Achilles Hold Help

Okay yeah I can fix both of those counters 100%. The boot will help you stall it out and is definitely advisable but on its own it won't ever save you from a good achilles lock. Standing up and passing with upper body grips is cool too (and that doofy rule about not reaping the knee makes it at lot more effective than it really is) but it's easily remedied. There IS a pass to remedy the remedy, but then the jits begins, no?

I'll post some tips here but next time I have someone to demo on I'll do a video too cause text fails at conveying this stuff.

I'll start with the standing pass. Generally this only works unassisted if you don't have a leg ride or are clamping only with your knees, with your feet under the uke's thigh or butt. (assuming you're both upright)
EDIT: We'll assume the ideal and say that your left leg is the outside leg, and the leg you're attacking is on the left side of your body.
Step one is to always get a solid leg ride. Clamp your thighs just above the knee just like in the juji gatame and keep it tight so that even if he stands up, you stick.
Step two is to plant your outside heel on top of uke's hip or junk. If you disregard that rule about reaping the leg in your gym then you have tons more options for technical exchange, but if not, clipping your heel in between uke's junk and his thigh is your best bet. You can also try triangling your leg if it doesn't put his foot too far behind your armpit. (EDIT: Note, if you triangle with your feet outside, which is probably best, Uke will always want to achilles lock the dangling leg. He does not have a leg ride so your leg is not isolated. You can ignore it. If it starts to hurt, scoot around the leg you have overhooked and pass or bicep cutter the crap out of him for his trouble. Unfortunately hipping out like that fouls the achilles lock most of the time. If you're bent on leglocking him hurt him with the bicep cutter until he loosens a bit then jump on a kneebar or toehold or spin back into a reverse heel hook-style leg ride and go from there /EDIT) It's probably the best option if you can make it all fit together but it works differently depending on how you enter. You can leave the inside foot clipped under the thigh or butt, or cross it over your outside ankle to keep the uke from pushing the outside one off of his hip. Whatever you do just keep that clamp tight.
Step three is to secure the lock. Overhook the leg and touch the first knuckle on your thumb against the achilles tendon. Clamp the foot with your armpit. Try to fold it like a hot-dog bun if you can. If not, it's cool. Punch your fist through so that your pinkie knuckle ends up resting on your navel. The sharp part of your wristbone right where your thumb meets your wrist should be against his achilles tendon.

There's the setup and basic position for an all-disciplines achilles lock. This is something you can do even if his leg is still rammed straight and toes pulled back. The troubleshooting comes next.

You want to fall to either side. It's not neccesary but it makes the rest of it a bit easier. Take it or leave it. Some jits competitions do not allow you to fall towards his free leg. This forces you to fall to the other side, which makes it easier for uke to pin your trapping leg and hop over. If he does this, you need to abandon it and move on.

Next you'll want to push with your hips just like an armbar to sort of hump a bend into his knee. This isn't neccesary but it makes the leglock much tighter and makes it next to impossible to maintain the "boot". If you find it makes it hard to hip into the actual ankle lock or messes with your arm positioning, skip it.

Last bit is to scoot the sharp part of your wristbone flush against the meeting of his heel and ankle. If you keep the overhook tight slide your wristbone down his achilles tendon it should stop at the right spot and cause some pain for the uke. You will probably have to arch a little bit to do this if he keeps the boot on. This is the time to fix that. Keep your wrist where it is and use your hips and core to straighten your back. Flare your shoulders back and puff out your chest. Use that motion to straighten his ankle. His toes should just be barely visible behind you.

Finish by using your hips to push his ankle joint up and pushing his hips down with your heels.

When I get a video up I'll go through this and add some variations to play with. Leg rides can be a fight like halfguard when you're actually allowed to use them as in MMA or non-white-belt-jits.

 

What helped me with the achilles lock is really visualising the structure of the leg in cross section. Imagine the main nerve running in behind the big achilles tendon.
Then use the wrist bone to shift that tendon to one side (I sort of roll the wrist in) and then really clamp it on crushing the nerve without the tendon getting in the way.
I found that that way you can get pain coming on a bit quicker, which in turn might give you that split second to get the tap before they "boot" and climb over.

Although, Ratty's your Sambo man so I'm sure he's better qualified than I.

 

I have a friend who is really good at this its a real pain.

