Outside sankaku — the outside ashi triangle, or "OHH position" in the no-gi shorthand — is the mirror image of the saddle, built on the little-toe side of a trapped leg instead of the big-toe side. Where the saddle exists to remove the defender's counter-attack entirely, outside sankaku is the entanglement a real, ongoing coaching debate treats as the smarter bet: shallower, more escapable, and reachable far more often.
At the 2017 ADCC World Championship, in the opening round of the absolute division, Craig Jones dropped to the mat against Chael Sonnen, threaded both of his own legs around one of the former UFC title challenger's, closed the loop from the outside, and turned Sonnen's heel against the grain. The clock read 1:52. Jones stood up, and the tap that had just happened — quiet, fast, almost bored-looking on Jones's part — became one of the most-replayed submissions of the tournament. (Fight News Australia)
Jones had come up training under Lachlan Giles at Absolute MMA, and the shape he used on Sonnen was not improvised. It was the entanglement Giles had spent years refining as his own signature weapon: legs triangled around a single leg of the opponent from the outside — the little-toe side, not the big-toe side — hips squared toward the opponent rather than rotated away from him. A year or two later, Giles put a name and a full curriculum around that exact shape in an instructional built specifically to argue that it, not the more publicized inside entanglement the sport calls the saddle, deserved to be a grappler's first destination. The community settled on a name that borrows the Japanese word for triangle: outside sankaku.
It is not a lesser cousin of the saddle. It is the other branch of the same tree, built on opposite mechanics, finishing a different variant of the same submission, and defended by a genuinely different escape game — which is exactly why a real, ongoing coaching argument exists over which one a grappler should be chasing first.
Outside sankaku triangles the legs around the little-toe side of a trapped limb rather than the big-toe side — a shallower, more escapable hold than the saddle that finishes the outside heel hook, and the entanglement a documented current in modern no-gi coaching treats as the more reachable, more repeatable weapon precisely because it gives the defender a fighting chance.
The raw material is old. Ashi-garami — Japanese for "leg entanglement" — describes any position in which one grappler's legs trap and control a single leg of the opponent, and grappling arts have used some version of it for as long as they have fought on the ground: judo's newaza curriculum, catch wrestling's century-old ankle-and-knee game, and Soviet sambo all worked variations of it well before Brazilian jiu-jitsu treated the legs as a serious attacking target. — the Japanese word for triangle — is the more literal term applied to the moment an ashi-garami tightens into a genuine triangle configuration of the attacker's own legs, as opposed to a looser scissor or hook. The entanglement is, by most accounts, the traditional of the two — it is the shape most grapplers meet first, sitting on the same side of the leg a standard single-leg takedown or a butterfly sweep naturally produces, and it is the entanglement John Danaher's control hierarchy treats as an entry-level rung on the way toward the inside position. (See the companion and for that hierarchy in full.)
What outside sankaku did not have, for most of the sport's leg-lock revolution, was its own name and its own dedicated study. It was "outside ashi," a stop on the way to somewhere else — the position a Danaher-lineage competitor passed through before climbing to the saddle, not a destination in its own right.
Lachlan Giles changed that framing. The Melbourne-based black belt and head coach at Absolute MMA St Kilda — the same coach whose companion instructional The Saddle (BJJ Fanatics) treats the inside entanglement as its own subject, and who mentored Craig Jones through his formative years — built a competing system around the outside line instead. His instructional, Leg Lock Anthology: 50/50 (BJJ Fanatics, eight volumes, roughly eight hours of material), is built around three connected positions: 50/50 itself, outside sankaku, and 80/20 — a variant Giles teaches as the answer when an opponent blocks the reaping leg outright. The product description frames the whole release as the system behind his breakout run at the 2019 ADCC World Championship, where he entered the absolute bracket giving away significant size and left with a bronze medal. (BJJ Fanatics; BJJEE) Which specific opponent Giles finished from which specific entanglement that weekend is not pinned down cleanly in the sources available for this article — the companion saddle article treats the same run as evidence for the inside position, and this article does not resolve that ambiguity, only flags it (see Known open items). What is not ambiguous is that Giles built, named, and released a standalone curriculum with outside sankaku as one of its three pillars, and markets it explicitly as an alternative route to the top of the sport, not a lesser one.
