Kimura Grip Entries from North South Guard and Turtle (Submission Grappling Personal Training)
- jamie03066
- Aug 14
- 9 min read
Submission Grappling
The kimura grip looks simple until somebody refuses to give you their arm.
That was the theme of this private lesson. My couple client continued their submission grappling work with the same bigger goal we’ve been chasing for a while: better hip control. This time, we used that goal to build something more specific, getting to the kimura grip from three common places: North South, guard, and turtle.
The kimura grip is one of those holds that shows up everywhere. One hand controls the other person’s wrist. The second arm wraps over or around their arm and grabs your own wrist, making a strong figure-four shape. Once you’ve got it, you can attack the shoulder, use it to turn them, stop them posting a hand, or create room to move.
But the grip itself isn’t magic. If the hips are too loose, the other person can turn, hide the elbow, or run their body around the trapped arm. So the lesson wasn’t “grab harder”. It was about learning where the body has to be before the grip becomes available.
We used constraints-led games for that. In plain English, that means small sparring games with limits. Instead of drilling a perfect move against a still partner, you set a clear job, reduce the number of options, and let the body solve the problem under pressure.
That matters, especially in a private setting with two people training together. You get enough repetition to improve, but it still feels alive. There’s feedback every round. You learn when something works because the other person is actually trying to stop it.
The kimura grip starts before the hands connect
A common mistake with the kimura is thinking of it as a grip first and a body position second.
It’s usually the other way round.
The grip becomes much easier when three things are already happening:
Their elbow has drifted away from their ribs.
Their shoulder line is being turned or pinned.
Your hips are placed so they can’t simply follow the trapped arm.
If those pieces are missing, the other person can usually straighten the arm, roll their shoulder free, or turn towards you. Even if you manage to clasp your hands, you’ll feel like you’re wrestling the arm on its own.
That’s tiring, and against anyone calm, it often fails.
So we treated the kimura as a control position first. The finish was optional. The grip was the goal, but the real lesson was how to make the grip appear.
That’s where the hip control came in.
Good hip control in grappling doesn’t mean squeezing with your legs as hard as possible. It means placing your pelvis, knees, and weight in a way that limits the other person’s next movement. If their hips can turn freely, their shoulders can usually follow. If their hips are slowed down, the shoulders become easier to manage.
For a couple training together, this is a useful way to frame progress. You don’t have to smash each other to make the lesson real. You can play the position, test the movement, and slowly raise the resistance.
The kimura grip then becomes a sign that you’ve controlled the right space.
Building the grip from North South
We began with North South because it gives a clear view of how the shoulders and hips connect.
North South is the position where one person is on top, with their chest facing over the bottom person’s head rather than facing their chest. It can feel strange at first because both people are facing opposite directions. The top person’s head is near the bottom person’s hips, and their hips are near the bottom person’s head.
It’s a strong position for attacking the kimura because the bottom person often has to move their arms to frame, push, or turn. Those reactions can expose the elbow.
Before chasing the grip, we broke the position into a few simple jobs.
The top person had to:
Keep their weight connected without lying flat.
Stay near the head and shoulder line.
Stop the bottom person turning freely onto their side.
Notice when an arm separated from the body.
The bottom person had to:
Turn towards a side.
Build a frame with one or both arms.
Try to recover space without giving up the arm too easily.
That gave us the first game.
Game one: find the elbow
The top person wasn’t allowed to finish anything. Their whole task was to make the bottom person put an elbow away from the ribs, then touch or cup that elbow before resetting.
This is a small goal, but it teaches a big skill. You start to see the grip before it exists. You notice how people push, where they post their hand, and when their arm becomes available.
The bottom person gets a useful lesson too. They learn which frames are safe and which ones make the shoulder vulnerable.
Game two: connect the hands
Once the top person could consistently find the elbow, the next goal was to connect the kimura grip. No finish. No crank. Just get wrist control, thread the second arm through, and lock the hands.
The key detail was staying heavy enough through the upper body while keeping the hips mobile. If the top person’s hips floated too far away, the bottom person could turn. If the top person collapsed too much weight forward, they lost the angle for the arm.
A good cue here was:
Don’t reach for the kimura from far away. Move your body until the arm is close.
That sounds almost too obvious, but it changes the whole feeling. The arms stop doing all the work. The chest, ribs, and hips help trap the space first. The hands join after.
Game three: keep the grip while they move
The final North South game was about holding the grip as the bottom person tried to turn or sit up.
This is where the couple format worked nicely. Both partners got to feel the same problem from both sides. One person learned how to hide the elbow and turn the hips. The other learned how to follow without panicking or yanking.
That’s more useful than just finishing the lock ten times on a still partner.
Repeating the idea from guard
After North South, we repeated the same concept from guard.
Guard is the position where the person underneath uses their legs to control the person on top. There are many versions of guard, but for this lesson we kept it simple. The bottom person was using their legs and hips to manage distance while looking for the kimura grip when the top person placed a hand on the mat or let an elbow drift wide.
The kimura from guard is often taught as a fixed sequence:
Control the wrist.
Sit up.
Reach over the arm.
Lock the hands.
Angle the hips.
