Electric Chair
Electric chair — from the lockdown in half guard, the far leg is carried to the shoulder and the lockdown stretched out to split the hips.
Adapted from InGrappling, Electric Chair. System Games did not invent this curriculum.
Manage injuries →Position map Connects to 2 positions across 2 relationshipsOpen in the map →12←Attacked from
The electric chair is a groin and adductor stretch applied from the lockdown in half guard. The bottom player holds the lockdown on the top player’s near leg — the figure-four entanglement with the feet hooked so the trapped leg can be stretched out — takes an underhook on the near side, and carries the top player’s far leg up over their own shoulder. Extending the lockdown while driving forward splits the top player’s legs apart and loads the groin.
The attack target is the adductor group, the groin, and the hip flexors of the split. The top player’s two legs are held on separate control points: the near leg entangled in the lockdown and travelling away, the far leg held on the shoulder line and travelling forward. Everything the submission does comes from driving those two control points apart.
The electric chair is both a submission and a sweep from the same platform. Extending against the split finishes the hold; a top player who turns out of the stretch to relieve the groin surrenders their base and is swept. The top player cannot answer both at once — holding still keeps them in the split, and turning away concedes top position.
Flexible opponents ride the stretch. A player with open hips absorbs the split well past the point where a stiffer opponent taps, which is why the electric chair earns its keep as much through the sweep threat as through the finish.
Ruleset contextADCC Legal IBJJF No-Gi Varies May fall under leg lock restrictions depending on configuration — verify current rulesSafety First
Elevated RiskElectric Chair is an elevated risk technique. The electric chair forces the hips into abduction with the legs split apart — one leg stretched out by the lockdown, the other held up on the shoulder line. The load lands on the adductor group, the groin, and the hip flexors, where strains and tears occur. Risk is elevated because the force is a whole-body extension that is difficult to modulate precisely, and muscle-tendon tissue under stretch signals less unambiguously than a joint under rotation — the tissue can be loaded past tolerance before the defender reads it as pain. Serious injury can occur varies — adductor strain can arrive with little warning once the hips reach end range.
If you are new to this technique: read this section before anything else. Understanding the danger is part of understanding the technique.