BTG 150 - Are Aoki Locks Too Dangerous?

[Music] Hey guys, what's going on? David Avalon here with another episode of Breaking the Guard. On today's episode, I'm going to talk about Aayoki locks and particularly how dangerous they are. And the topic will be should this be a move that's banned or not? I'm going to argue not but uh I will make some cases where you want to be cautious about them because as we have seen they are very well we can't say lethal but they they cause serious damage very quickly and uh in PGF I'm if I had to I know at least two people have been taken out of the season with Iogi locks, possibly three. So, it just goes to show you how effective that technique is. And it's funny to me because as someone who played with leg locks a lot back in the early days, you would stumble on it by chance when I was going for a straight ankle lock and someone tried to slip their heel and then you could still finish. But it never really occurred to me like, oh, this is like a hold in itself. I always I always felt like it was an accident from the other guy. Like, oh, he goofed and gave me this weird angle on this ankle lock. I never really made the connection like, oh, this is a separate hold that we can actually get into. Um, so that is kind of like uh duh, right? Like I should have seen this like a couple decades ago. uh probably to the fortune of all the opponents because man uh if people were clueless about heel hooks and even straight ankle locks, can you imagine somebody doing a Yoki locks back in the late 90s, early 2000s? They would have just destroyed everybody. It would have been too easy. Uh that said, in today's world, even people know about it, but they're still getting hurt by it. And it's because it sets in so quickly. And I feel in certain ways it's a little more stable of a position than a heel hook or whatnot because heel hooks there's some rolling momentum. There's some more slip factor going on with the knee. Um whereas with and it's also you know in I I'm not sure how you would call it but you know we're rotating internally like towards the center of the hips right which is normally a better angle whereas when we're doing ayokis it's kind of like inside heel hook so we're rotating externally. Um, since you're able to lock up like a figure 4, it's a tighter grip, less slippage, and you really don't need as much like stabilization around the knee. I mean, you still do, right? But I'm saying it's hard to slip because it is going this way now. And you could and you see most people doing it don't have a reaping leg. They just have like a butter like an outside butterfly and then the inside leg is either wedging or it's stepping on the hip and pinching the knee inward to help bring the knee that way. And again, I'm imagining if I I have the guy in a right now, you know, I'm blocking here. I'm going figure this way, right? I'm pushing the ankle in. So, it seems to set a lot quicker, especially when people drop into it, and you really have a hard time tapping in a competition scenario, especially if you're gutsy and like you're trying to escape everything. By the time the guy falls back on it, it's already over, right? And uh it it is a scarier game. And you know, I've told I've said this many times on the podcast at this point, and I've told a lot of people my opinions on this, which is also an opinion my brother has shared with me, which is that professional grappling in a lot of ways is a lot more dangerous than professional MMA. Because in professional MMA, the worst thing that's going to happen to you typically is that you get knocked out, right? And in most scenarios, it's a concussion. You know, a couple months, you're not even a couple months. It's normally like a couple days and you're fine. But like maybe you can't compete in a couple months just because you won't be medically cleared. In professional grappling, you can get your leg broken pretty quickly. And that's going to change your career entirely cuz now you're talking at least 6 month recovery time if you do everything right and you know everything goes well with your surgery and your PT. And not to mention now you're have a different perspective on taking leg locks. You're going to be a lot more antsy about it. So, uh, not to mention like the costs of these things are a lot higher, right? Like getting a concussion doesn't really cost you anything besides the diagnostics or ER visit. Hopefully, you have insurance. It's not a big deal. Getting ACL reconstruction is not great, right? And in these cases, it's not even ACL reconstruction. And we're talking about like um some people are getting their shin bones or tibas, you know, fractured or whatnot. And so I mean, not great, right? Like it's definitely not the way you want to go. And it's a sport that pays less in MMA. So the risks have increased dramatically now. And particularly with the lightweights, right? You don't see as much of this in heavyweight grappling, although it's still there, but like in lightweight grappling, spamming leg locks