The debate that instructional started is still visible in the sport's own forums. A widely-read r/bjj thread, titled plainly "Why I prefer 50/50 and outside sankaku over the saddle," lays out the practitioner-level version of the argument this article is built around: that the saddle's total control comes at the cost of being harder to reach, while 50/50 and outside sankaku trade some of that control for a position competitors can actually get to against a resisting opponent, more often, in real time. (r/bjj) That argument — control versus access — is the through-line of everything that follows.
Outside sankaku is defined by four choices, and each one is the mirror image of the equivalent choice in the saddle. Get all four right and the entanglement holds a real, if more contestable, threat. Get one wrong and it degrades into a loose outside ashi-garami — a leg held, not a leg controlled.
The trapped leg, isolated from the outside. The attacker's legs close around the little-toe side of the opponent's leg — the outside line, the side away from the opponent's own centerline. This is the entanglement most grapplers reach first, because it is the side a standing opponent's base naturally offers when a single-leg takedown, a butterfly sweep, or a scramble goes to the mat. It is mechanically easier to enter than the saddle's inside position, and that ease of entry is the position's entire competitive case.
The legs close in a genuine triangle. As with the saddle, community usage treats "outside ashi-garami" and "outside sankaku" as points on the same spectrum rather than strict synonyms: outside ashi-garami is the looser family of outside-line entanglements generally, while outside sankaku specifically describes the moment the attacker's own two legs lock into a closed triangle — a figure-four ring around the trapped thigh — rather than a scissor or a loose hook that a defender can still work a foot through. (InGrappling)
The hips square, not rotated away. This is the position's defining mechanical difference from the saddle, and it is what makes the escape game genuinely different rather than just a mirror-image drill. In the saddle, the attacker's hips rotate the defender's trapped leg internally, dragging the defender's whole lower body out of alignment with his upper body — the rotation itself is what removes his options. In outside sankaku, both grapplers' hips generally face the same direction; the attacker's control comes not from a rotated hip line but from a figure-four seal on the knee combined with the attacker's top leg blocking the defender's hip from elevating. It is a pin-and-block rather than a twist-and-drag. That difference sounds academic; it is not. A defender whose hips are square to the mat, rather than dragged out of alignment, retains a genuine option the saddle is specifically built to deny him: he can still work to elevate that hip, and elevating it is the single action that unravels the entanglement.
The knee sealed, the heel offered on a shallower angle. As in the saddle, the finish depends on controlling the knee before attacking the ankle — but the geometry of what happens once the heel is turned is different, and it is the reason the two variants of heel hook are not spoken of as equally dangerous. The outside heel hook loads the leg's lateral collateral ligament and the popliteal structures behind the knee, with the posterior cruciate coming under load as rotation increases — a real path to serious injury, and a submission the sport's own instructional material rates as an elevated-risk technique rather than a minor one. But the rotational path is the leg's more natural direction of travel, which is why the companion saddle article describes the outside heel hook as "shallower" and "more forgiving" than its inside counterpart: the same care and the same tap-early culture apply, but the margin for a defender who reacts in time is measurably wider.
No account of outside sankaku is complete without the IBJJF's definition of a reap: a competitor's leg crossing the opponent's knee line from the outside, generating inward pressure on that knee. That crossing motion is close to a structural description of how outside sankaku's control is built in the first place, which is why the position sits at the center of the sport's single clearest gi-versus-no-gi divide. Reaping has been prohibited in IBJJF gi competition at every belt level for the federation's entire history. It remains prohibited in gi after the 2021 rule change too — the update that legalized heel hooks and reaping applied only to adult brown and black belts in no-gi competition, effective 1 January 2021. (FloGrappling) The saddle's inside entanglement can, in some of its configurations, be built and held without ever crossing that specific line; outside sankaku's outside-crossing structure makes the reap close to unavoidable. In practice, that means outside sankaku is a no-gi-and-submission-only-format position in a stricter sense than its inside cousin — a fact worth knowing before a gi competitor drills it as a general leg-lock habit rather than a no-gi-specific tool.
The outside heel hook is the position's signature finish and the reason the entanglement carries the nickname "OHH position" in some corners of the no-gi world — a small, controlled internal rotation of the trapped foot against the loaded knee, applied only once the knee line is sealed. (InGrappling)
The straight ankle lock lives in the same control without the rotational commitment, and is legal under essentially every ruleset — the probing threat a defender has to respect even in a gi match, before the reap question ever arises.
The toe hold and calf slicer occupy the same neighborhood of secondary threats a defender's specific reaction can open, rather than attacks planned around from the start. (See the companion Toe Hold and Straight Ankle Lock articles.)
80/20 is the position's own answer to a defender who solves the reap directly — pins his own knee flat or blocks the crossing leg outright. Giles's instructional teaches it as the entanglement's escape valve: a different grip and angle on the same trapped leg that keeps the attack alive when the classic outside sankaku shape has been denied.
The unifying idea is the inverse of the saddle's: this entanglement gives the defender real, live options — an escapable hip, a defensible knee line, an entire sanctioned counter-game built around exactly those openings — and the attacker's job is to close them faster than the defender can find them, not to eliminate them outright.
By 2026, outside sankaku sits inside the same shared no-gi vocabulary as the saddle, but the coaching debate the position started has not resolved into consensus — it has hardened into two visible camps. One, downstream of Danaher's ashi-garami hierarchy, treats outside position as a waypoint to be climbed past on the way to the saddle's total control. The other, downstream of Giles's system, treats 50/50 and outside sankaku as legitimate, repeatable destinations that trade some finishing certainty for dramatically better access against a resisting, elite-level opponent — and argues that access, not theoretical control, is what actually wins matches.
Giancarlo Bodoni is a useful modern data point for the position's defensive side specifically. The Miami-born black belt, who trained under Rilion Gracie before joining John Danaher's New Wave Jiu-Jitsu in Austin, is a two-time ADCC World Champion at −88 kg (2022 and 2024) and, per at least one secondary source, the first competitor to win that division back-to-back. (The BJJ Story) Bodoni has been featured teaching outside-ashi-specific defense — recognizing the entanglement forming, timing the escape, and using boot-and-hip-elevation counters distinct from the saddle's turn-and-hide defense — material published through BJJEE. (BJJEE) That a Danaher-lineage, New Wave–affiliated champion teaches a dedicated defense for this specific entanglement, separate from general leg-lock defense, is itself evidence the position is treated as its own problem to solve rather than a footnote to the saddle.
The IBJJF's 2021 rule change did the same institutional work here that it did for the saddle: it pulled outside sankaku from a fringe, submission-only-format tactic into a required part of the curriculum for any brown or black belt preparing for IBJJF no-gi competition — with the added wrinkle, discussed above, that the reap definition keeps the position off the table in gi matches even after that change. Competitors now train the position knowing precisely which rooms it is legal in and which it is not, a level of ruleset literacy the leg game did not require a decade earlier.
Isolating bouts decided specifically by outside sankaku, as opposed to the broader outside-heel-hook family or a leg-lock scramble that resolved into it, is harder than the position's reputation suggests — commentary and highlight-reel titles tend to label the whole exchange loosely, a limitation the companion single-leg-X and saddle articles both flag for the same reason.
Beyond these three, outside heel hook finishes are common across the Danaher-lineage and Giles-lineage competitive record, but individual match dates, opponents, and confirmation of the specific entanglement (outside sankaku versus a looser outside ashi-garami) are not pinned down cleanly enough in the sources available for this article to state with false precision, and are left general rather than asserted.
White belt, under IBJJF rules, does not compete with heel hooks at all — no-gi legalization begins at brown belt, and the reap that defines this entanglement is banned in gi at every rank. What a white belt should learn is the shape and, more urgently, the defense: recognizing an outside leg entanglement forming and working to keep the hip mobile before the triangle locks.
Blue belt learns the straight ankle lock from the same outside position — legal at every belt and every ruleset — and starts building the entry habits (hip discipline, angle) that outside sankaku will later depend on, largely without heel-hooking.
Purple belt starts distinguishing outside ashi-garami, the loose family, from outside sankaku, the fully triangled configuration — and starts drilling the escape specifically, since the position's whole competitive argument is that a defender who knows what he is doing has a real way out.
