Mikey Lock

What This Is

The Mikey lock attacks the foot and the knee at the same time, and it does it by putting the opponent’s foot beside your neck rather than under your armpit. The neck becomes the fulcrum, the lower palm drives the heel bone, and the finish is a collapse of the elbow with the shoulder dropping toward the floor.

It exists to solve one specific problem. The standard defence to a heel hook is to point the toe and slip the heel out, and that defence works because the attacker’s grip needs the heel to travel a long way before anything loads. The Mikey lock moves the heel a much shorter distance — between the shoulder and the head — so the defensive moment a heel hook gives away never arrives.

The name is descriptive rather than honorific: it is the grip configuration that distinguishes it, not the position it comes from. Everything below is about that configuration and what it buys.

Safety First

The thing that makes this submission good is the thing that makes it dangerous to drill: the defender has no struggle to lose. Agree the tap on the grip closing rather than on load, and finish slowly enough that the shoulder drop is a press.

The Invariant in Action

The configuration Musumeci calls X-flex is what holds the inside space: the inside foot sits on the opponent’s inner thigh as it would in 50/50, and the outside leg comes over and hooks under the far leg as it would in inside sankaku. Both halves are inside-line, and together they deny the extraction that would make the grip irrelevant.

The fixed point is the neck. That is the whole mechanical idea — with the foot trapped between the shoulder and the head, the elbow collapse rotates the foot around a fulcrum the defender cannot move, because moving it means moving the attacker’s head.

The secondary anchor in a heel hook is the defender’s ability to slip the heel and to hand-fight the grip. The Mikey lock removes both: the hand configuration is hidden beneath the foot, so there is nothing to grip-fight, and the heel has almost no distance to travel before it is loaded.

A slight outward turn takes the knee across its range rather than along it, which is where the short timeline comes from. The Achilles loads in the same movement, so two structures reach their limit together.

The foot is the handle and the knee is the target, as in every heel hook — but here the handle is held by the head and the shoulder rather than by the hands, and that is what changes the defensive maths.

Defence and Escape

Defence before attack. Understanding what is being done to you is the prerequisite for using this responsibly.

Defend the configuration, not the grip. There is no grip to fight — the hands are hidden beneath the foot. Everything reliable happens before the foot is trapped against the neck.

Do not rely on the heel slip. Pointing the toe and slipping the heel is the correct answer to a standard heel hook and it is specifically what this grip was built to beat. It also does not matter whether your toes are pointed or flexed — the wedge works either way.

Do not straighten the leg to relieve it. The instinct is to extend, and extending walks you into a kneebar. If the leg is going to move it has to come out, not out-and-straight.

Deny the inside space. The X-flex configuration is what holds you there. Recovering the shin against the attacker’s inner thigh addresses the submission’s positional requirement, which is the only durable answer.

The Grip

The grip is the technique, so it is worth stating on its own.

The ball of the opponent’s foot goes underneath your neck, with your elbow framing to support and hold it in place. The elbow then reaches deep across and the hands connect — pinky-to-pinky, or by taking the big toe — forming a solid wedge under the foot.

The lower palm presses the heel bone. Because the hands sit beneath the foot rather than around the heel, the defender has nothing to hand-fight and no angle from which to kick out.

Setup and Entry

From the X-flex configuration

The home position. Get the hips above the opponent’s knee, inside foot on their inner thigh, outside leg over and hooked under the far leg. From there the foot is already close to the shoulder and the grip is a short movement rather than a fight.

When the heel hook is defended

The common practical entry. A defender who points the toe and hides the heel has answered the heel hook and not this — the heel only has to travel from where it is to your neck, which is a much shorter distance than the standard grip needs.

The Mechanics

Hips above the knee. The position is established from above the knee line rather than beside it. Without that the foot never reaches the shoulder.

Trap the foot with the head. The head and shoulder hold the foot straight. That trap plus the wedge is what stops the foot rotating away, which is what a heel hook defence relies on.

Collapse the elbow, drop the shoulder. The finish is not a pull. The elbow comes in and the shoulder drops toward the floor, and the foot rotates around the neck.

Turn slightly outward for the knee. The same grip loads the Achilles on its own; a small outward turn adds the knee. Both structures are live, which is why the finish is applied as a press rather than a crank.

Position Requirements

Hips above the opponent’s knee. The defining requirement, and the reason X-flex exists.

The foot reachable to the shoulder line. If the foot is at armpit height you are building a heel hook, not this.

Inside space held. The X-flex configuration prevents extraction while the grip is built.

Common Errors

Treating it as a calf attack. It is not one. The target is the foot and the knee; nothing about this submission compresses the calf, and confusing the two leads people to hunt a fulcrum behind the knee that this technique does not use.

Gripping around the heel. That is the heel hook grip and it hands back the hand-fight and the heel slip. The hands belong beneath the foot as a wedge.

Finishing with the arms. Pulling with the arms moves the foot without loading it. The shoulder drop is the force.

Attacking from beside the knee. Without the hips above the knee the foot cannot reach the neck, and the whole advantage disappears.

Drilling Notes

Drill the X-flex configuration before the grip. The grip is short and simple once the hips are above the knee, and impossible when they are not.

Drill it against a partner actively using the heel-slip defence, since beating that defence is the entire reason the technique exists — drilling against a passive foot teaches nothing about what it is for.

Agree the tap on the grip closing. There is no struggle to warn either player, which makes this one of the few submissions where the usual “tap when it starts to hurt” instruction is genuinely unsafe.

Ability Level Guidance

Advanced. The grip is learnable quickly; getting the hips above the knee against a resisting opponent, and recognising the moment a defended heel hook has offered the shorter path, is not.

Ruleset Context

The Mikey lock loads the knee through rotation as well as the foot, which places it with the heel hooks rather than with the straight ankle lock for ruleset purposes — legal in ADCC and submission-only, restricted where knee-rotation attacks are. Check the ruleset’s treatment of rotational knee attacks rather than its footlock rules.

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