Body Locks, Metagames, and Countering Magic Moves

What Games Are We Playing?

A helpful definition of grappling is the sport of physical control. The way you win a grappling match is by either restricting your opponents’ movements until they ask you to stop via tap out, or you accrue more points than them during the match. That’s the game - make the other person quit, or get as close to that point as possible. How people play the game varies quite a bit.

In gaming terminology the word "meta" refers to a generally agreed upon strategy that is considered to be the optimal way to win. Some people say that meta is an acronym for “most effective tactics available”. To be an effective coach or competitor in any sport you need to understand the current meta of that sport.

The entirety of a grappling match can be subdivided into distinct smaller segments with different desired end results and metas. One grappling match is basically one major game with small mini-games built into it.

When you play the takedown minigame you want to put your opponent’s butt on the mat. When you’re playing the guard passing mini game you want to get around your opponent’s legs. When you’re playing the arm bar defense mini game you want to free your arm from the submission.

One way to understand a sport is by tracing how its metagame and various minigames change over time. At one time basketball was dominated by moderately sized players that could run and pass quickly. As basketball evolved, bruising big men ruled the NBA. Today we see the league ruled by teams with players that can shoot from outside, slash to the basket, and play more fluidly. Similarly, MMA was originally a sport to be dominated by grapplers. The answer to grappling was sprawling and brawling - people learned just enough wrestling to stay on their feet so they could knock people out. Today we see many elite fighters weaponizing distance to time striking and grappling exchanges so they can control the pace and place of the fight.

A “New” Magic Move

In no gi grappling we are seeing an explosion of body lock passing. Why is that?

The main reason that body lock passing is gaining popularity right now is because it offers a solution for no gi grappling’s previous leg lock metagame. Body lock passing holds someone’s hips in place, making it difficult for them to elevate and attack leg locks.

Body lock passing involves locking your hands around your opponent’s somewhere between their waist and their shoulders. Passing in this manner makes it extremely difficult for your opponent to maintain a guard. There are a few distinct ways to do a body lock:

1. Double Under - your body lock traps neither of your opponent’s arms

2. Over Under - your body lock traps one of your opponent’s arms

3. Double Over - your body lock traps both of your opponent’s arms

Being body locked sucks. Your opponent can put a lot of weight on you, you have their sweaty head right in your center, and it’s hard to open up their arms and release the lock.

Here, Lachlan Giles finishes a textbook double under body lock pass by using his outside leg as a wedge to open his opponent’s half guard.

Because body lock passing is demonstrating lots of effectiveness right now, people are incorrectly assigning excess value to it. There are no magic techniques in sports, let alone grappling. As sexy as the dim mak might seem to some it isn’t real, nor is the body lock pass unstoppable. Like all techniques, body lock passing presents specific counter opportunities that I want to talk about today.

Scrambling Under Suffocation

First things first - when getting body locked, or passed in general, you cannot let your opponent’s head travel up your body towards your shoulders. The closer your opponent’s head is to yours, the heavier they will be, and the harder they will be to stop. It is imperative for you to frame your opponent’s head down and off your center line for what we’re going to discuss today.

You can not scramble out from underneath someone if you cannot move their head off of your centerline and away from your shoulders.

As long as you can keep your opponent’s head low, there is a brief moment when you can initiate a scramble and prevent them from finishing their body lock pass. You want to try to sit up and attack their feet with your hands. Sounds silly? Let me explain.

In the gif above, for Lachlan to finish the pass he has to do two things:

1. Move his head across his opponent’s centerline

2. Walk his feet towards his opponent’s hands

Lachlan will then end in a position like this one below.

Bringing your feet close to your opponent’s hands and keeping your head low across the waist gives your opponent the ability to sit up and attack your base similar to the two positions shown below:

Body locking is almost equally restrictive for both people involved. The body lockee is held down and squeezed while the body locker has both of their hands occupied. Sometimes the body locker even has both of their hands locked beneath their opponent’s body, giving them little to no ability to open the lock and get their hands back. This is great when it works, but when you roll with a good scrambler giving them the slightest opening can be a death sentence.

Grabbing your opponents’ feet is not the end all be all. You still need to sit up and scramble to make something happen. When you start pulling on someone’s ankles you need to get your hips back and start wrestling. When you do this a few things will reliably happen. In no particular order:

• The body locker will back out of the position and disengage, thereby preventing the pass

• The body locker will try to hold the position rigidly, this likely leads to them on bottom

• The body locker will grab a leg of their own and you end up scrambling

We’re going to discuss options for scrambling and wrestling up.

What Are The Opportunities?

In a competitive setting people do not want to give up top position. As you try to scramble and wrestle up you’re likely going to find more skilled players initiate wrestling scrambles and grabbing single legs. There are many positions this can lead to but many of them are blurry and ill defined - except for one.