is a lot more of a thing. And I told you from a fan perspective, sometimes is when they're prolonged shootouts. I don't really care for it too much. I don't want to rehash that, but you don't see it as much in heavyweight. And I think it's just because they're not as nimble. Legs are thicker. It's not as easy to leg pummel. Um, and it also requires that you want to be playing off your back, which most big guys don't want to do because big guys will pressure pass you and their guards is not as loose and nimble as a small flexible guy. the lightweights this and I was talking to Robert Ddale the other day and he was you know reiterating this for the lightweights it's it pays off because lightweight jiu-jitsu guard is very hard to pass right everybody's super flexible super fast very nimble it makes it very difficult to get a pass playing into leg locks is very easy and it is seen as like a better path right because now Rather than try to pass an impossible guard, I could just drop back and start going for ankle locks like crazy, right? And this is what has fueled this like leg lock shootout. Heavyweights and even this like middleweights and light heavyweights don't really see it that way cuz you know pulling guard now the guy doesn't play the leg lock game with you. He's going to start smash passing and you're going to be at a disadvantage because you're not as good in your guard. But lightweights don't have that dilemma. Uh, so I feel that's why it's very strong meta in lightweight jiu-jitsu to play heavily into the leg blocks is just an easier path than trying to actually work passing. I will argue however that I think it's a bit overplayed um by some people and especially if I'm playing a leg lock heavy game against another leg lock heavy guy. This is what I talk about which is a shootout and now you're playing a game where maybe the odds are like 50 50 or 40 60 either way it's close. Not the type of game I would want to play. I want to play a game that's like 8020 ideally like I have all the all the the chips in my side, you know? I don't want to play where it's like a, you know, a 50/50 situation or equivalent. I I want more advantage. And I think sometimes even when you do have a really good leg lock game, but you're trying to force it and spam it, if you will, you lose a lot of the novelty behind it and it becomes harder to catch because everybody knows what you're going for. For example, with me, I can spam kimoras from everywhere all the time. But if I did that, it becomes harder to catch because now everybody is very self-conscious and aware of that kimora threat and they're pretty much going to hide their elbows tight into the rib cage and make it very difficult for me to catch anything. and they might be less risk-taking and it it'll still meet the game quite a bit. Fortunately for me, that plays into a reverse kimora game which actually works great when the elbows are tucked in, right? But like I have a different even though it's kimora related Jason, it's a different style of it which allows me to play that. Uh, so I feel like if you're going to play a very leg lock heavy game and you know at a certain point it's going to get shut down, you should then have the opposing game where whatever defensive posture your opponent plays to defend against a leg lock heavy game is going to make your second game more powerful because of the way they're basing. For example, uh if I'm grappling somebody who's very good at leg locks and it's playing, you know, from their their back and they're trying to draw me into the game, I know right away I got to keep my hips really low. I don't want them to split my legs. So, I want my knees on the inside, my feet on the inside, so that they don't get any good angles. I don't want them being able to get any grips on my legs, right? So, I'm going to be a little bit further back, hips down, and try to address, you know, that that leg situation. So, as the bottom player, you're going to see now where this person might have their very low hips, weight distributed a little bit back, makes it hard for me to get underneath him because he's low and he's a little bit away. Now, you have to think, what becomes easier to do there? Well, one wrestle ups, right? Two, arm drags, right? Particularly if you're playing a seated guard. Now, that's a good position to start arm dragging somebody because that might even be an entry into the leg lock if they base out, right? Or at the very least, now we get the guy off balance. Um, so that's the type of thinking that you and the ways that you want to strategize, right? And it's not something that we see a lot of people do. I feel like the guys who are going heavy into leg locks is like that's all they have. They don't think about anything else. They got like overly fixated on this one strategy of winning and it becomes iterative and uh it as a spectator you get kind of like uh okay I I've seen the same shootout now for like 5 minutes straight and it doesn't really progress past this because both people are very