The six ties a no-gi beginner needs names for

A jacket is a set of handles. Take it away and the hands need a vocabulary instead, and the rule books make sure there is no shortcut. The IBJJF lists it as a serious foul in no-gi when an athlete "grabs hold of his/her uniform or that of his/her opponent in any way", and the ADCC rules forbid holding the T-shirt or the shorts. A separate Journal note, on grip decay, is about how long the remaining connections last. This one is about what they are called.

Stephan Kesting, writing on Grapplearts about moving from the gi to no-gi, gives the replacement in one sentence: "Without the gi you'll have to rely much more on wrestling-based controls like wrist grips, collar ties, underhooks, overhooks, two-on-ones, and bearhugs." That is six names, wrestling-based by his account, and it is the list this note follows.

The number is a choice. Kesting's sentence says "like", which makes his six examples and not a census. USA Wrestling's coaching material counts differently again: a technique test it published for coaches asks them to name "the 8 contact (tie-up) positions" identified in its freestyle video syllabus, and a later question concerns the "6 tie-ups" explained in the Greco-Roman one. A retailer's wrestling guide we read sorts ties into three types. We set out to write about five, and the one sentence we found on the gi-to-no-gi change named six, so six it is. Where the list stops is our decision, and the wrestlers' longer lists are fair warning that it stops early.

For each tie the questions are the same four. What is it, what does it control, what is it usually the first step of, and what will another room call it.

The plainest definition we found is in a wrestling guide published by Dick's Sporting Goods: a collar tie is when "you have one hand on the back of your opponent's neck to control their head". There is no collar involved, with or without a jacket. Kesting's description of the tie in use adds the rest of the arm and the other hand: "one forearm on his collar bone and the other hand controlling his elbow". So it is a hand, a forearm and normally a second grip on the other arm, and the thing it controls is the head.

Wrestling writing often calls the same thing a head tie. Ted Witulski, in a technique column for USA Wrestling, wrote that "The most often used tie-up technique in youth and high school wrestling is the head-tie". That is a coach's statement from 2002 and not a count, and we repeat it as his.

What it usually begins is a snap. In another column Witulski describes the snapdown coaches commonly teach as one "done with a head tie": a fake at the legs, then a snapping motion on the tie, with the aim of putting the opponent off balance and breaking the stance. Kesting chose "the snap down from the collar tie" as his half of a piece on the two easiest no-gi takedowns. He also uses the tie as a push that invites a push back, entering on the legs when the opponent returns the pressure.

A tie is also a handle you have given away. Witulski's column on reacting to ties has the defender take the elbow of the head-tying arm as a control point and push it across. The Library's arm drag entry drills against exactly that reach: the partner reaches for a collar tie, and you drag the arm as it comes.

These two are one contest seen from either side. An underhook is your arm underneath the opponent's arm, and Kesting states its value in a sentence: it "gives you a huge amount of control over your opponent's body and also gives you a route to his back". BJJ Mental Models files the space it occupies under a heading it calls inside channel control, the channel being the space "between your opponent's legs or under their armpits".

The overhook is the arm that wraps over an underhooking arm, and in the material we read it appears as the reply to one. Kesting, describing an exchange on the knees out of half guard, has the opponent "tie up your arm with an overhook (aka whizzer) which stops you from slipping out to his back". That is the relationship in one line: the underhook is a route to the back, and the overhook is what stands in the route. Whizzer is the other name, and our Library entry on the underhook in half guard uses both, noting that the top player "wraps it with an overhook, usually called a whizzer".

The skill of swimming an arm back to the inside is called pummelling. BJJ Mental Models says it "occurs in standing, top, and bottom positions", which is worth knowing if these sound like takedown words. Kesting lists "closed guard with overhooks and underhooks" among the common no-gi guards, and a separate Journal note argues that the same underhook settles most of what happens in half guard. We do not repeat that argument here.