A position I’ve been exploring recently is the CatDog position. Popularized by Lachlan Giles, CatDog is as close to a neutral scrambling position as you’ll find. When you start scrambling up from bottom you’ll often find yourself in a position similar to this, so its helpful to use CatDog as an anchor for the techniques below.

In CatDog both competitors are on hands and knees with an over hook over their opponent’s hips. CatDog and positions adjacent to it afford many scrambling opportunities, and we’ll explore some below.

Funk Roll

The funk roll is a classic scrambling technique. As the person on top attempts to finish a takedown or move to side control with their hands locked around their opponent’s legs or waist, the person on bottom scoops the near leg and brings it over their head. This allows the bottom player to roll under and come on top or come out the bottom.

Far Ankle Defense

Far ankle defense is most common when someone shoots a head outside single leg, but it will also come from CatDog as well. Your partner grabs with their head outside, you grab their opposite leg’s ankle. If they’re attacking your right leg you defend by grabbing their left ankle.

This position is particularly frustrating for the person who initiated it because at best they’re now neutral - you both have one leg. What often happens is the shooter is unable to put their foot down and they are easily put on the mat.

Octopus Guard

The octopus position most commonly occurs in half guard. When your opponent switches their hips and turns their back to you, you have the opportunity to scoot your hips out, sit up, and grab their outside lat with your inside hand. After grabbing the ankle like we discussed above, you can work to reach up, grab the far lat, and start attacking the octopus position.

Here Craig Jones goes to the octopus position immediately after Ethan Crelinstein gives him space. Jones uses the position to bully training partner Crelinstein.

Sitting the Corner

Sitting the corner also gives you a great opportunity to throw in a twister hook and start hunting the back take.

Oftentimes when you attempt to sit the corner the person you’re grappling against will concede top position. If you use your hooks well you can control your opponents’ ankle, thereby controlling their hip and posture so you can hunt the back.

Sitting the corner is very similar to far ankle defense. The defending grappler uses a free limb to hook their partner’s ankle, turn their hip, disrupt their base, and come on top. Although, instead of attacking the opposite leg you attack the same side. If they’re on your right leg you have to attack their right leg. Also instead of using your hands like you would for far ankle defense, you use your heel to hook your partner’s ankle.

Grab the, Attack the Leg

These grips on the near leg can present clear opportunities to enter into leg attacks. If your opponent backs away when you start reaching for their leg they invariably take their weight off of you and expose their legs. This means you can use this position to enter K Guard and Backside 5050.

In the gif above Lachlan Giles enters K Guard using the same grip that sets up the funk roll. In the gif below Lachlan uses the foot in the armpit position to give him room to throw his outside leg over and enter Backside 5050. Lachlan uses this position to get the heel hook finish.

It should be noted that these sequences are starting from Open Guard and X Guard. If your opponent backs away from you when you start grabbing their leg for these counters they have essentially put themselves into Open Guard. From Open Guard there are many options for you to sweep, scramble, submit, or just stand-up.

What’s the Risk?

It would be disingenuous of me to present a counter I’m exploring as a perfect panacea to body lock passing - especially considering my self-indulgent rant at the beginning of this article.

The counter opportunities discussed here come mainly from an opponent using a double under body lock. Much of the mechanics discussed here need to change if your partner is using an over-under body lock or a double over body lock.

Your likelihood of success will increase as your opponent’s lock travels lower and lower towards your waist and you keep their head off of your centerline. The inverse is also true.

Your likelihood of failure increases as your opponent’s lock climbs higher up your spine. If your opponent’s hands are locked high beneath your shoulder blades you will not be able to make these counter attacks work. For your opponent’s lock to move up your back they need to bring their head forward closer to your shoulders and head - you can’t let that happen. The riskiness of the position is also compounded as you expose your back to your opponent. Any time your back is exposed you run the risk of your opponent taking it.

Don’t Get Too Technical

This article is my attempt to clarify a murky position, to add some structure and technique to what could seem like an otherwise chaotic engagement. We want to have a plan of attack but we don’t want to get rigid and rote.

One of my old coaches used to say, “He’s allowed to wrestle too - grab a leg and figure it out!” What sounds like smartassness is actually scrambling sage wisdom.

People rarely, if ever, react exactly the way they do when you drill techniques. Even when people move similarly to one another, everyone’s body type is different. It is exceedingly unlikely that you will ever be able to recreate any scramble or grappling exchange exactly. In this particular situation you’re just grabbing someone’s ankle to disrupt their base, stop a pass, create a scramble, and hopefully get on top.

Don’t get too technical. Don’t over complicate it. Sometimes in the practice room you just need to grab an ankle and figure it out.