Jeff Glover's Hanging Triangle: A BJJ Setup Lesson
When this Jeff Glover clip first ran on Jiu Jitsu Style in March 2015, the framing was about as small as a technique post can be — a quick note, a video, and a heading that read "Mr Glover teaches…
Words: Jiu Jitsu Style
When this Jeff Glover clip first ran on Jiu Jitsu Style in March 2015, the framing was about as small as a technique post can be — a quick note, a video, and a heading that read "Mr Glover teaches the concepts on how to set up the hanging triangle." Eleven years on, the clip has aged the way Glover himself has: a touch out of step with the gi-and-IBJJF mainstream when he first showed it, and quietly correct about the direction BJJ was heading the whole time. The hanging triangle isn't a trick. It is the position he built around the way he likes to fight, and it's a lesson in how a serious Jiu Jitsu game gets stitched together from one good idea.
The shape of the setup is the part worth slowing down on. Glover isn't shooting a triangle from a textbook closed guard with both feet on the hips. He's hanging — sitting up, one arm overhooked, his weight loaded down on the trapped shoulder so that his training partner's posture has nowhere clean to go. From there the locking leg threads across the neck the way it does in any triangle, but the angle has been pre-built by the hang. Your partner can't stand up because your weight is on his arm. He can't posture because your overhook has him bent. He can't pass because your hips are already off-line. The triangle is sitting there waiting; Glover's job in the clip is simply to point at the door.
What makes the cue land is the same thing that makes the rest of his game land. Glover never tried to look like a normal Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt. He played donkey guard when the rest of the sport was learning the berimbolo. He hunted deep half from places nobody else would sit down in. He competed at Eddie Bravo Invitationals with one foot in the no-gi underground and one in the IBJJF mainstream, and he was happy to lose a couple of matches to keep playing his game on his terms. The hanging triangle fits that catalogue exactly: it is a submission you can only set up if you're willing to commit your weight, your grips and your posture to one specific story about the fight.
How the hanging triangle aged into the modern BJJ game
A decade ago, the hanging triangle had a reputation as a Glover special — a position only he could really pull off, against opponents who didn't know what he was about to do. That has not held up. Mikey Musumeci finishes triangles from inverted angles that would have made a 2015 coach roll their eyes. Ffion Davies attacks the head and arm from positions her partners think are stalemates. The Ruotolo brothers, Tainan Dalpra and Cole Abate all live in some version of the lean-on-the-shoulder, off-balance-and-finish style of BJJ submission game that Glover was selling at EBI long before it had a marketing name. CJI brackets are full of competitors using the hang the way Glover did — to load weight onto a defending arm until the triangle is already three-quarters done.
Glover himself is still here too. Deluxe BJJ is producing competitors, his instructional work has migrated to the platforms the sport actually uses now — apps, YouTube, the long-form breakdowns BJJ Fanatics trained everyone to expect — and he's now closer to elder statesman of the creative no-gi scene than the eccentric outsider he was sometimes painted as. The hanging triangle is in his catalogue alongside the donkey guard and the deep half, and a fair slice of the modern no-gi guard game is using its DNA whether the credit lands on the label or not.
What the rest of us can take to the gym
For the rest of us, the lesson goes a little beyond the technique. The most-taught submission in Jiu Jitsu still has rooms full of upside if you're willing to be picky about what you load up before you lock it in. Try the hang in your next open-mat triangle attempt — sit up, overhook, get your weight on the trapped shoulder before the leg ever crosses the neck. Notice how much less your partner can do about the squeeze once their posture is already broken.
Drill the entry with a patient partner. Borrow the hang for your back takes, your arm drags, your guard pulls — the principle of loading weight onto the side you want to attack travels everywhere. And the next time someone tells you Jeff Glover's game is too weird to take seriously, point them at 2015, a quiet Jiu Jitsu Style clip, and a hanging triangle the rest of the sport eventually agreed was right.
See you on the mats.
Originally published in Jiu Jitsu Style, 3 March 2015. Refreshed for 2026.