Leg-Lock Defence Drill Book

Mat Manual companion guide to "Clearing the Knee Line: Defending Leg Locks After the Entry." Print it. The article teaches the three stages and the knee line. This book drills them: a recognition checklist for early, mid, and late, hand-fight and knee-line progressions that isolate the working stage, and positional rounds run under tap-early rules printed where neither partner can skip them.

Name: ______________________________ Gym: ______________________________ Coach: ______________________________ Room rules verified (Part 3): ☐ Date: ______________

THE SAFETY GATE — READ BEFORE ANY DRILL IN THIS BOOK ☐ Tap early and tap often is the first technique in this book. In drilling, the tap comes at control, before pressure. A partner who waits for pain to tap is removed from leg work that day. ☐ No leg lock in this book is ever cranked. Attackers apply at a speed the defender can process, and stop at the grip, not at the grimace. ☐ Heel hooks in drilling are caught and released at the catch. The finish is never applied to a learning partner. Ever. ☐ Any knee pain, pop, or instability stops leg work for that student that day and is told to the coach before they leave the mat. ☐ The room's legality rules (Part 3) govern every drill. This book teaches defence against what your room allows, at the belt levels your coach sets.

Part 1: The Three Stages — Recognition Checklist

The defender's first skill is naming the stage out loud. If you can name it, you are not frozen.

The call drill. In every drill in this book, the defender calls the stage ("early", "mid", "late") the moment they recognise it. The call is scored as heavily as the escape, because recognition is what the freeze eats.

How the calls are coached. In the first week, the coach freezes drills at random and asks for the call and the evidence: what, exactly, told you it was mid and not early? Answers must point at facts, a grip completed, a hip position, a knee's address, never at feelings. By week two the calls are made in motion, and a wrong call is treated as information, not error: the pair resets to the moment of the call and studies the difference. By week four, students who have run the calls honestly report the book's real product, which is not an escape at all. It is the absence of the frozen half-second, in rooms and positions this book never mentioned.