Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Gracie Breakdown: heel hook edition

Gracie Breakdown of UFC 142, leading off with the Rousimar Palhares heel hook finish.

Back in the day when grappling and BJJ were still fringe activities, I often had to travel to strange clubs to find training. It was intimidating to visit a new school where I didn't know anyone, even more so to spar with people who could easily injure me. The one submission I was most afraid of was the heel hook. The two serious injuries I sustained in years of training were from a straight armbar (juji gatame) and a heel hook, which sprained the tendons around my knee. The heel hook is much more effective on the street, where the opponent is likely to be wearing shoes and pants (escaping by pulling the leg out is much harder than in MMA), although there are also reasons not to pull guard in a street fight.




Here's a Palhares highlight video. Beautiful jiujitsu and very dangerous leglocks.

4 comments:

Guy_Brodude said...

A. Silva submits to the flying scissor heel hook. Probably my second-favorite PRIDE moment (after Randleman's suplex of Fedor, natch):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=267i7rKeECA

steve hsu said...

Chonan very lucky. AS tapped very fast!

Sam H said...

Wow, yes indeed he tapped fast.

When I watch the clip of Randleman suplexing Fedor it reminds me that Fedor was very, very lucky that he did not get paralyzed. 

Guy_Brodude said...

His judo training saved him, no question about it (Fedor was a near-miss for the world-class Russian national team).

Coleman was temporarily paralyzed by the same move in a training session IIRC.

Blog Archive

Labels