John Frankl’s leglock defense was turned to the offense with his material on display in competition with Ben Hooper, who trains under Michael Heinz at SBG New Braunfels taking gold via ankle lock at an IBJJF tournament. At SBG Bury we’ve been working Professor Frankl’s material ourselves. The intention is to build a fundamental defensive game to deal with leg attacks under all rulesets, identifying the most important factors in leg offense and defense.
Most recently, we’ve been focusing in on rotation of the thumbs to support the spine when defending. There are effectively two routes of escape, the heel slip which is an early escape, and the more traditional late escape going with the heel hook rotation. Modern stylists emphasis that the late escape can cause the leg to become more entangled. We’ve focused upon rotating upwards on the late escape in what is known within SBG as the Skinny X as oppose to escaping laterally as is traditionally shown. This is of course only in the event of the heel slip not working. Furthermore escaping the heel hook and most leg attacks generally will require use of the technical stand-up which is often performed inefficiently due to poor hand and foot placement. We see the technical stand-up and the sit-out position from which it originates as a fundamental Jiu Jitsu skill that transcends positions and rulesets.