Ricky Lundell can be considered a genius and a BJJ phenom, having received his black belt from Pedro Sauer at age 19. the youngest person in North America to be promoted to black belt. He graduated from college with a degree in science when he was just 18. At age 20 he wrestled for Iowa State University although he had never wrestled and came from a BJJ/ Grappling background. Lundell has trained UFC fighters such as Frank Mir, Joe Lauzon, Carlos Condit, Travis Browne, and Forrest Griffin. He coached Team Jones and Team Tate on the latest two seasons of The Ultimate Fighter.

In an interview with MMAfighting, Lundell explains why leg locks are considered taboo in wide swathes of the jiu-jitsu community, how sambo came to embrace the practice, why gi competitions have affected the mindset on leg locks both in jiu-jitsu and MMA and why he believes expert heel hookers must employ a special set of delicate ethics when applying their craft:

“If the heel hook’s done right, I think it can do probably the most amount of damage the quickest,” explains Lundell. “It will put somebody out for quite a while. It’s very deadly and very dangerous when it is actually applied. That just gives more reason that if you are going to develop those in your game – we’ll give it a little Spider Man quote: ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. A heel hook is one of those things that’s very powerful. You gotta be very responsible.”

“Our body evolves and becomes stronger in the areas we train it in. I see that because jiu-jitsu guys have never been put in those leg locks because it’s illegal – especially gi only practitioners or gi only competitors – they become very susceptible to these leg locks.

“Judo is another example. Judo doesn’t allow leg locks at all. They are so susceptible to leg locks because of this because they are black belts at throwing you on the ground, black belts at armbars, black belts at triangles, but they are white belts at leg locks.”

“This great (BJJ) black belt who has trained every day and he’s great at upper body locks, he can’t compete with somebody who just grabs onto his legs. He’s a white belt in that area.”

Luke Thomas: Let’s dive in here and take a stab at a broad question. In jiu-jitsu – both the sport and mixed martial arts – why are leg locks so controversial?

Ricky Lundell: Leg locks have been viewed as taboo in jiu-jitsu for many years. It wasn’t long ago that you would be basically booed off the mat for submitting your opponent with a leg lock or some of type of lower body submission hold. I feel that when people don’t fully understand something, they discredit it. They become afraid of it. Because of this, they start to even create a false propaganda and try to strike fear into other practitioners and try to keep them away from leg locks.

As time goes on, I believe these leg locks will become less controversial as people get more understanding of leg locks. As of right now, not very many people out there train leg locks safely. They don’t know the transitions or how to move through them and because of that they tend to create a negative look on them and a lot of practitioners, including the group that I came from, made you afraid of leg locks before you even got to learn anything about them.

LT: Do you believe if you have that power and you know you have, at least in that skill set, an advantage over your opponents, a certain set of ethics when applying them?

RL: I do. I do. I believe that there is a code of ethics when applying heel hooks and you almost have more responsibility because right now everyone sees it as taboo. So, while the world sees it as taboo, you have to tread that line very carefully. You have to be very responsible with it. You gotta be very careful with it because people are going to cut you from the UFC if use it wrong.

Everybody’s afraid of them. And because everybody’s afraid of them, you better tread lightly.