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Jean Jacques Machado: ‘Students Shouldn’t Learn Leglocks Until Blue Belt’

Jean Jacques Machado:  ‘Students Shouldn’t Learn Leglocks Until Blue Belt’

Leg locks in traditional Gi Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu academies still seem to get a bad rap. In other similar grappling arts like Sambo or Catch Wrestling, they occupy an important place.

In recent years a new school of Jiu-Jitsu players have started to perfect the leg lock game (Garry Tonon, Gordon Ryan and the Danaher Death Squad in No Gi and Luis Panza, Musumeci in Gi) but they are still not developed so much in Gi Jiu-Jitsu and may even be frowned upon because of high risk of injury (especially heel hooks) . Why would that be?

Leg locks are very effective but the problem is that they are also addictive. Once someone gets good at them, they tend to center their whole game around them and their may other aspects of their game gets negatively affected. Many leglockers at the lower levels often have faulty open guards. When their opponent defend their foot lock and get on top, their guard is so week that they always get smashed and get their guard passed…

Leg lockers spend much less time on developing more important aspects of their game like developing a good guard, guard passing, and improving position. They just been focus on getting the easiest submission available: The leg lock.

BJJ legend Jean Jacques Machado who is a former ADCC champion and also the instructor of Eddie Bravo and Joe Rogan believes that leg locks should only taught to students from blue belt onwards. He explains his reasons in this video.

Interestingly, IBJJF allows straight foot locks at white belt level in competition so this means that if students compete, BJJ instructors would be doing their students a disservice by not teaching them leg locks.  Machado believes that white belt doing leg locks increases the risk of injury since beginners still have less control of their actions. Another reason is because they will focus less on developing solid basics.

World champion Marcio Feitosa has this to say about footlocks in Jiu-Jitsu in his interview with Grapplearts

“It’s true that footlocks don’t let the game flow as nice as it can flow, but they are moves just like any other moves. The only thing we tell our students not to use is anything that rotates the knee to the inside – it’s not that we don’t like that move either, it’s because it can damage your partner. With the rotation when you feel the pain your knee is already injured, so that is why we stopped teaching this move. We also don’t teach the cervical (spine lock) because you can hurt someone really badly with it.

It is harder to get an arm, because it’s so slippery, and other things too. When you train footlocks with the gi you must be much more technical, because the other guy will grab your collar and be able to defend much better. If he does this you can get tired trying to pull his foot all the time.

Without the gi it’s harder for the person to defend. Your foot is slippery, but once the guy catches it is harder to defend, since you don’t have the gi to hold. Also without the gi you have less submissions – you don’t have the collar to use all the time, so you have fewer armlocks and chokes, so you use more footlocks, kneebars and leglocks.”