Systematic Submission Dilemmas Review: 3 Craig Jones Lessons

Do you have trouble entering the legs against defensive opponents? Chances are that they’re leaving open opportunities to attack their upper body. In Systematic submission dilemmas, Craig Jones shows how he combines triangles and leg locks, so his opponents are never safe. In this review I tell you exactly what this instructional is about and what I think of it.

Title	Systematic Submission Dilemmas: High Level Triangle And Leg Lock Combos
Instructor	Craig Jones
Total duration	7 hours and 27 minutes
Publication year	2020
Where to buy	Here on BJJ Fanatics

What’s this instructional about?

Systematic submission dilemmas has 3 main topics:

• Leg lock breaking mechanics
• Triangle finishing mechanics
• Combining upper body and lower body attacks (mainly triangles and leg locks)

Leg lock breaking mechanics

Craig Jones is the best teacher of leg lock breaking mechanics. He tells how he broke people’s legs in competition with every major leg lock (inside heel hook, outside heel hook, knee bar, toe hold and straight footlock).

I think this is a big deal. Many people achieve small tears in pops when they apply a heel hook, but Craig Jones had Vinny’s bones poking through his skin. And Vinny Magalhaes had never been heel hooked before by anyone.

I think it’s telling that he’s the only guy that uses the reverse rear naked grip (the one that he broke Vinny’s leg with), instead of the normal heel hook grip – which he says isn’t enough to actually break a leg.

Craig shares an infinite amount of important details here and I can’t possibly digest all of them yet. This section is one that I’ll have to keep coming back to for a long time as my leg locks get stronger and stronger.

Here’s an overview of the leg locks for which Craig explains the breaking mechanics:

• Inside heel hook
• Outside heel hook
• Knee bar
• Toe hold
• Straight footlock
• Straight footlock from 50/50
• Estima lock
• Reverse toe hold
• Aoki lock

Also read: Top 10 Best Craig Jones Instructionals (& 6 to Avoid)

The 5 triangles of death

Craig used to be known for triangles. He says it was his only submission up until brown belt, and he hit a flying triangle at ADCC 2017.

In this instructional he teaches the finishing mechanics of the triangle. But not only the normal front triangle, also 4 other variations of the triangle. I made an overview of these variations in below.

Normal front triangle / omote sankaku

Back triangle / ushiro sankaku

Reverse triangle / Gyaku sankaku

Side triangle / yoko sankaku

Hantai sankaku / inverted triangle

How to transition from upper body attacks to lower body attacks

More than half of this instructional is about entries. It’s about:

• Triangle entries from bottom
• Triangle entries from top
• Leg lock entries from bottom
• Leg lock entries from failed triangles
• Triangle entries from failed leg locks (This would have been super cool, but it’s not in there.)

All the leg lock entries are Craig’s bread and butter, so those are really good. The triangle entries from bottom are good too. I’m a little less confident in the triangle entries from top, because I haven’t actually seen him do those in competition. But they look good.

Is this instructional outdated?

I feel like some parts of the instructionals are a little outdated. For example, he doesn’t use the false reap here yet. I think that if he shot the instructional today, he’d probably at that in there somewhere. And I feel like the triangle entries from top are a little suspect. I think that nowadays he focuses more on top control, and he’d say that these entries are a little too risky.

However, most of this instructional is not outdated at all. Everything he shows still works. And this is still the best and most detailed instructional about leg lock finishing mechanics by far.

My experience with this instructional

This instructional is super dense, so I have to keep coming back to it for a long time. I already learned a lot from it, but to be honest, most of the leg lock mechanics went over my head. I’m pretty much able to understand 3 layers of details on this topic, and Craig shows like 12… So it’s a work in progress for me.

The triangles come pretty easy to me though (I have more experience with this). And the leg lock entries from failed triangles too.

My verdict

Should you buy systematic submission dilemmas? The answer is yes, if:

• You want to learn leg lock finishing mechanics. I really think this is the best product out there for this topic. Nobody broke more legs than Craig (not just popped them, but broke, catastrophic damage).
• You want to learn all the triangles. You could also get a Danaher dvd for this, but I think Craig summarises his teaching pretty nicely.
• You want to learn leg lock entries. I think you can learn those partly from other instructionals as well, but this is probably the most extensive overview he gives. (The only thing is that here he didn’t play the false reap yet, so you might want to pick up False Reap Accusations too.)