Why Do Wristlocks Still Trigger People?
For context a big wristlock lover, I even put a wristlock bell in my gym (you get wrist locked, you ring it) but they get very strong reactions from the BJJ community.
Things like heel hooks are now embraced even through they are a frontrunner in devastating injuries but wristlocks seem to carry this strange reputation of being somehow “cheap” or sneaky.
But they show up everywhere once you start looking for them. What’s funny is that the moment people start respecting the threat of the wristlock, it tends to open up other attacks anyway. I use them as setups for better positions and grips, but once you have control you can reuse them to finish it. So why the hate towards the wristlock in the general community?!
Do you see wristlocks as:
• a legitimate technical part of grappling
• or just a funny “gotcha” submission?
4 Comments
They are legitimate techniques to me. I think people hate wrist locks because you're attacking very weak joints and when you do it, you have to be very quick applying the technique if you intend to finish them. I never look for them specifically but I will threaten wrist locks to break a sleeve grip from someone passing closed guard or to force someone under mount to open up.
I personally love wrist locks and can hit them from virtually everywhere: good positions, bad positions, and many random places.
My first ever black belt competition I got submitted by a wrist lock inside someones lasso guard and then immediately after that it sparked an obsession lol. I think focused on wrist locking people for almost 2 years with intention. Now I can hit them in many placed and wrist locks open up many opportunities for me as well.
If you watch the "Wrist Lock Concepts Course" (which I need to add a lot of content still), you can see the main concepts I follow. I personally hit most of my wrist locks in a slow controlled manner, that are not quick and won't hurt people.
From my perspective, wrist locks are just fun and I reserve them for that. Especially with people that have some kind of hyper-mobility. Other submissions are higher percentage for me (which could just be an artifact of my training).
I've known of a couple of people who came to the gym who were either surprised that people were allowed to use them or offended that somebody used them. I often wonder if some of the polarizing opinions stem from a lot of the pressure point/pain compliance training that cops used to get in the US. A lot of those wrist locks work well if someone is just standing static but are pretty difficult to put on someone flailing about. Wrist locks in grappling come from different positions so maybe they can be more viable?
Some really good points here, I'm with Jason they need to be applied slow and controlled, same heel hooks and to be honest same as all submission when your in the the gym (maybe less slow) but controlled with proper mechanics. I would like to look at standing wrist locks in my own development but these are done dynamically so it's difficult to get people to drill them in my gym.