That order can work. But under resistance, the top person rarely gives a clean, still arm. They post, pull back, push the chest, or drive forward.
So we brought back the same idea from North South. Find the conditions first. Then take the grip.
The first guard game was simple. The person on bottom had to make the top person place a hand on the mat. The top person’s job was to keep posture without letting the hand become trapped.
This taught the bottom person to use their hips rather than just pull with the arms. Small hip movements changed the top person’s balance. Once balance changed, the hand often posted. Once the hand posted, the wrist became available.
The second game added the kimura grip. The bottom person could only score by getting the figure-four hold and turning slightly onto the hip. The top person could defend by straightening posture, bringing the elbow back, or circling the hand out before the grip formed.
The turning action mattered a lot.
If the bottom person stayed flat on their back, the grip felt weak. The top person could stack weight forward or pull the arm free. But when the bottom person moved onto one hip, their body lined up behind the grip. The arms stopped feeling isolated.
That’s the same lesson again in a different shape: the hips make the hands stronger.
This is where personal training can help a lot. In a normal class, it’s easy to copy the outline of the move and miss the small body angles. In a private lesson, you can pause the round, test one change, then go straight back into movement.
A small adjustment, like moving the hips five centimetres off-centre, can make the difference between a grip that slips and a grip that controls.
Finding the kimura from turtle
The final position was turtle.
Turtle is when a person is on hands and knees, usually protecting their neck and arms while the other person attacks from the outside. It’s a common position because people often turn to their knees when they’re escaping pins, defending takedowns, or trying to avoid having their back taken.
The kimura from turtle can happen when the defender posts an arm, reaches to block a hook, or leaves space between elbow and ribs.
Again, we didn’t begin with the lock. We began with control.
For the attacking person, the first job was to stay attached without sliding too far over the top. If they leaned too high, the turtle player could roll or shake them off. If they stayed too low and too far back, they couldn’t reach the arm.
The second job was to control the near-side hip. That didn’t mean pinning it completely. It meant staying close enough that the bottom person couldn’t freely turn and square up.
The first game from turtle was about exposure.
The person in turtle tried to move, turn, and protect both elbows. The attacker tried to make one elbow separate from the body. No submissions. No rushing. Just create the opening.
A few common openings appeared:
The turtle player posted a hand to stop being turned.
They reached back to block the attacker’s leg.
They widened the elbow while trying to build back to their knees.
They tried to face the attacker and left the arm behind.
Once those reactions appeared, we added the grip.
The attacker had to trap wrist first, then connect the second hand for the kimura grip. The turtle player had to either hide the elbow, roll at the right time, or turn their body so the trapped arm no longer stayed isolated.
This made the position feel much less like a memorised move and more like a conversation.
One partner asks a question with pressure. The other answers by moving. That answer creates the next chance.
The safest and most useful part of this work was that the grip became a control point rather than an immediate finish. With shoulder locks, that matters. The shoulder is a mobile joint, but it doesn’t enjoy sudden force at the end of its range. Good training means giving time to tap, moving with control, and treating the catch as the win during learning rounds.
Why constraints-led games worked so well here
Traditional drilling has value. If someone has never seen a kimura grip before, they need to know where the hands go. A clear demonstration helps.
But once the basic shape is understood, live problems matter.
Motor learning research often supports the idea that people learn movement skills better when they practise solving real tasks, not just copying shapes. Grappling is full of changing pressure, balance, timing, and reaction. A grip that works on a still partner can fall apart when the other person moves.
That’s why constraints-led games fit this lesson so well.
The rules were narrow enough to keep everyone focused:
Find the elbow.
Connect the grip.
Hold the grip while the partner moves.
Reset before the finish becomes messy.
But the movement stayed real enough to teach timing.
For couples training together, this style also keeps the energy right. You’re not trying to “win” every exchange. You’re giving each other honest looks. One person resists enough to help their partner learn, then increases the difficulty when the skill starts to settle.
It also makes progress easier to feel.
At the start, the kimura grip might appear only when the other person makes a big mistake. By the end, it starts appearing from smaller reactions. The elbow opens slightly. The wrist lingers for a second. The hips turn at the wrong time. The grip is there.
That’s a real improvement.
The main takeaway from the lesson
The lesson wasn’t really about collecting three kimura entries. It was about understanding how one grip changes across three positions.
From North South, the top person used weight and shoulder control to expose the arm.
From guard, the bottom person used hip movement and balance to make the hand post.
From turtle, the attacker used attachment and hip control to stop the defender turning freely.
Different positions, same thread.
The kimura grip gets easier when the hips are controlled first. If the other person’s hips can turn without trouble, the trapped arm usually finds a way out. If the hips are slowed, blocked, or redirected, the shoulder becomes easier to isolate and the grip becomes much more reliable.
That’s a useful lesson for anyone learning grappling privately with a partner. You don’t need hundreds of techniques at once. You need a few strong ideas that repeat across positions. The kimura is perfect for that because it teaches grip fighting, body angle, hip movement, control, and safe finishing habits all in one family of movements.
If you’d like structured coaching built around this kind of positional work, you can book a submission grappling private lesson.
The best sign of progress isn’t forcing the hold. It’s when the grip starts to appear because your body is already in the right place.
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