Full Transcript for White Belts Should Learn Heel Hooks!

stand. Where do you stand on this, Joe ? Yeah. So I was thinking about like, yeah, I absolutely agree that, that everyone should learn it. But I think the, yeah, the old school me probably had the view of, oh no , there's better things to prioritize your time on. You know, when you're newer to the game, learn more of the other fundamentals, you know. But then I think about the guys, there's um , a couple guys that I train with over at Alain who have just learned their white belts and they've learned hill hooks from day one because that's the class they come to. Yep . It's the Nogi class and you know, a lot of leg game stuff in there. Coach Paul's really good at it. And , um, these guys don't have any less, they , they, they don't lack any of the other areas of jiujitsu, but they have competency in leg entanglements. Yeah . And I'm like, well that's so good because I'm a black belt that like a year ago I didn't have any competency at I , you know what I mean? Sure. Like very minimal. Yeah. And so I'm like, yeah, well I don't see any downside for them. All I see is upside. They're familiar with that and they can also do a bunch of other stuff. Yeah. And so you're like, yeah, absolutely. People should learn it. And I do think that when you learn it, that's when you come to understand how powerful it is. And that's when you can respect the, the potential damage that you could inflict on somebody else. You, you respect that more. So you're a safer rolling partner. Yeah. I I think the associated fear is that it will result in more injuries. I actually, I my counterpoint to that is ignorance doesn't make you safer. No . like how is, how's you not experiencing a heel hook gonna mean? I mean we've seen it all the time with MMA where say someone has them in an inside heel hook as opposed to an outside heel hook and the person defending spins the wrong way and destroys their own knee thoughts go out to Cub Swanson or or Cal Potter. Like, it's just like one of those things you , you see the moment and they're trying to defend themselves so they spin in the way that you think you should, which mainly works for the outside heel hook. But by spinning that way with the inside heel hook, you actually create more torque. And that's a problem . Yeah . And I say this because at the pro class at absolute MMA in St Kilda , you have to, you have to be blue belt and above to do heel hooks. Right. And I think it's more that lucky he doesn't want to answer dumb questions to white belts. But it's also safety. It's safety that you don't want someone in their first year or two of jiujitsu ending up with a knee reconstruction. Yeah. Yeah. But what I'd say is like very high level guys who are doing heel hooks all the time are also not really ending up with knee ricos either. Unless, you know, obviously the heel hook comes on, they don't tap. What we used to do, which is very interesting is Locke would , this was a warmup. I i , I always question this 'cause I'm like, you're

a physio . We , but I'm a juujitsu black belt first and foremost. First and foremost, I reserve the right to make poor decisions. start with like, like 50 50 like locked in. You have me in a heel hook, right? And he's like, right, you defend, you finish the heel hook at like, like positional at , at warm up level , uh, warm up level. Okay, well no, no, no. Like it's, you have a locked in heel hook, but it's not like, am I attacking a hundred percent? Yeah, yeah. Well you're trying to, you're trying to tap me and I'm trying to escape. But he was like, you have to learn to defend from here. Oh God. Because there is opportunity for you to get out. Yeah. But what sounds like hunger games. Oh mate, , it always used to make me go, ah , this doesn't seem right, but we're conditioning the connective tissues. , we're just, just stressing them. Yeah . Enough. Microtrauma is micro key to growth . No, but the funny thing was, you know, I , I don't recall there being any major knee injuries coming out of that, but it does make you realize once someone gets the bite, what kind of when to tap Like you , you know, like you feel if someone's got it or they don't. Yeah. You get that familiarity around your , your heel and your Achilles. Like do they have that? Do they not have that? Here's the problem. And this is for those of you out there who've never done any kind of leg lock training or heel hooks, the problem is you don't actually get pain in the knee. Like if you're getting arm barred , you'll feel pressure in your elbow and you'll be like , ah , it and you, you'll probably tap early before rupturing all ligaments. But you know, when you get that rotational torque in the knee, you feel tension and it feels off, but it's not a super high level of discomfort. No. So it goes from like, oh , this doesn't feel good to, and then you And it's also the , um, it's also the, the breaking mechanics of a heel hook are just so efficient. Yeah. Like it's, you've got the extension, the rotation, you've also got this heel, which is a really great lever that you can just latch onto. Yeah. Close the foot . And then if you , if you get the knee bent at that like 90 degrees, keep in . Yeah. There's just so much power at the point of break. Uh , that is very hard to replicate, say with an armbar. Yes. Like, you know, those armbars where you, where it kind of, someone tries to move it turns into a bit of a , like a figure four . Yeah . And you're like, wow. You can feel it. You're like, that's a real nasty armbar . Like, and usually they're the ones you might catch someone they're like, oh man, that was pretty gnarly. 