Juji gatame escape

Juji gatame escape is the judo name for the defence against the armbar — the position in which the attacker’s body lies perpendicular to the defender’s trapped arm with the elbow loaded against its natural range.

Etymology. Juji (十字) means “cross” or “the character ten,” referring to the perpendicular geometry of the attacker and defender at the finishing configuration; gatame (固め) means “hold.” The escape term carries the parent technique forward: judo’s kansetsu-waza (joint-lock) catalogue records the armbar under juji gatame, and the defensive counter takes the same name with the escape suffix in English-speaking no-gi and judo contexts alike. The Brazilian and English no-gi traditions translate the parent technique to “armbar” but the Japanese name remains the precise search term across judo and submission-only communities.

Mechanics. The escape’s priority is preventing or undoing the limb isolation that the juji gatame depends on: the defending player must connect the trapped arm back to their body — by stacking, by hand-fighting the wrist control, or by hitchhiker-style elbow rotation — before the perpendicular loading reaches structural failure.

Cross-reference. English-speaking no-gi uses “armbar escape” or “armbar defence”; wrestlers historically grouped this configuration with the broader “arm bar” defensive category. Full mechanical coverage on Armbar Escape.