Guest post by Daniel Vaughan UCLA undergraduate, judo brown belt under Mike Verdugo and BJJ black belt under Master Julio Cesar Pereira. Daniel is an instructor at M3Fight Academy.

With the rise in popularity of the heel hook in the BJJ community, we are going to take a look at a few ways to place your legs in the heel hook position (inverted heel hooks will be looked at in the future).

First, we are taking a look at the position of the legs from the inside. You reap the leg over, triangle your legs, then under hook the furthest leg with your leg. The under hooking leg can also be re-positioned to push on the persons furthest leg to stretch them out to prevent the rolling escape.

Dean Lister is showing an inside leg position with a slight variation. Instead of triangling his legs and under hooking with it, he is over hooking with his leg and creating a diamond position. An advantage to this is that a rolling escape and scramble is nearly impossible after the leg positioning is locked in.

Eddie Cummings is showing the heel hook attack with an outside leg position. He underhooks with one leg on the inside and locks his heel on his opponents hip. This requires no reaping of the leg unlike the two shown above.

What’s one thing we notice with each of these leg positions? When they are attacking they are protecting their own lower extremities. Each position we have seen above hides their feet from their opponent.

Here we see Gokor showing what can happen when we place our legs from the outside in a triangle position. The other person has options to attack your legs. Notice Eddie Cummings and his variation of the outside position. He is hiding one foot by tucking it underneath and keeping the heel locked to the hip, so there are no leg locks open for attack.

When attacking the heel hook, be sure to hide your legs from your opponent. These are just a few ways the legs can be positioned to attack while preventing attacks. What are some ways you position your legs while attacking the heel hook? Let us know.