 

For a proper achilles lock, you're spot on but some numbskulls have run around telling people that leglocks are pain submissions and simply can't injure you so they don't want to tap when they really should. So I pretty much replace a technically proper achilles lock with a straight footlock. Legal in all the same places and visually most people can't tell the difference but it will break bones in the foot and tear ligaments and tendons in the top of the foot and ankle to force a submission whether they are willing to tap or not.
With the proper achilles lock, to force a submission, you have to either break the shinbone (my coach has done it but he's a freak) or rupture the achilles tendon, which is really not easy. You can saw back and forth and that's hell, but it's not a sure thing and the dude might punch you in the mouth for it.

 

my problem has always been how do you keep your leg that's inside there's tight whilst keeping it safe from being leg locked, I can remember being told to put the inside leg underneath there's but then how do you do this

 

Your outside leg should be clipped tightly on the inside of his thigh. You don't want it far enough over to call it reaping but far enough that he can't just paw it off of his hip and stand up. This HAS to be solid if you can't reap the leg.
With that out of the way, the inside leg (the one between his legs) needs to be parallel to your outside one. Both knees should point in the same direction as in the juji gatame. Your foot can be beside or on top of the other one, or you can clip the top of your instep under uke's thigh or butt.

Or you can throw that all out the window and just triangle the leg. You still want to clip the dangly leg under his butt if you can. And don't show any heel. Not many people do it, but the ankle lace sucks and there isn't really an escape once it's on.

If you can reap the knee, then do so. Then you can hide both your feet under uke's other knee and curl your feet back to trap it so he can't spin, or use the sole of your inside foot to cup the backside of his free knee and push it away to stretch his hips.

Really there's tons of things but it becomes spaghetti really quickly. I'll clarify in video soon.

 

this is the one I mean but doesn't this make it harder to keep your legs tight around his ?

 

It's just like an armbar. If you can do an armbar properly you can do this properly.
Foot clipped in, knees clamped



Feet both out, knees clamped




The last one's a heel hook and while different leg rides are ideal between the heel hook and achilles lock, pretty much any place where you can do one, you can do the other.

 

your right but I think the concern comes from if you mess up the leg positioning in an arm bar its not usually going to result in you being arm bared yourself but in allot of leg locks you very much have to risk a little to gain allot.

 

It's true. When leglocks happen you're not ever going to be immune to them but with a good legride you can make it so that halfhearted or poorly executed leglock attempts don't put you in any danger. It's certainly possible to shut out leg based counterattacks with certain legrides but the real danger comes when you transition from one legride to another or when you play a lot of kneebars and toeholds since you have to sort of jump to them a lot. Heel hooks and achilles locks and leg-ride toeholds are pretty safe in and of themselves. It's the entry that's dangerous, just like any other submission or pass.

With an armbar you get passed or stacked most of the time because leglocks are fairly rare. Dick up a triangle or juji gatame against a solid leglocker and it becomes just as dangerous to fail as any leglock.

 

It's been a while since I applied a leg lock or rolled even but I seem to remember I hooked the outside leg over their's, figure four it with my inside leg and then put the other foot under their butts. That "hides" both of your feet to some degree while you go to work on their leg.
Again...Ratty is providing some really good info here so I'm only throwing this in for discussion.

 

Yep. That's one of the better ways to do it, but it sort of demands that you put an inward bend on the uke's knee and makes it much harder to pass... So they banned it for all but black and brown belts in BJJ. There would be so many better ways to do it that Lefty could use if it weren't for that.

 

Gonna try to do the video tonight as long as all goes as intended.

 

Alright. Had to get to work before it finished downloading but I'm home now so assuming it works, here it is.
Apologies for the accent and the awkwardness. Video tutorials are a new thing for me.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTssB56dne8"]YouTube - ‪Basic achilles lock skimthrough‬‏[/ame]

 

No prob man. If you still have issues feel free to post a vid anytime and I'll see what I can do. I basically just argue on here the whole time, and it turns out I enjoy contributing positively too XD

 

Cool. Just remember, the biggest parts to all that is to keep him from knocking your foot off his hip and to keep that clamp right. Your legs need to grip his knee joint like your hand grips the elbow joint in an armdrag.
You do that and all the other tools are available to you.

 

Excellent coaching Ratty