Wrist control is one hand on one wrist. Kesting describes it as "controlling your opponent's same-side hand or wrist", his right hand on the opponent's left, and the USA Wrestling test refers to the "wrist tie up" as a contact position in its own right. It is commonly a first step. In Kesting's article on arm drags the first and simplest version starts from exactly this grip, and the Library's arm drag entry pairs a hand at the wrist with one above the elbow.

It also cuts both ways. Kesting's second arm drag begins with the opponent holding your wrist, which he says can come from "him winning the handfight or you baiting him", and his no-gi grip sequence is built on the bait: "once he grabs your wrist you know exactly where his hand is!" The Library's inside position entry makes the same point from the other side, that a hand reaching for a grip presents the wrist.

The two-on-one is two hands on one arm. Kesting's written description of his version from butterfly guard: put the point of the opponent's elbow in your palm, grab and bend the wrist, and rotate the arm inward. He warns the reader not to mistake it for a kimura grip, "although it's beginning to go in that direction", and adds, "Now you've got a handle to work with." The Library's kimura entry describes that other grip, a figure-four closed on the wrist, and the two are different things. BJJ Mental Models gives a general reason a two-on-one is strong: several of your limbs set against one of the opponent's levers "generates overwhelming force".

Kesting uses it as a first step in more than one place. From butterfly guard it is his starting point for getting the underhook; standing, it is the grip he prefers for breaking an opponent's posture forward. He calls it "a very dominant two-on-one grip".

The other name is the Russian tie, and here the rooms disagree out loud. Witulski uses both, writing of the two on one or, in his own quotation marks, the Russian tie. A FloWrestling article by Michael Malinconico runs under the line "It's a two-on-one, not a Russian Tie. Let's start there." The rest of that piece sits behind a subscription and we have not read it, so we report the objection and not its reasons. We found nothing we could cite on where the name came from and say nothing about it. This note uses two-on-one, as Kesting does.

The sixth name on Kesting's list is the one we had left off our own. His arm drag article uses the word bodylock instead. We treat the two as one thing, both arms around the opponent's torso with the hands joined, and since no page we read stops to define either word, both the definition and the equation are ours.

What the sources do say is where it sits in a sequence. Kesting's arm drag article ends its standing version there: drag the arm, shoot forward to take the back, and "If you're on your feet then you'll typically end up in the bodylock". BJJ Mental Models lists "Double underhooks on a standing or kneeling opponent" first among its examples of inside channel control. On that evidence the bearhug is less a first step than a place several first steps lead. The arm drag arrives there from the wrist, and two underhooks won from the front are most of the way to it. That reading is ours, and it is the reason we had planned to stop at five.

The retailer's guide quotes the coach Erin Vandiver on the purpose of all of them: "Tie-ups help to control your opponent's motion and are also very useful to set up your own attack". The second half of that sentence is the part this note has been about. None of the six is described anywhere we read as a position to stay in. Kesting's advice to the no-gi convert is to be prepared "to transition from grip to grip to grip" and, on getting a dominant one, to "exploit it immediately!"

BJJ Mental Models turns the same idea into a question to put to any grip: "What can I actually do with this grip?" Our grip decay note reaches that question from the grip-strength literature, arguing that a no-gi connection has to buy something before it expires.

The Library's inside position entry supplies a map the six fit on. The retailer's guide sorts ties into inside, outside and collar. Read against the Library, the underhook is the inside claim under the arm, the overhook is the outside answer to it, the two-on-one puts both hands on one side, and the collar tie and the wrist are where the hand fight opens. That arrangement is our reading and none of these sources sets it out.

The case for learning the names first comes from Witulski, who made it for wrestlers: "See the opponent's tie-up, react, and attack." Recognition comes before reaction, and a thing with a name is easier to recognise, and easier to ask a coach about, than a thing without one. That last step is our argument and not his.

Expect the names to move. Head tie and collar tie, whizzer and overhook, Russian tie and two-on-one, bearhug and body lock are four pairs of names for four things, and the room you train in will have settled on one of each. This note is a glossary and not instruction. How any of these ties is taken and kept is a matter for a coach who can watch you do it.