Heel Hooks & Leg Locks: A BJJ Seminar With Imanari

_By Mark Turville_

For as long as I've been obsessed with Jiu Jitsu and mixed martial arts, Imanari has been one of my favorite fighters, a style like no other. Nicknamed "Kamikaze Jiu Jitsu" for good reason, his grappling is high-risk, high-reward, the kind of thing you still pull up on YouTube on a slow night just to remember how it's done. Let the man anywhere near your legs in a fight and you'd better have packed a pair of crutches.

Back in 2016, when I took this seminar, a lot of gi academies in the UK still treated heel hooks like a dirty word, something you left for "the no-gi guys" and quietly avoided teaching your own students. A decade on, that attitude looks almost quaint. The Danaher Death Squad turned leg attacks into a finishing system, Craig Jones and the Ruotolo brothers built entire careers on the entries Imanari was demonstrating in this room, and Gordon Ryan made the position the cleanest endgame in the sport. The IBJJF eventually caught up too, allowing heel hooks at brown and black belt no-gi. What felt like forbidden knowledge back then is now the first module in every serious leg-lock instructional on BJJ Fanatics. This seminar was ahead of its time, I just didn't know it yet.

A Quiet Master of the Jiu Jitsu Leg Game

Imanari is a quiet man. His reputation precedes him, and you could tell just from looking around the mats that everyone in the room had the utmost respect for his abilities. Everybody there knew who he was; we'd all shown up to try and take away some of the secrets that make him one of the best in the game when it comes to attacking the legs.

There were roughly forty like-minded grapplers packed into the gym, true mat rats eager to absorb some of this legend's knowledge. We kicked off with one of Imanari's warm-up drills, rolling from leg to leg with our partners, and it wasn't until later that we realized how many different attacks he could launch out of that single movement. For the first few minutes there was a seed of doubt, a little voice going "what am I doing here," but after a few failed attempts and a fair amount of chuckling, I settled into the techniques. Looking round the room, it was reassuring to see grapplers of every level having fun with moves that none of us had ever used before.

Imanari took special care to get round everyone, giving each of us a good amount of time to absorb the work. He's a man of few words, I suspect he doesn't speak much English, but Jiu Jitsu is a universal language, and it was clear he could get his teaching across with ease even without saying much. Throughout the two hours we covered knee bars, heel hooks, toeholds and ankle locks. Some came naturally. Others needed, and honestly, still need, a lot more work to get the technique just right.

Two Hours of BJJ's Most Feared Leg Attacks

It was a genuine eye-opener just how many submissions live inside 50/50 guard alone. By the end of the seminar the room was buzzing with good vibes, full of guys who'd traveled from up and down the country just to make the most of the opportunity.

For me, that's one more Jiu Jitsu experience checked off the bucket list, with plenty more still to come. I'm hugely grateful to have learned direct from Imanari, and I still hope to showcase some of what I took from that session the next time I step out to compete. Ten years on, with leg locks all over every BJJ feed and instructional app going, I'm glad I got to learn them from the man who was doing it before it was cool.

See you on the mats.

Originally published in Jiu Jitsu Style, 6 November 2016, by Mark Turville. Refreshed for 2026.