Garry Tonon's BJJ Heel Hook From the Berimbolo
When we posted this Garry Tonon clip in November 2015, the caption we ran was one line long: how would Garry defend the berimbolo? With a heel hook, of course. At the time it read like a wink — a…
Words: Jiu Jitsu Style
When we posted this Garry Tonon clip in November 2015, the caption we ran was one line long: how would Garry defend the berimbolo? With a heel hook, of course. At the time it read like a wink — a bit of cheek from the New Jersey kid who'd already decided that the fashionable BJJ position of the moment was really just a leg lock waiting to happen. More than a decade on, that one line looks less like a joke and more like the whole modern leg game announcing itself early.
Watch it: Garry Tonon's heel hook from the berimbolo.
How the berimbolo hands you the heel hook
The idea is beautifully simple, which is why it has aged so well. Your training partner drops to the De La Riva hook and begins to spin underneath you, chasing the back the way every berimbolo player is taught to. Rather than sprint for the far hip or try to out-rotate the inversion — the honest, exhausting response most of us grew up on — Tonon lets the bottom player commit to the turn. The moment the inverting leg passes underneath and the outside foot floats up looking for its next grip, he sits into it, threads the entanglement, and takes the heel that the berimbolo has politely handed him. The position that was supposed to end on your back ends on his terms instead.
The principle sitting underneath the leg lock
What makes it more than a party trick is the principle sitting underneath it. Every aggressive attack in Jiu Jitsu is also an exposure for whoever has bothered to study the answer. A fast berimbolo has a half-beat where one leg is buried and the other is in the air — and for those few frames, the spinning player's foot is a finished leg-lock entry sitting out in the open. Tonon was one of the first people to show that out loud on a Jiu Jitsu page. The Danaher basement crew built an entire no-gi curriculum on the same read, the Ruotolo brothers grew up treating it as common sense, and today no serious berimbolo player shoots the entry without first having a quiet word with themselves about what their feet are offering.
How it reads in the modern BJJ leg game
Roll the tape to 2026 and the clip needs no updating at all. Heel hooks are legal everywhere that matters, ADCC and CJI podiums are decided by inside sankakus, and Gordon Ryan, Craig Jones, Mikey Musumeci and Ffion Davies have spent years reminding the sport what happens when the leg game meets a committed guard player. The exact shape Tonon filmed here — berimbolo goes, foot floats, entanglement closes — turns up on every modern no-gi card long enough to hit the ground. What was a slightly mischievous idea on a BJJ magazine page in 2015 is now first-chapter material on every serious leg-lock instructional.
The lesson that outlasts the technique
For the rest of us, the lesson outlasts the technique. Whatever you fear most on the bottom — the berimbolo, the deep half, the sweep you can't stop — is a counter that somebody, somewhere, has already filmed, usually a long time ago and usually with a quiet grin. The submissions haven't changed. The willingness to look at a flashy position from the other side is still what separates the people who get tapped by trends from the people who tap them. Garry Tonon was that person in 2015. Grab a partner who values their knee, drill the entry slowly, and learn to read the berimbolo as an invitation rather than a threat.
See you on the mats.
Originally published on Jiu Jitsu Style, 5 November 2015. Refreshed for 2026.