wellversed. Whereas if you were able to shift your game plans, you know, halfway through the match or after a couple failures, you will get a lot more success out of it, right? So I I feel that type of strategic element is important, especially when you're a specialist because people will find out your specialty if you don't catch them with them early in and now they're going to be a lot more cautious. So if you have no plan B, your plan A is going to have a hard road ahead of itself to try to get executed. That's my take in it anyways. Now, as far as legality, you know, I always want everything in uh I don't like things being excluded, right? Like I want down kicks. I want kicks to down opponents in MMA. I want elbows and knees. I want everything in there. Headbutts even. Uh so I'm not making exceptions for grappling either. I I feel like these are good holds. They're strong. Uh as a professional, you have to be ready for everything. You also have to be smart and you have to know like when your numbers up and be ready to tap quickly. And don't rely on this. All right? People are not going to feel this. So, no one's going to see it in time. I would be like, "Tap tap tap tap tap." like get it out there because you you want the mercy of your opponent on a hold that breaks quickly. Uh so I would say that's one thing. Um, however, for amateur competitors, this is where I could see like, okay, we might want to make some exceptions here and we might want to ban certain holds because just like how early days they were banning heel hooks from competition, I can see like, well, there might be a move to ban a locks in just because it's a brutal hold that's hard to defend, especially when there's like a mismatch of like technical sets, right? Where if I have a a purple bell that's a leg lock specialist, all he's been doing is training and then I have like a conventional purple belt that doesn't really mess around with too much. If that leg locker purple belt just goes full ham on that, he might just break that leg pretty fast, right? and before the guy even gets a chance to tap, right? Or even knows to tap. So, I feel like there is a concern as a matchmaker in general that well or a tournament um promoter rather like do I want to have to deal with a lot of leg breaks or whatnot? And I'm not sure what the stats are other than now, but at least on a professional level, so far it's pretty high. Right. Those yogi locks don't play. Even the conventional heel hooks and stuff, they they all suck, you know. And I think especially now, like at the UFC event, man, I I couldn't tell you if it was an inside heel hook. I think it was an inside heel hook that hurt one of the guys. Um, and he was limping out of there, unfortunately. So yeah, any of those twisting leg locks when they're fast and quick set, it's hard to tap in time, right? Um, so for amateur competitors, it is a concern. Now, as a coach, you should be training a guy to deal with everything, right? You don't want your your students to not train something because you're scared that they might get hurt because that's exactly how they are going to get hurt because when they go to compete or god forbid they end up in a street fight with a guy who's a leg locker, they're not going to know how to respond and they're going to get destroyed. So, you definitely want to be able to train your students with everything. You just have to make sure you preframe things very well. Like for me, when I teach dangerous techniques, I'm giving lots of preframe. I'm like, look, this is a very dangerous hold. You have to be very careful when you execute it. When you're doing this in training, we're going very slow, very smoothly, and we're not trying to go explosively or like jitter into it. And there's going to be times you might have to let go of the hold because your partner is being a little stubborn. That's fine, right? You don't want to break your toy cuz then you have nothing to play play with. And also if you're the guy caught, don't be a silly goose, right? Like if you see like he's controlling it and he's slowly moving into it and you can't escape it. Just tap, right? And you know, you could tap and then just tell him to hold it and you can try to work the escape so that he's not applying more pressure, but you're still learning how to work out of it. And sometimes I I actually did that today a couple times where I got somebody in a hold and they wanted to restart. I'm like, "No, no, just start again. I'm not going to go anywhere and just get your way out of here just like how the coach showed." Right? That way it's not just end of lesson and you don't know how to disconnect. Let's get you out of this position, you know, so that you know how to escape it the next time around. That's what training is for, right? And if you train smart like that, no one gets hurt in the training room. They get more comfortable being in these positions now because they know like, "Oh, my training partner is not going to break my leg in 5 seconds." And also, I have trust in my