'cause they almost figure forward themself Yeah. While you were extending into the side of the elbow. Yeah. The rotational pressure is massive. Yeah. It's like a heel hook's like that, but more amplified. Well I guess the hand can point in different directions where it's much harder with the foot. Yeah. And you can't like latch onto the hand in the way that you in in the same way . Yeah. I think of like a , like AT handle, like Allen key . Yeah . You know, where you , it's kind of like that. Right. You can really grip it. And the reason why I wanted to bring this up is little something for the hardware dad's out there. Cool . Yeah. So you handle Allen key . That's what's up. Home Depot. Am I right? ? Um, I think people should be learning it early on, not because it's fundamental, not because I, I think it is , um, the most important thing, but it is part of Jiujitsu and ignoring relevant information is a surefire way to create problems. I mean, why would you ignore 50% of the human body, you know, the ankle? No, I , I don't even, it's not even that. I think it's a different game when you start doing leg attacks because you don't have to worry about guard retention as much. You don't have to worry about putting yourself in certain bad positions as much because for a lot of the time what seems like a bad position can turn into a leg entanglement, which can advantage you. Yeah. And and I think part of the reason why a lot of coaches who are probably more traditional are not pushing this is because they themselves maybe do not have the, the finer points of it down. They're worried about beginners getting hurt and also it might put you in bad habits for other jujitsu concepts. Yeah. Like, you know, kind of almost like giving your back to be able to roll under to be able to take the leg or whatever the situation might be. Yeah. I think that there's a definite factor of coaches who are just not familiar with enough with it. Probably feel a little bit insecure about it. I mean, I know I would, if I was running a gym, I'm like, I don't know this. You , you , I would need to have put the time to go and learn it so that then I could bring it back to the crew if I didn't, wasn't able to put that time in . Or I , or I didn't want to, then I need to find a way to stop my crew doing it. Yeah. You just , I'm like, nah , nah guys, you don't need to know that. Let's just, hey , close guard's where it's at. Yeah buddy . Lemme show you guys this sick armbar set up from close guard . But if you've got a , if you've got a 17 year old obsessive white belt young lady on all the instructional and just wearing her future kimonos everything. Yeah . And just he hooking your blues and purple belts, you gotta wake the up. Like it's Yeah. You need to cancel her membership right away. Yeah. Just kick her out your gym . Get her the out of the gym. Sorry. She's gonna expose everyone . But , but that's the thing how cool though, right? It's so effective that someone with the cryptocurrency of Jiujitsu, does that mean it's all gonna collapse when , uh, Gordon Bankman freed ? Let's, let's say it was 10 years ago, crypto 10 years ago. I was like, God , I wish I was in on this. No, no, no. I think it's more shore fire than crypto. I think we're gonna say it's, it's probably the AI of Jiujitsu because with very little knowledge you can

start just submitting people left, right, and center. I had a guy when I went and rolled up at , um, Kaza , BJJ in Noosa . Mm-Hmm. , I don't know , a few months back when I was up there. And , um, it was a guy that I've known , um, I knew him from back in the day when I was like a blue belt at , at Bondi, I can't remember his name. Lovely fella . And , uh, we rolled and he just, he just went straight into K guard . Yeah . And I spent the whole role with him just defending his leg attacks. Yeah . And part , and he was really good and I mean, well he was good. Not really good because my defenses are okay, but I'm not excellent at defending and he wasn't able to catch me. So you were able to get out. Right. So I don't want to give myself too much credit, but, but he was just, or give him that much credit either. He was good though, but he was just stringing together, attacks, entries. And he , he was just playing his game and I'm like, oh , I'm trying to figure this out. And I asked him, I'm like, you know , um, I can't remember how or something, but he's like, oh , lucky Giles. He's like, that's all I do. Like I'm just on that lucky Giles tip. Yeah, sure. I was like, man, beautiful. You know, like , uh, that's, that's his game. You know, that's a game that's developed and I think like when we talk about like the creativity and stuff that can come through juujitsu, you could be that guy. Yep . Or you could be, or that girl or you could be that person that's just like, I just find the back from everywhere. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah . Like it , it starts to bring more characters into the game. I think the only mistake that can happen here is the, don't get me wrong, because I'm all about the hyper fixation is the idea that this is the answer. I only need this because what a lot of people don't appreciate about Lachlan Giles, he had a good almost t 20 years of jiujitsu. Like he started when he was really young of just very fundamental jiujitsu to work his way up to like learn the bololo to improve his game as the game changed and then he decided he was gonna do this thing. Yeah. His understanding of jiujitsu is so broad that if a leg lock doesn't work for him, he's gonna get you some other way. Yeah. You know, he's constantly thinking about what's the other thing he can do. I know because I would do my best to shut down the leg locks on him and then he would just take my back or triangle me or so , you know, something else I that . So it is important though . this leg locker . Oh , choking me out again. This guy. No, actually Locky always, and this is the worst thing, he always rolls me real nice. Still can't do much to that guy. . So more than me . Is he , is he always filming the role ? This is for some matter? No, no , no . Actually he's not. I'm , I'm very fortunate. I, but I feel pathetic because I'm like, come at me bro. Like I'm, I , I don't mind if you get my leg and you tap me, I'll be happy. Don't roll me nice. Like, I suck at this.

All right . Is that No, I'm working on something . Nah , but that's, that's just Lucky's style. Like he talked about rolling with Mikey, Mr . And he said it was just really playful. He's like, if people are good at Juujitsu, it's much more of a, it's a game thing. It's not a kill each other thing. Fire . Yeah. He's like, it's usually when the skills are a bit more disparate, but say, so to that point, I I , I see what you're getting at. Like when you have , um, like, so say you take like a , a white belt that's come through this leg lock game and you roll them and this is, this is not referring to the , the woman that you trained with, but just say, let's pick a generic kind of person character in our mind. A person, a person, and they enter the leg tangle entanglement and they do the whole. And then you just shut that down and then you put 'em in side control and then they're. Yeah. Right. And then they've got no defenses there. You take their back, they've got no defenses to your back attacks. Like is like, we can look at that and go, well you don't want to just zero in on the leg lock thing. Of course . At the expense of all the other techniques. Right. But what about say the white belt, who just like, is that not also part of being , uh, more of a beginner where you have, you develop a bit of a game Mm . But once you're taken outside of that you dunno what to do anyway. Yeah . Like you really, you don't have all the gaps closed. Yeah, of course. Yeah. No, I, I definitely agree with that. But I think we're all like that. I think it doesn't matter where you're at in your jujitsu journey, you find the jiu-jitsu you like and you tend to just kind of stay in that zone and maybe add a few little accoutrement . Like I , I'm , I'm that smash pass guy. I might do a bit of a long step . Oh I might , oh I might do a bit of a Ian . Ooh . And then you still might use the sweep that we learned in class today. Yeah. But you still just getting that side control and ing everyone. Yeah . Like, you know what I mean? Like I think we tend to look at people who are early in the journey. Uh , and it doesn't matter your age, you're just, you , you're new to Jiujitsu, it doesn't matter what age you are. And we're like, oh , white belts. But that person might be genius. That person might be a savant for Jiujitsu and be learning really quick and just snap and everybody up. But typically what happens, and I've witnessed this with when , when emboss were hot and it was a new thing, people being like, yeah, I'm just pulling me out. I'm just pulling guard. I never come on top. If I can't take you back from the bottom, then I'm just staying on my. And then, yeah, it's really one dimensional. I guess the challenge for anybody doing jiujitsu, whether you are really quick to learn it or not, is being able to link whatever you understand of jiujitsu to what you need to learn next. And we often give that to our coaches as a responsibility, but for the best part we have to take

