rather than fully triangling your legs around theirs, so that's worth trying too. To help recover full guard, you can also bring your arm across to their opposite shoulder, impeding their movement while aiding yours. Emily Kwok has a handy tip too: if their foot is too flat, making it hard to get your heel in for a drag, slide your flat leg outside to roll their heel up. That will create the space you need in order to insert your heel between their foot and the mat.



A very similar escape, which I don't use much, is the foot lift. Dean shows these two escapes in sequence on his excellent Blue Belt Requirements. The foot lift is for when they have some space underneath their in-step. People won't often do that, in my experience, but if they do, this time just step over your flat leg. Use your foot to hook underneath their instep and lift it over, then as before lock up half guard (your legs are already in position), or shrimp to recover full guard.

Make sure that you pay particular attention to shoving on their knee with this variation, as it is easier for them to slip free (though if that happens, you can always switch to the heel drag). With both escapes, it is important to get the knee of their trapped leg back behind your legs. If they still have their knee past your legs, it makes it much easier for them to move straight into a half guard pass, by driving their knee to the mat and sliding through.


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Teaching Notes: I can't think of anything I forgot. Emphasising the leverage of the three motions (elbow under knee, knee to elbow and push down on ankle) is handy, I think that's a good one to keep highlighting.

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.

19/10/2022 - Teaching | Mount | Low to high mount

Teaching #Evening
Artemis BJJ (7 Easton Rd), Can Sönmez, Bristol, UK - 19/10/2022




In order to progress from low to high mount, the main barrier is going to be their elbows. There are several ways you can remove that barrier. There is the brute force method, yanking their elbows out of the way and driving your knees up into their armpits. I wouldn't recommend that method, though it can work. A more reliable option, with greater finesse, is to put your hands on their shoulders. Keeping you arms straight, lean forwards to put all your weight through your arms. That should lift their elbows, enabling you to slide right up into high mount.

The ezequiel choke is another way to get them to lift their elbows: as soon as they give you that space in their attempt to defend, shove your knee into the gap. To really fire the leg forward, you can push off your toes. Another option is to simply keep walking your feet up their sides, as if you were climbing up a wall. Every time you see a gap, fill it, until eventually you're up really high and their bridge is nullified.



Grabbing the top of their head and driving your hips forwards is another possibility, using that leverage to raise their elbows. To further help that motion, you could try hooking an elbow and 'spider-walking' your fingers up the mat, aiming to bring their elbows away from their body. Once you have gotten up into high mount, make sure they can't wriggle back out by blocking their shoulders. You could do that with your elbows on the mat, grabbing their head or indeed the cross-face.

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Teaching Notes: I think I got everything, this class is coming together well. As I forgot it until Rob mentioned it in daytime class, remember elbow hook and walk! Most important one. ;)