Blue belt · Defense · Core
Straight ankle lock defense
How to escape a straight ankle lock: boot the foot, sit up and fight the grip, then clear your knee. Use it the moment they clamp your foot in a leg entanglement.
Step by step
- Prevent it: when they grab your foot, keep your knee bent and your foot flexed. Don't let them clamp your foot tight in their armpit.
- Boot your foot: pull your toes back toward your shin and keep them there. A flexed foot is hard to lever.
- Sit up as they fall back and fight the grip: grab the wrist that's under your Achilles and push it down off your foot.
- Clear the knee line: push their outside foot off your hip and pull your knee back past their hips.
- Pull your foot free, then stand or start passing.
- Tap when the forearm is under your Achilles and they arch. If they switch to a heel hook grip, stop moving and tap. Never spin out of a locked heel hook.
Details that make it work
- Sit up and fight hands. Lying flat lets them arch at full power.
- Knee line first, then the foot comes out.
Common mistakes
- Pulling the foot straight back while the grip is tight, which helps their finish.
- Pointing your toes, which feeds the lock.
Drill it
Partner enters ashi and goes for the ankle lock slowly: 5 escapes each leg. Then 3 × 1 min leg lock game, ankle locks only.
If it fails, or what comes next
- Leg lock defense Escape · Legs attacked
- Knee cut (knee slice) pass Pass · Passing
Set it up from
This defends against
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