Tarikoplata Escape

What This Is

The tarikoplata is a kimura grip reinforced by a leg. For the attack, see Tarikoplata. The attacker holds the figure-four on your bent arm, and when you defend it the way kimuras are defended — gripping your own leg or body, or stiffening the arm so the wrench stalls — they bring a leg over the trapped shoulder. The shin presses down on the shoulder line so the leg’s weight reinforces the grip and breaks your defensive hold, and the finish drives the arm into internal rotation in the kimura direction, with the leg’s leverage added to the arms’.

⚠ It beats both of the defences you already own, which is the point of it. It shares real estate with the omoplata — a leg over the shoulder — but the force runs through a different channel: the omoplata rotates the body against a leg-trapped arm, while the tarikoplata sends force through the kimura grip with the leg as an amplifier. So the self-grip that stalls a kimura does not stall this, because the leg breaks that grip; and the posture that shuts down an omoplata does not shut this down, because the finish never needed the body rotation. A defender running either neighbour’s answer finds it closed and has spent the seconds discovering it.

What is left is a narrow set of answers, all of them upstream: the wrist home before the grip closes, then denying the leg, then extracting the elbow while they bring it over. It shares a look with the baratoplata and monoplata — a leg over a shoulder — and it is read against the kimura escape rather than the omoplata one, because that is where the force is actually running.

Also Known As

Safety First

⚠ Tap on the rotation rather than on the position. The defensive habits that buy time against a kimura — gripping your own body, stiffening the arm — are the specific things the leg is there to break, so a defender who has stalled a kimura once and expects the same purchase here is calibrating on the wrong technique.

Defence Timing

It starts as a kimura and stops being one when the leg arrives. The stages are the grip, the defence you make, and the leg that answers it.

The grip — a figure-four on your bent arm

Nothing distinguishes this from a kimura yet, and the answers are the kimura answers: get the wrist home to your own body and the elbow tight before the grip is complete. Everything cheap happens here.

Your defence — the self-grip or the stiff arm

You have stalled the wrench in the ordinary way, by gripping your own leg or belt line, or by making the arm rigid. ⚠ Against a kimura this is a stable place to be. Here it is the cue: the tarikoplata exists precisely to answer this, and an attacker who reaches for their leg at this moment is telling you which technique you are actually in.

The leg — coming over the trapped shoulder

The shin or calf comes over the shoulder and presses down on the shoulder line, sometimes with the foot hooking to their own wrist or hip. This is the whole submission arriving. Deny this leg and you are back in a stalled kimura, which is a problem with known answers; allow it and your self-grip is about to be broken by their bodyweight rather than their arms.

Loaded — the leg is on and the rotation is turning

⚠ Tap. The leg has added weight to a grip that already had leverage, and the arm is being driven into internal rotation with the shoulder anchored. There is no version of this where holding the self-grip harder helps, because the leg is what defeats the self-grip.

The Invariant in Action

This is why the technique exists at all. A kimura that has been stalled by a good self-grip is a stalemate; the tarikoplata is the tool that ends the stalemate, and it ends it by out-weighing the grip rather than out-pulling it.

A kimura you can feel someone working against is a kimura you have some read on. When a leg supplies the force, the effort disappears from the exchange and so does the signal.

The attacker has to reconfigure to bring the leg over, and reconfiguration costs them something. That beat is the escape window, and it is the same shape as the window on the opposite triangle page — the attacker improving their position is the moment their position is worst.

Named Escape Techniques

What Causes Escapes to Fail

Counter-Offensive Options

Bringing a leg over the shoulder costs the attacker a leg they were using for something else, and it happens while both of their arms are already committed to the grip.

If the elbow comes out during the reconfiguration, they are holding a figure-four on nothing with one leg in the air — a good moment to come up on top or to take the back if their hips have turned away. If the leg is denied and the position reverts to a stalled kimura, the ordinary kimura counters apply and the attacker has spent a reconfiguration for nothing.

The general point: this is an expensive technique to attempt and a cheap one to be caught by, so a defender who reads the switch reliably turns an attacking option into a positional risk.

Drilling Notes

• Wrist home under a live grip. Partner builds the figure-four at half speed; defender brings the wrist to their own body before it closes. Ten reps a side. Standard kimura work, and it is the layer that prevents this submission along with several others.
• Spot the switch. ⚠ The important one. Partner takes a kimura grip and the defender establishes a self-grip. Partner then either keeps wrenching or reaches for the leg, chosen at random. Defender must respond differently to each — hold against the wrench, attack the shin against the reach. Score only on whether the read was right.
• Extract on the beat. Partner sets the grip, defender self-grips, partner begins bringing the leg over slowly. Defender extracts the elbow along their own centreline during the movement. Reduce the partner’s leg speed drill by drill until the window is realistic.

Ability Level Guidance

Related Pages