Dean Lister achieved ADCC championship heavily utilizing leg locks, and thereby popularized leg locks in modern BJJ. Jon Danaher, who is the prolific teacher and leg lock aficionado who coaches and taught Gordon Ryan and Gary Tonon, was said to have been inspired to develop his leg locks by meeting Dean Lister. 

Before the Danaher “Ashi Garami” terminology became popular, returning it to Japanese terms, there was Dean Lister’s “Game Over” terminology which was very popular in the old-school leg locking period prior to the modern surge. This terminology is simple and easy to learn and I think it helped me to have a simple foundation to build on to learn the variety of modern leg locking positions and transitions.

Most people can apply it as soon as they learn it, finishing with the outside heel hook and fig 4 toe hold, whereas many students find it takes more time to learn to finish the inside heel hook from the 411 (inside-sangaku) side-saddle position.

Therefore, the outside heel hook checkmate trap with Dean Lister’s game over terminology should be the first heel hook you learn and build into your game, because it transitions perfectly off of the Single-X Guard Sweep and Straight Ankle-Lock techniques from the fundamentals 4 curriculum you should already know, or review. As you will see in the next video, it also chains perfectly from the modern checkmate trap kneebar as a back up position!

On the history of leg locking, the old-school leg locking positions and most of the modern leg locking is taken directly from Russian Sambo, which was drawing it’s techniques from Japanese JiuJitsu.

The Russian founder of Sambo spent time in Japan studying traditional Japanese JuJitsu and Judo which included leg locking at the time, and returned to Russia to teach what he had learn, hybridized with Russia’s tribal European wrestling styles. The resulting Russian grappling style was called Sambo.

Dean Lister wrestled in high school and his coach also knew Sambo, which he ended up competing in as well and became US national champion of Sambo.

Having the no-gi gripping skills of wrestling and the leg locking skills of Sambo allowed Dean to apply those skills together in no-gi BJJ submission grappling to stunning effect, winning the ADCC which is the highest level of competition in JiuJitsu today, and paving the way for the modern era of leg locking.