The Great Divide: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Leg Lock

If you started Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu more than a decade ago, you likely remember the "Dark Ages" of leg locks. In many traditional academies, attacking the lower body was viewed with a mixture of disdain and fear.

There were unwritten rules, often trickling down from IBJJF belt rankings, that created a culture of avoidance. Straight ankle locks were tolerated at white belt, but anything involving a twist—heel hooks, toe holds, calf slicers—was considered "dirty" Jiu-Jitsu. They were labeled as "cheap moves" used by people who couldn't pass guard properly, or worse, dangerous techniques that would permanently ruin your training partners' knees.

I grew up in that system. For the first few years of my grappling journey, I operated under the assumption that 50% of the human body was off-limits. I became decent at passing guard, hunting for lapel chokes, and working for armbars. When someone would dive for my legs during open mat, I would internally roll my eyes. "Real Jiu-Jitsu," I told myself, "happens above the waist."

The wake-up call was brutal. It didn't happen in the gym; it happened as the global grappling meta began to shift rapidly. Suddenly, we were seeing competitors at the highest levels—ADCC specifically—decimating traditional guard players without ever passing their guards.

I remember getting caught repeatedly in training by a visitor who specialized in the modern no-gi game. It was infuriating. I would establish what I thought was a dominant top position, only to find my base destabilized. Before I could react, my knee line was compromised, and I was frantically tapping to a heel hook I didn't even see coming.

My ego took a massive hit. I was losing not because I was weaker or slower, but because I was ignorant. I was trying to play chess while completely ignoring half the board.

The turning point for me was shifting my perspective on what leg locking actually is. For years, I thought it was just yanking on a foot until something popped. But when you actually study the systematic approach to the lower body—the mechanics of Ashi Garami and the various control positions—you realize it’s not about brute force pain compliance. It’s about control.

It’s about isolating a hip and a knee joint so completely that the opponent cannot rotate out of danger. It is incredibly technical, perhaps even more so than upper-body attacks because the legs are stronger and harder to isolate than arms.

Once I humbled myself and started learning the systems of control from scratch, my entire game opened up. Ironically, learning leg locks made my guard passing significantly better. When you understand how leg entanglements work, you understand how to dismantle them before they start. Furthermore, the threat of a leg lock is often enough to make an opponent panic, open up their guard, and give you an easy pass to side control.

We were wrong about leg locks. They aren't cheap, and taught correctly, they aren't inherently more dangerous than kimuras. They are a vital, inescapable part of modern grappling. If you are still holding onto the old mindset, refusing to engage with the lower body game, you aren't practicing "pure" Jiu-Jitsu. You are practicing incomplete Jiu-Jitsu, fighting with one hand tied behind your back against opponents who are using both.