Leg Lock Everyone With This System: Cross Ashi / Saddle Full Guide
Double trouble, exposing the heel, finishing mechanics and heisting for top position.
Last weekend, I attended a Robert Diggle seminar here in Spain. In that seminar, we went all over the saddle position. It is also called cross ashi, the honey hole, inside sankaku, or even 411. Whatever name you use is a cross leg entanglement with the feet on the inside.
Robert is one of the best leg lockers in the world, and he’s an specialist in the saddle position, so learning directly from him was a great opportunity (he also was super nice and said that I look like a mini Jay Rod).
Today, I wanted to share with you what he told us in an organized guide, so you can get better at the saddle position and use it to submit your opponents or get on top. Yes, you heard me well. You can use the saddle to get on top, and that’s a big part of what he taught us that day.
First, let me get this straight: this system is available for everybody, so if you are reading this and think that you may not be ready yet, believe me, you can learn from this. The only real requisites I would suggest would be to have a decent ability to retain your guard and a good ability to escape pins. If you train correctly, you should have that checked after your first year in jiu-jitsu.
Also, if you want to see videos of the seminar in which Robert teaches everything I’ll be talking about here, plus his body lock passing, everything should be on his patreon. I’m not sure if it’s out yet or not, but definitely go check it out.
Without anything else to say, let’s go into it.
The Saddle is The Mount of Leg Entanglements
You can't rush from the mount. If you try to attack any submission from there without proper set up, you are going to lose the position. You need to slowly work your way into a submission. The saddle is the same. This is what Robert taught us.
You need to treat the saddle as the mount. Avoid rushing to catch the heel for a heel hook; it’s counterproductive. Instead, work slowly. Just as in mount, you would take your time to extend your opponent’s arms over his head, from the saddle, you need to interact with your opponent’s secondary leg. This is what’s called double trouble.
Rules are to be broken, but if you are just starting in the position, I would say that a good rule is to never look for the heel if you don’t have the secondary leg.
Usually, the secondary leg is available in the saddle position. You can use your legs (especially the bottom one) to hook behind the knee on that secondary leg and pull it close to you, so you can grab it. Later on, we’ll see what to do if you can’t get the secondary leg, but for now, let’s focus on what to do once you have it.
Exposing The Heel From Double Trouble
When you have control over both legs, you are winning. Do not be desperate to try to get the heel immediately. Be patient, and you’ll get there.
Avoid just freeing the leg and trying to catch the heel. It’s not going to work against someone good at leg locks. Instead, you have to have some interaction with the secondary leg first.
Your first goal would be to get the secondary leg over your shoulder. If you can do that, that’s a great moment to catch the heel on the primary leg.
The specific way Robert taught us was this: use your far arm to grab over the knee pit so you can secure the leg, then let go of the Achilles grip with your near arm and switch to a scoop grip on the ankle. Using both arms, lift the leg over to your shoulder and capture it with your head.
There, Robert recommends not going directly for the heel, but rather taking a shot gun grip on the primary leg and use it to bend the toes back with your triceps so you have more control and a better ability to expose the heel.
Then, to switch up from a shot gun grip to a heel hook grip, you don’t lean with your hand, but rather with your elbow. Think of chopping your elbow to the ground while catching the toes in your armpit. Then, just bring your forearm below the heel.
Avoid going elbow deep (it is too easy to slip the heel there) or too short on the wrist (not bad, but less leverage for the finishing mechanics we’ll look later on.
Passing The Leg Across
Once you get the secondary leg over the shoulder, your opponent can try to pull his knee to his chest to free it and go back into his escape. That’s a great opportunity to get the leg across to the other side of the center line.
If you just try to get the leg across, you probably will lose the leg, which is definitely not what you want. So, to avoid that, you need to grab over the knee with your near arm. Then, use your far arm to grab the toes, and use it to get the leg across.
The reason you grab the toes is because it is the end of the lever. Just grab all the toes; avoid grabbing individual toes, which is illegal.
Once the leg is across, grab with both of your arms the knee so you can secure it, and once you feel good, go for an Achilles grip on the secondary leg once again. From there, you are in a double cross, and the process to expose the heel is the same as before: shot gun grip, bend the toes, lean with your elbow, capture the toes, and grab the heel.
So, if you get the secondary leg over your shoulder and your opponent tries to pull it back, that’s the moment to pass it to the other side of the centerline.
Finishing Mechanics
For heel hooks, you can try a rotational finish or a side finish. Rotational finishes aren’t bad, but allow your opponent to rotate (duh!), which can be undesirable in certain situations. Lateral finishes solve that problem, so you should focus on them if you are serious about leg locking, which you should.
There are a lot of ways to finish on your side, and most of them involve bridging. I always finish my heel hooks bridging, but Robert actually does it differently, and it’s extremely powerful and efficient.
