The single leg for jiu-jitsu

Position and problem

You are standing, hand fighting, and a leg comes within reach. You drop to it, catch it, and stand up holding a thigh against your chest. In a wrestling room the match now turns on the finish. In a jiu-jitsu room something else happens first: the person whose leg you hold sits down and pulls you into their guard, or drops under you to wrap the leg you are standing on, or reaches over your head and closes an arm around your neck. Each of those is a normal answer under a ruleset that rewards the position after the landing and lets the bottom player attack from their back. The single leg is a takedown many grapplers reach for first, because a leg is often the easiest limb to get hold of in a no-gi tie, but it has to be chosen with the landing in mind rather than the score.

Objective

Catch one leg off a tie, keep it high and tight, and turn the opponent down onto a side where you arrive past their legs rather than inside them.

Core concept

Choose the single leg by the landing, and the entry and the finish follow from that choice. The takedown ends when your chest is past their legs with the caught leg still in your hands, not when their back touches the mat, because a back on the mat with a leg free is a closed guard being assembled around you. That standard decides three things at once. It decides that you enter off a tie that has already turned their shoulders, since a shot from open space arrives with your head in front and your neck available. It decides that the leg is held high on the thigh, since a leg held at the ankle leaves them a hip to sit on and a knee to pull you down with. And it decides that the finish turns them across the caught leg toward the side that has no post, since driving straight back lands you between their legs. Wrestling and jiu-jitsu differ here in what the ruleset pays for; the shot is the same in both. Wrestling scores the takedown itself and then scores the mat by its own rules, turns, escapes and pins, none of which reward a guard, so the finish of the shot carries the match. A submission ruleset scores or ignores the takedown and then keeps playing, and it lets the bottom player pull guard, attack your legs and strangle you from underneath, so the landing carries the match. The same single leg is a good takedown in one room and a poor guard pass in the other.

Key mechanics

1. 01Enter off a tie, not from space. An arm drag or a collar tie that has turned their shoulders opens the leg on the side the arm left, and your head arrives beside them rather than in front.
2. 02Keep the head up and pressed into their body, whichever side of the leg it is on. With the head inside, the arm that wraps you is a guillotine; with it outside, that arm is a whizzer on your shoulder; a head down and away is a neck in the open either way.
3. 03Lift the leg to your chest and trap the thigh between your elbow and your ribs, with your hips underneath it. A leg held low at the ankle is a leg they can post on, sit from and pull guard with.
4. 04Turn them across the held leg toward the side that has no post. Their free leg is their base, so driving straight back into it lands you inside their guard; turning them over the caught leg lands them on the hip with nothing under it.
5. 05Keep the leg as they land. The caught leg in your hand is the first half of a pass, so step over or around it and put your chest past their knees before you let go of anything.
6. 06Treat a guard pull as a landing, not a loss. When they sit as you lift, stay upright, keep the leg, and pass with the leg already in hand, because they have done the entry for you.
7. 07Read your own lead leg. When they drop under you while you hold their leg, your front leg is between their legs, and standing still there is how a takedown turns into their leg entanglement.

Common errors

• ×Shooting from open space with no tie, which arrives with the head in front and the neck in reach of a front headlock.
• ×Holding the leg low at the ankle, so they keep a hip to sit on and pull guard from before the finish starts.
• ×Driving straight back into the free leg, which puts them on their back with you between their legs and the guard closing.
• ×Standing still at the caught leg with your own leg inside theirs, which hands them the entanglement you were standing in.
• ×Dropping the head to lift harder, which puts the neck in the open at the moment the arm is coming over it.
• ×Chasing the finish after they have sat to guard, when the leg in hand was already the start of a pass.

Safety

Training progression

1. 01Static: partner stands with one foot forward and holds still. Drop to the leg from a collar tie, catch the thigh, lift it to the chest and stand. Check the head is up and tight.
2. 02Cooperative: partner offers a reaching arm each repetition. Drag the arm, take the leg it opens, and lift. No finish, no resistance.
3. 03Finish drill: from the leg held high, turn the partner across the caught leg toward the free side and land past their knees. Partner falls willingly and you hold the leg until your chest is past it.
4. 04Landing game: partner may sit to guard, drop to your leg or wrap the head as soon as the leg is caught. You score by arriving past their legs; they score by closing guard, catching your knee or finishing the headlock position.
5. 05Positional sparring: standing, full resistance, single legs only for the attacker; the defender may use every answer the ruleset allows. Reset when either player is clearly past the legs or clearly in guard.
6. 06Live rounds from standing, noting afterwards where each single leg landed: past the legs, inside the guard, in a leg entanglement, or under a front headlock.

Related entries

• The arm drag
• The whizzer is an overhook on the hip
• The knee cut pass
• The leg entanglement as a control position