it on ourselves. And this young lady had clearly taken it on ourself . I'm gonna learn leg locks, this works. I'm a snap dude's up because I, I think it's difficult if you're smaller and it doesn't matter what gender you are. If you're getting smashed by people, you're like, how do I stop getting smashed? Yeah. I'm gonna tap people. Yeah. And leg locking is a quick way to get there because typically people will tend to give you their legs before they'll give you their arms. Yeah . You know, they'll walk into your guard or they'll whatever. So I think it's a byproduct of what people are used to doing. And this thing being, it's not new now, but it's just, it's not as practiced and you don't expect it from a white belt. So it's like, ah, sneak attack . Like, I didn't expect that. And you know, usually if I'm, if I'm rolling with another black belt, I'll go, oh , do you want to do like leg locks ? I'll like , yeah, I'm cool with that. Or something might be like, nah , nah . So that's cool. No discussion like that. It was just whoa . Like pull, roll, go bang bang pulling on the legs. I had something come to mind that I was gonna say and then I just lost it. That's cool. S o t hat's disappointing because I had it and then I lost it and then I got it back and then I lost it again. , this is the pinging pong match of Joey's mind. I had a beer last night. one brain cell h it t he idea o f the other brain c ell. O h, bring i t b ack. Bring it back. It came back to me again. Nice. The thing you said about, um, people thinking that like it's the answer, right? And you can see this like say if you looked at L ock Giles in, uh, the two accs ago, 2019. 2019, you're like, this is the game Gordon Ryan around that same time. Right. Craig Jones like, holy, h ill hooks are where it's at, right? Y ep. And naturally the instructional are released in a flood and we a ll start learning them a nd man, this is what's working. And then now you look at it, it didn't, not a lot going on there. 2021 it didn't work. Back attacks again. Yeah . You know, you're see like you're seeing everything. You are still seeing HILs, but not to the same, it's, it's there's trends. Yes . And that was the trend. And now the trend is shifting because it res it's in response to that past trend. Yeah. But I think that that it's, it's not just a trend. Dean list is coming from . No , no , no , no . I up still the, the mo the highest rate of submission in the history of ADCC. It's like really high , which is inside Hill Hook from Dean Lister . I think it's like nine 90% or 89%. Right. Pretty, pretty full on . But what I wanted to say is I think it's precedent. It's not like, oh it will come and go. It's now part of the culture. Yeah. If you do no, gee , jujitsu and a lot of pe more people are doing it now. You better get around that leg block game. And I think there's nothing wrong with, obviously beginners have to learn everything else, but if you can just see someone's like really quick and keen to learn, I don't think there's a problem with keeping them safe. 'cause I just think about whenever I relate this to a beginner learning jujitsu, I always just think, how would I teach my sister? How would I teach my young sister Kate, who is the producer on this show? Shout out Kate White. So Kate, so when you are um , husband Tom White gets outta line, you just I roll . I said back the dishwasher mother just crying . Ah , yeah. Okay. And have him limping around. No , I, I think I re the reason why I relate it is because I taught Kate um , some self-defense back in the day when he used to train TaeKwonDo. And she would always push back on me. She's my baby sister. I have a middle sister, Jenny. Shout out Jenny. And she's, she's feisty as, like me and Katie go head to head all the time 'cause she's just like, she's as strong-willed as me. Uh , she's probably nicer and more socially well adjusted. But I remember showing her like an old school , like if someone grabs your wrist, you know, this kind of , oh yeah, this kind of a thing. Like Steven's a girl . Yeah , that what's up ? But pretty much And what was funny about that, she had the remote control. So at this point in time she's like, I don't know , seven I , I'm 12 and I'm like, gimme the remote. She's like, no, like my remote. And I'm like whatever. I'm the big dog here. And so I grabbed the remote and then she hit me with like the wrist lock and I was like, ah , ah , I had to like let go. And I was like, oh , how dare you do my own move to me. I was kind of proud of her but I was also like off. That's the cool thing. If someone is new and their eyes are fresh and they're very open to learning, it's great to teach 'em anything. The worst thing is when we get stuck in our juujitsu and we become less flexible in our mind and we resistant to change. Yeah. And that's why I think it's cool to take something which is effective and show it to someone who's new. It doesn't matter what age they are. The key thing, the like key factors of like anything you're teaching someone something, you've gotta show 'em the safe way to do it. Whether it's driving a car using a lawnmower, power tools, you know, you get your young three year old son on the thanks for bringing me in on that, on the, on the . You know, you're like, alright , here we go Leo. We're just gonna use the power saw . Like wear your gloves and put the visor and chainsaw. When the tree falls you run . Oh wait . That way. That way. Not in front of. Um, so that's the thing. I think if you do it safely, teaching hill hooks to white belts is a good thing. There it is. There it is. Alright fam. Very nice. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in. 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