Across five key trends, this past weekend highlighted how athletes are refining their games to meet the modern demands of ADCC rulesets with regards to control, positional dominance, and risk calculation.Leg Locks Have More Or Less Evened OutIn the mid 2010's, the heel hook craze hit and by the late 2010's it felt like the inside heel hook was dominating competition. If someone was able to enter legs consistently, odds are they were chasing the inside heel hook nearly single-mindedly. Then the defenses caught up and by the early 2020's it was all about the outside heel hook.

Easier to get to, even if wasn't as strong - especially since so many athletes got better at finishing outside heel hooks. After that for a couple years we saw a big increase in straight ankle locks and Aokis, which are even easier to get to (but harder still to break). All this was being done with a big decrease in the other techniques as the larger focuses were clearly shifting and finding balance.Now, I think things have largely evened out (at least in terms of what people are attacking once they get into the legs).

Good leg lockers now need the ability to attack inside and outside attacks with variety, because one dimensional players are getting exposed by the defenders. There's definitely some space for specialists (for example, Reese LaFever is gonna be a killer with outside heel hooks for a while) but when you take the full data sample it seems very even. The next evolution we are seeing, as we broke down in a recent video, is instead coming in the form of entries and the breaking of the dogma around that.The Triangle Choke Was Key For Open Guard PlayersTo be a great no-gi guard player in 2026, you have to have a submission arsenal that covers both the upper body and lower body and that was evident at ADCC Trials.

The last round we saw intentional guard play, with no penalties, was in the semifinals and we saw two examples of the same submission - triangle choke. One was Dominic Mejia against Tristan Sainz, the other Lyzz Mitrovic against Joslyn Molina. This is a real sign of how important attacking upper body submissions is from off your back.The days of leg lock specialists is largely done, outside of a few outliers.

Now grapplers need to have ways to attack back up the body. We've seen the adoption of a lot of front headlock work to make up for this but now we are seeing a small uptick in the number of triangles from the guard. I think this will continue and maybe even increase as it continues to fill the gap for submission players that leg locks once dominated.The False Reap Era Is OverSadly, the time when a very good false reap was your ticket to winning an elite tournament is basically done.

While a few guys (for example Pawel Jaworski) still base their game around the powerful sequence, it's become largely figured out by top players. They've found ways to hide the far leg from entanglement, shut down the reap early, and smash it even when it does come in. The best example of this has to be Gianni Grippo, who used a counter from false reap to set up his winning back take.There's maybe no one better right now in no-gi better at shutting down leg entries and smashing them with hip pressure.

Grippo was using his tight passing all tournament and his combination of tight passing, back takes, and arm triangles were as good as ever. I think up and down the tournament, we saw a lot of evidence that relying on the false reap can be a crutch that now can be exploited.The No-Gi Passing Meta Is Basically Set In StoneIf you want to see the modern no-gi passing game done to the letter, look no further than Michael Sainz's weekend in Pomona. His passing work, especially against Jett Thompson and Max Hanson, is the meta that seems to have largely cracked how to break down talented guards over time.Start by establishing connection with low head position, gripping and posting until you can force your opponent onto their back - a seated opponent is much more mobile and harder to pin & control. Once they are flat, pummel around the legs to either a split squat or a fu