Brown belt, the first rank the IBJJF permits to compete with the heel hook in no-gi, is where the position turns genuinely competitive. The brown belt studies both sides of the coaching debate this article opens with — when to chase the saddle's total control and when to take the faster, more escapable outside line instead — and starts making that call live, under pressure.
Black belt treats outside sankaku, 50/50, and the saddle as one connected network rather than competing systems, threatening whichever entanglement the opponent's defense actually offers rather than forcing a single preferred shape. For a black belt working from Giles's system specifically, 80/20 is the answer when the outside line is denied outright — the leg game does not run out of options, it reroutes.
Coral belt can explain, without notes, why the outside heel hook is described as the "more forgiving" of the two heel-hook variants, why the reap definition keeps this exact position out of gi competition at every rank, and which specific coaching lineage — Danaher's hierarchy or Giles's system — a given room's outside-sankaku instruction actually descends from.
1. Treating outside sankaku like the saddle. The single most common conceptual error. A grappler who reaches outside sankaku and then plays for the same total-control patience the saddle rewards is squandering the position's actual advantage — speed and access — while giving a live, mobile defender time to find the hip-elevation escape the saddle does not offer. Fix: recognize which entanglement you are in and finish faster from this one; it was never built to be held indefinitely.
2. Missing the knee seal before turning the heel. As with any ashi-garami, lunging for the ankle before the figure-four has actually pinned the knee lets a defender's hip mobility do the escaping for him. Fix: control precedes finish here exactly as it does in the saddle — the sequencing does not change even though the geometry does.
3. Forgetting the reap in gi training. A grappler who drills outside sankaku only as a general no-gi leg-lock habit and then reaches for the same shape in a gi round is one whistle away from a reaping disqualification, at any belt, in any IBJJF gi match. Fix: know the ruleset you are stepping onto the mat under before your legs do.
4. Ignoring the defender's hip as a live threat. Because outside sankaku's control depends on blocking hip elevation rather than rotating the hip away, an attacker who gets tunnel vision on the trapped ankle and stops managing that block is handing the defender the exact escape the position is built around. Fix: the hip block is not a one-time setup step — it is an ongoing job for the entire time the entanglement is live.
5. Assuming outside is simply "worse" than inside. Ranking outside sankaku as a lesser, fallback version of the saddle misreads the actual coaching debate. Reachability is a real competitive asset, not a consolation prize — Giles's own competitive record is the argument for that position, not against it. Fix: learn both, and learn to recognize which one a given scramble is actually offering rather than forcing the one you were taught to prefer.
At open mat this week, isolate the entry from the outside line specifically. Starting from a neutral scramble or a defended single-leg takedown with a same-rank partner, work only to build the outside triangle — hips square, figure-four sealed on the knee, top leg blocking hip elevation — while your partner's only job is to elevate that hip and recover a neutral base. No submissions attempted. Five-minute rounds, both sides.
Then isolate the escape on its own, since this is the half of the position most hobbyist training skips entirely. From a fully built outside sankaku, the defender's only job is finding and using the hip-elevation counter this article describes as the position's structural weak point relative to the saddle. Learn what that escape actually feels like from both sides before you ever add a submission attempt.
Finally, if your gym trains Giles's fuller system, drill the 80/20 transition: from a denied outside sankaku, where the defender has specifically blocked the reaping leg, work only the switch into 80/20 without resetting the entanglement from scratch. This is the sequence that turns a single position into a small system.
Repeat weekly for six weeks, and treat the ruleset question as part of the drill, not an afterthought: confirm out loud, before live rounds, whether reaping is legal in the room you are training in.
Outside sankaku is a leg-lock position first — the outside-line counterpart to a family of entanglements this article has repeatedly had to define itself against.
Every one of these is a position or system someone had to choose between and this one, specifically, in a live match. That choice — not a rulebook, not a coach's preference alone — is the map.
Publication date will be set at Sanity ingest. This log will be appended to over the life of the article. Any factual corrections will be dated and specific.
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Known open items:
saddle-position.md article treats the same tournament run as evidence for the inside position/saddle; this article treats it as evidence for the system behind Giles's later instructional, which markets itself against that same run but bundles 50/50, outside sankaku, and 80/20 together. The two articles' treatments of this shared event are not fully reconciled and editorial should decide whether to pin down per-match entanglements from primary footage before publish.