First, let’s look at everything you have to do, no matter what kind of finish you are doing, to break a knee from an inside heel hook. You need to:
Bend the knee.
Bend the toes back.
Force the knee to the inside while forcing the heel to the outside.
Now, let’s look at how Robert finishes the inside heel hook.
First, he makes sure he keeps the knee of the primary leg pointing directly to the ceiling or slightly to the inside. If it’s pointing to the outside, it’s not optimal. To do that, he gets his chest low and puts inside pressure with his top leg, forcing his opponent’s knee to the correct position.
Then, he focuses on putting the bend on the knee. Robert scoops his hips as close as possible to his opponent’s hips, and then brings his elbow —the one with the heel— to his ribs, and this puts a big bend on your opponent’s knee and can even finish already.
Then, the finishing comes from two actions:
He brings his top knee down, which forces his opponent’s knees to the inside.
He brings the hand of the heel out, which bends the toes.
As a result, Robert gets a powerful break, without the need to bridge.
I believe this way to finish a heel hook is superior to the others I’ve been doing, and I will definitely add it to my game.
Heisting to Top Position from Double Trouble
There’s more to the saddle than trying to finish the inside heel hook. We can also look to heist and take top position, and actually, you can get on top from the saddle directly into an advantageous position, so it’s a really good option if you feel you can’t get the heel hook or the ruleset you are in doesn’t allow it.
From the double trouble position, you can get up pretty easily. To do that, you may need to create a little bit of momentum by swinging your body back and forth until you are able to retract your bottom leg and get into a half-kneeling position.
From there, your opponent can’t get up because you are still controlling both legs, and now you are on top.
If your opponent is open, you can access the waist and get a body lock, unlocking your legs and passing the guard. If instead your opponent frames on you, you would have to unlock your legs, get into a split squat, and do a rau drag to get chest to chest.
Heisting Without The Secondary Leg
Everything we covered so far was in double trouble with the secondary leg, but what if I’m in the saddle without the secondary leg? You could try to pass the leg across to inside ashi and go for an outside heel hook, which is an amazing option, but it can be more difficult and risky.
Instead, you can use that opportunity to heist and wrestle up, getting on top with a body lock, and possibly taking the back or getting outside the legs. Let’s look at it.
To avoid giving you control over the secondary leg while hiding his heel, the defensive player will rotate his whole body to the inside and retract the leg back and away from you. That creates back exposure.
You can remove your top leg out of the entanglement, and then do the same technical stand up as before to get back on your knees and wrestle up from there, getting a body lock.
If your partner keeps rotating, you can get the back. If your partner gets his back to the mat, you can get past his guard. If, for some reason, he’s able to recover in time, you’ll still be on top with a body lock. I cannot stress enough how good this is.
Here’s an example by Mica Galvao trying this technique and ending on top:
Keep in mind that this was obviously a harder way to do it because Jonnatas Gracie was rolling when Mica tried the technique, which is what is going to happen against high level opposition. That being said, against your regular Joe in your gym, you probably can do this technique in a more static scenario.
Summary: Saddle System
If the secondary leg is available, grab it and go for double trouble.
From double trouble, we look to get the secondary leg over our shoulder or to the other side of the centerline.
We don’t go directly to the heel, but rather, we get a shot gun grip and bend the toes back. Then, we catch the heel, leaning with our elbow.
Once we have the heel, we go for a lateral finish by forcing our opponent’s knee to the correct position, bending the knee by getting our hips closer to our opponent’s hips and getting our elbow to our ribs, and compressing the knee with our top leg, while bringing our bottom hand out.
If we can’t go for the heel hook for any reason, we have to heist into top position. You can do so from double trouble, or even without the secondary leg, ending in a strong passing position.
And that is your saddle system in a nutshell.
So…
The saddle position has been a little bit overlooked in the last few years because people got too good at defending it. That’s why 50/50 and, more recently, outside ashi have grown in popularity compared to the saddle. That being said, I believe the saddle still offers a lot if you have the right system, and someone like Robert Diggle has been able to use it at a really high level.
Honestly, that was a great seminar by Robert, and I’m so thankful for having met him in person. He’s such a cool dude and was open for all types of questions. He actually just arrived to Spain and immediately went to the seminar, so that’s insane dedication, especially when he just had ADCC Trials a couple of weeks before and has been going from seminar to seminar. He didn’t look in his best form for sure, so we didn’t roll, but honestly, while I would have loved that opportunity, I’m good with that, and I wish he makes a ton of money with his seminars.
If you want to support Robert, make sure to follow him on social media and even buy his instructionals. He’s a really good teacher! Here’s his patreon again.
By the way, this article should be out on Wednesday, which means I’m on a flight to Malaga for the Figure It Out Camp by Greg Souders and Max Bickerton. I’m super excited for that, literally can’t wait to experience real CLA training. I’ll be sharing my thoughts with you.
Anyway, that’s everything I had to say. I wish you a great day!