training partner because I know he's looking out for me just like I'm looking out for him. And I get to work out of these bad spots. So when, god forbid, it does happen in a competition scenario or, you know, self-defense scenario, I'll be better equipped to deal with it because I already know how to work out of it, right? uh being ignorant of things doesn't make you safe. It makes you more in danger of them happening. So, uh with ails, I think if you're training for modern grappling, you definitely need to be working on them, man, because they're all over the place. They're pretty much anytime you're trying to slip out of uh an ankle lock, especially when they're over hooked around like straight ankles, you're going to be potentially putting yourself in a Yoki lock. And the guys who are like eyeing for it, they're just waiting for you to try to pull your heel out, right? The moment you try to slip out, you're going to get slammed right into a yogi lock. So, like you have to be a little bit more cautious uh about extracting legs, you know, you have to be aware of where you're safe and where you're not. And that's only going to you're only going to manifest that knowledge by putting yourself in there more. So, find a training partner that you can trust that's not uh a reckless guy that's trying to like get as many tops as he can. Find someone smart and hopefully you're smart too so that you both can link up and say, "Okay, let's work on these, you know, these locks or inside heel hooks or whatever hole that you find that's risky or dangerous that you're not too comfortable with and play like at 50%." Right? Where you can work your escapes more, right? Assuming you've already practiced and drilled escapes, now you can put it in like a semi-live situation. so that you can work through these difficult spots because that's how you're going to build the skills to be able to escape effectively. And you also have to have the humility where like, okay, I can get tapped here, right? Like my my training partner taps me like 10 times in the fiveminute round. That's fine. I'm starting from bad positions and it should be expected that I'm going to fail a lot, especially when I'm learning. Uh so you have to have that humility and detach your ego from like the training round. You're not the training round, right? The training round is a learning process, right? Um sometimes people are too invested in winning rounds, especially when they're going against their friends who might be their rivals and they don't want to attach to this guy because oh like I I usually get the better of him or we're like we're very neck and neck so it's competitive. Like sometimes you got to be able to go in around like I'm just here to learn, right? Uh and I'm here to play a little bit so I can expand my game a bit. Uh so I feel you need to have that mentality especially with holds like like a lock which are quite dangerous and don't have a lot of room for error from the defensive side and they do set in pretty quickly because you don't need a lot of attachment. uh like conventional like leg locks where like you have to have both knees over reaping and stuff like that. This you can have a outside butterfly and just one knee pinching that's enough, right? So they can jump in from a lot of different places now and you need to be able to train through those safely and responsibly. And if you do that enough, you're going to be in a much better position to be able to take those logs. And from what I've seen, even in this PGF, couple of the guys that did get caught with even aili locks who were leg lockers themselves, they were able to tap out fast enough before getting hurt. And I feel like that's because they know the weapon themselves. So when they get caught with a weapon they like, they know the danger zone. They know, okay, I'm I'm do toasts, right? My goose is cooked. when you don't know how deep it is and you don't know how screwed you are, you might let it go a bit too far before you realize, "Oh man, I just destroyed my leg." Right? So, um it's important even if you're not trying to be the attacker, uh learning the offense is going to let you understand better when a position is strong defensively. Right. Anyhow, I'll make that this podcast a little short and sweet. Uh, so that was just my opinion on locks. I do feel like we're going to be seeing uh especially with the lightweights. A lot of these uh they're just not that difficult to get into, especially as people have gotten better at I like we I talked about maybe a couple months ago how straight ankle locks were making a resurgence and it only makes sense that the Yokis have been coming up as well because they come right off, you know, failed straight ankle locks. Uh, so the leg lock game has been shifting, but we, like I said, uh, you have to be able to adjust and training smart is going to put you in the path to be able to defend these better and maybe attack them yourselves. Anyhow, that's all I have for you guys for this week. I'll catch you all next week.