Australian black belt and physiotherapist Lachlan Giles knows a thing or two about just how dangerous it is to use heel hooks in submissions.

A two-time ADCC veteran and the coach and teammate of famed Aussie submission machine Craig Jones, Giles is a qualified physio as well as a damn good leglock practitioner himself. 

He took to Facebook recently to dispel the myth that heel hooks are just as safe as any other submission attack, drawing on an example from his personal experience to prove his point. 

I often hear people make the analogy that heel hooks are no different to armbars in relation to the chance of getting injured. However this is simply untrue, and the consequences of injuring your knee are considerably worse.

While I have rarely seen anyone in training get injured from a heelhook, I would say about 50% of the time I see them in competition it results in an injury to the opponent.

There are a few reasons for this:

In training we tend to put them on slower, and tap a bit earlier. However in competition, once the heel is collected you will probably suffer damage even if you decide to tap. The reason is that an injury results from you moving the heel about 2cm in space. This takes only a fraction of a second (less time than it takes to recognise that your opponent is tapping). Compare this to your average armbar which you have to extend the wrist around 30cm through space, giving ample time to tap.

People tend to hold out on tapping a little longer in competition than they do in training, which makes the scenario even worse.

At Absolute we only allow heel hooks if both people are blue belt and above. Our white belts learn the technique so they can feel what the pressures are like, but are not allowed to apply them in training until blue belt.

In the video attached I put on a pretty nasty inside heel hook at the ADCC trials, in which my opponent elected to try to roll out of it at the time I think he should have tapped. I felt the knee go and he was in severe pain for some time after the incident. I'm sharing this video so people can see the consequences of not tapping to heel hooks.

Amazingly he was back around 6 months later and won the 2nd Asia/Oceania trials, securing his spot in ADCC.

Watch the match below: