Luiza Monteiro with 3 Sweet Leg Lock Transitions

Luiza Monteiro definitely knows her stuff when it comes to leg locks.

She’s a 2-time World Champion in Gi, 5-time World Champion No-gi.

She’s also won Pan’s 5 times, Brazilian Nationals 4 times, the European Open, and Pans No-gi.

Plus, she’s trained under a host of accomplished practitioners during her career, including Lucas Leite, Leo Vieira, Rodrigo Cavaca, and Cicero Costha.

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She was also a coach at Unity BJJ in NYC before returning to Brazil to train with Cicero. The result of that training were Brasileiro and World Championship wins.

Here, Luiza teaches leg-locks that allow you to attack submissions even from non-dominant positions on BernardoFaria BJJ.

The first leg-lock she shows is off of really bad position for her: open guard with no grips. 

With no grips, all of her sweeping power (and most of her control) is gone.

But, Luiza turns this into a submission (pretty cool).

From the open guard, the top person goes for a leg drag (a pretty likely scenario).

Then, Luiza she switches her hips so her upper body moves closer to Bernardo’s leg, and her bottom (non-dragged) leg posts on his inner thigh. 

Now, she can underhook the leg closest to her. She then brings her leg (the one that was leg dragged) behind Bernardo, while lifting her hips (sort of like in a Single Leg X entry).

Luiza can then use her ankle on his butt to force Bernardo over. 

Once she lands, Luiza hides her top leg under Bernardo’s legs so they can’t be attacked.

Then, she uses her head near the toes and her hand on the ankle to block Bernardo’s leg from twisting out, and finishes.

For the second leg lock, Luiza is again on the bottom in open guard, and her opponent is on top.

This time, Luiza starts with two feet on the hips, one hand grabbing a sleeve, and the other hand on the bottom of the pants.

She then puts her foot on Bernardo’s bicep (on the side with sleeve control) to get a spider hook.

Then, she plants her free foot on the mat, and uses a combination of her spider hook and her foot on the mat to pull Bernardo forward.

From here, she goes for the toe hold.

She takes her foot on the biceps and puts it behind Bernardo’s knee. Then she takes her other foot and puts the top of her foot on Bernardo’s shin, creating X-guard style control.

She uses her leg control to force Bernardo’s leg up, and crosses her legs for a calf-slice setup.

This traps Bernardo’s leg and keeps him from rolling.

Then, Luiza uses her tricep on Bernardo’s hamstring to bend his knee. From there, she has the angle she needs for the toe hold.

If the toe hold isn’t there, Luiza can still go for the calf slice. 

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She uses her hand on Bernardo’s quad to pull herself up, then builds up so she sits up. As she does that, Bernardo is forced to the mat (since his leg is still trapped).

Then Luiza can keep driving until her opponent taps from the calf slice.

And finally, the third leg lock setup is from standing, when your opponent has lapel or worm guard (an increasingly popular position).

Luiza goes for the kneebar when her opponent goes for an omoplata from lapel guard.

While Bernardo is spinning for the omoplata, Luiza grips Bernardo’s thigh, close to the knee.

Then she steps close to the hip, and falls back -- right into the kneebar. 

She keeps a tight grip on the thigh can clamps down on the leg. 

If she needs more to finish it, she can bring her top leg around so her ankles are next to each other, then pinch her legs and pressure down while moving her upper body back (like you would do to finish an armbar). 

These three options show smooth transitions into powerful submissions, even from normally compromising positions.

While IBJJF rules only allow upper belts to go for the majority of lower-body attacks (excluding heel-hooks), other major grappling competitions such as ADCC, EBI, and Polaris have popularized leg-locks with their more liberal rule sets.

So even though some of these attacks may not be applicable to IBJJF competitions at lower belts, these techniques can be useful in other contexts.

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