The leg entanglement as a control position

Position and problem

You have caught a foot. They stand up, turn their knee, pull the leg back through your hands and arrive on top of you, and the attack has cost you your guard. The grip on the foot was never the problem. Nothing was holding the rest of the leg, so the far end of the limb you were attacking was free to move, and a joint lock applied to a limb that is free at the other end is a tug of war. The leg entanglement, often called by its Japanese name ashi garami, is the answer: your legs wrapped around one of theirs so that their hip and knee are held in place before your hands do anything at all.

Objective

Hold their leg above the knee with your legs, keep their hips from turning or rising, and only then attack the foot or the heel.

Core concept

An entanglement is a pin applied to one leg. Every leg lock needs the same thing a straight arm lock needs: the joint above the one being attacked has to be fixed, or the limb simply follows the force. Here that means their knee has to stay trapped between or behind your thighs, on your side of what coaches commonly call the knee line. While the knee is inside, they cannot pull the leg out and cannot turn it far, and your hands are free to work. Once the knee slips back out of your legs, there is no position left, only a foot in your hands. Two further controls decide whether the position lasts: your hips stay tight to theirs so there is no slack for them to rotate in, and their second leg is watched or held, because the free leg is what they stand on, step over with and push your legs off with. Treated this way the position is worth having even when no submission follows, since a person whose leg is pinned cannot pass, and can often be swept or stood up on. The specific configurations, and which of them cross your leg over their body, are where rulesets differ.

Key mechanics

1. 01Win the knee before the foot. Get your legs above their knee and pinch your knees together around the thigh. If their knee is already free of your thighs, recover the position or let it go; do not chase the foot.
2. 02Close the distance at the hips. Your hips belong tight to their hip and the underside of their thigh. Space there is what lets them turn the knee and begin to slide out.
3. 03Keep your feet active and out of reach. A foot placed on their hip pushes them away and stops them coming forward over you; feet left dangling in front of them are an entanglement for them to attack.
4. 04Account for the second leg. Hold it, hook it or at least know where it is. Most escapes and most counter leg locks start from the leg you were not paying attention to.
5. 05Stay on your side with your shoulders off the mat, facing the trapped leg. Flat on the back, your legs lose their pinch and they can stand and drive the knee through.
6. 06Take the grip last, and take it slowly. With the knee held, the foot is going nowhere, so there is no reason to snatch. A grip applied in a hurry is a sign that the control underneath it was never there.
7. 07Be willing to use the position without finishing. Coming up on the trapped leg for a sweep, or letting go to take top position, are complete outcomes of a won entanglement.

Common errors

• ×Grabbing the foot first and wrapping the legs afterwards, so the knee is already free by the time the grip is set.
• ×Leaving space between the hips, which gives them room to rotate the knee and slide it past your thighs.
• ×Ignoring their free leg, which they then use to stand, to step over and to push your top leg off their hip.
• ×Lying flat with both feet crossed in front of them, which hands over your own feet and loosens the pinch on their thigh.
• ×Pulling harder on a heel or a foot when the knee has slipped out, instead of recognising that the position underneath the lock has gone.

Safety

The injury this position exists to threaten is a twisting one, to the knee. A heel hook turns the foot and lower leg while your legs hold the thigh still, so the rotation arrives at the ligaments of the knee, and it gives far less warning than a straight lock, where the direction of pressure is obvious and pain builds first. Three habits follow. When you attack, take the position, take the grip, and apply rotation slowly enough that a partner has time to tap; in ordinary training, catching the heel and letting go is a finished repetition. When you defend, tap when the heel is caught and your knee is held, not when it starts to hurt, and do not spin explosively to escape a twist whose direction you have not identified, because rolling against it applies the lock to yourself. And agree before the round whether heel hooks are being played at all. Crossing your outside leg over a partner's thigh so that your foot passes the midline of their body and presses on the knee from the outside is what the IBJJF rule book calls knee reaping, and it loads the same joint. Whether reaping and heel hooks are permitted depends on the organisation, the rank and the age bracket: the IBJJF, for one, has allowed them in adult brown and black belt no-gi divisions since 1 January 2021. Check the current rule book for your own division.

Training progression

1. 01Static: partner seated, one leg offered. Build the position in order, knees above their knee, hips close, foot on the hip, second leg accounted for, with the hands doing nothing.
2. 02Cooperative escape: partner slowly works the knee out past your thighs. Follow with your hips and re-pinch. No grips on the foot at all.
3. 03Control-only game: the attacker scores by keeping the knee trapped for ten seconds; the defender scores by freeing it. No submissions are permitted on either side.
4. 04Position to sweep: from a held entanglement, come up on the trapped leg and take top position. Treat this as the finish for the round.
5. 05Catch and release: with a coach's agreement and a partner of similar experience, add grips on the foot or heel. The repetition ends when the grip is secure and the knee is still held. Nothing is turned.
6. 06Positional sparring under rules agreed aloud before the round, including which locks are in play and that taps come early. Swap roles every round.

Related entries

• The butterfly hook as a lever
• Inside position