Are heel hooks wrong?
Ricky Lundell graduated from college with a degree in science when he was 18. At 20 he was recruited by…
Ricky Lundell graduated from college with a degree in science when he was 18. At 20 he was recruited by Cael Sanderson to wrestle for Iowa State University; he had never wrestled. Instead his background was in BJJ and grappling. Lundell started BJJ under Pedro Sauer at age 6, and received his black belt at age 19, the youngest person in North America to be so honored. Lundell has trained a number of notable UFC fighters including Frank Mir, Joe Lauzon, Carlos Condit, Travis Browne, and Forrest Griffin. He coached Team Jones and Team Tate on the latest two seasons of The Ultimate Fighter.
In short, Ricky Lundell is a genius. He was interviewed recently by Luke Thomas, and discussed at length the controversy over heel hooks.
“If the heel hook’s done right, I think it can do probably the most amount of damage the quickest,” explains Lundell. “It will put somebody out for quite a while. It’s very deadly and very dangerous when it is actually applied. That just gives more reason that if you are going to develop those in your game – we’ll give it a little Spider Man quote: ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. A heel hook is one of those things that’s very powerful. You gotta be very responsible.”
“Our body evolves and becomes stronger in the areas we train it in. I see that because jiu-jitsu guys have never been put in those leg locks because it’s illegal – especially gi only practitioners or gi only competitors – they become very susceptible to these leg locks.
“Judo is another example. Judo doesn’t allow leg locks at all. They are so susceptible to leg locks because of this because they are black belts at throwing you on the ground, black belts at armbars, black belts at triangles, but they are white belts at leg locks.”
“This great (BJJ) black belt who has trained every day and he’s great at upper body locks, he can’t compete with somebody who just grabs onto his legs. He’s a white belt in that area.”
Luke Thomas: Let’s dive in here and take a stab at a broad question. In jiu-jitsu – both the sport and mixed martial arts – why are leg locks so controversial?
Ricky Lundell: Leg locks have been viewed as taboo in jiu-jitsu for many years. It wasn’t long ago that you would be basically booed off the mat for submitting your opponent with a leg lock or some of type of lower body submission hold. I feel that when people don’t fully understand something, they discredit it. They become afraid of it. Because of this, they start to even create a false propaganda and try to strike fear into other practitioners and try to keep them away from leg locks.
As time goes on, I believe these leg locks will become less controversial as people get more understanding of leg locks. As of right now, not very many people out there train leg locks safely. They don’t know the transitions or how to move through them and because of that they tend to create a negative look on them and a lot of practitioners, including the group that I came from, made you afraid of leg locks before you even got to learn anything about them.
LT: Do you believe if you have that power and you know you have, at least in that skill set, an advantage over your opponents, a certain set of ethics when applying them?
RL: I do. I do. I believe that there is a code of ethics when applying heel hooks and you almost have more responsibility because right now everyone sees it as taboo. So, while the world sees it as taboo, you have to tread that line very carefully. You have to be very responsible with it. You gotta be very careful with it because people are going to cut you from the UFC if use it wrong.
Everybody’s afraid of them. And because everybody’s afraid of them, you better tread lightly.
LT: Jiu-jitsu is at a crazy point right now. I don’t think in the UFC we’ve ever seen a berimbolo. There’s a criticism of jiu-jitsu in MMA because a lot of it just doesn’t work, but the heel hook and the toe hold, these are very functional moves for no gi and MMA. Leg locks are a focus of evolution, yet it’s applicable for self defense and MMA. Would you agree?
RL: I agree 100 percent. I think it’s very applicable and why you don’t tend to see it amongst enough MMA practitioners is – in the world of mixed martial arts right now – a lot of people go out there and tend to find a guy that has trained gi forever and they go, ‘Ok, this is my Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor because he caught me in three triangles and I can’t escape it.’ Well, the guy is great at upper body locks and he only teaches upper body locks. Now we get to a MMA match and somebody like Frank Mir grabs ahold of your leg and you don’t know what to do because your instructor didn’t know what to do and didn’t know how to train you in those areas.
It’s important if you have an instructor that’s an upper body submission-type guy or gi only practitioner, that’s not a bad thing, but you need to seek out a lower body practitioner as well if you can’t find one that has it all.
