Submission legality across rulesets

Of the 24 techniques we track, an adult white belt in no-gi can use 12 under IBJJF rules, 14 at Grappling Industries, 20 at NAGA, and 21 at the ADCC Opens, counting only moves that are legal outright. Including moves legal with conditions, the counts are 12, 14, 21, and 22.

Published 2026-10-24. Data as of 2026-10-22. Counts are of the 24 techniques in this matrix, not of every move in grappling.

Key findings

• 11 of the 24 techniques are banned in at least one of the four adult beginner no-gi divisions and allowed in another: wrist lock, bicep slicer, calf slicer, knee bar, toe hold, heel hook, knee reaping, neck crank, twister (spinal lock), body compression with the legs, and scissor takedown (kani basami).
• Heel hooks for beginners: of those four divisions, only the ADCC Opens adults, beginner/intermediate (white to purple belt) division allows them. The ADCC Opens masters beginner/intermediate division bans them.
• In the gi, heel hooks stay illegal even at brown and black belt under all 3 gi rulesets we track (IBJJF, Grappling Industries, and NAGA). They open up only in no-gi.
• Slams are illegal in 31 of the 32 divisions. The exception is the ADCC World Championship and Trials (general rules), and there only for an athlete caught in a locked submission.
• For the youngest kids, IBJJF bans the omoplata, the triangle choke (pulling the head), the arm triangle (incl. D’Arce, anaconda), and the guillotine (on the ground) at ages 4–12, which the ADCC Opens kids, Grappling Industries under-18 and NAGA kids divisions all allow, some with conditions. Only the armbar and the kimura / americana are legal outright in all four.
• 18 of the 768 cells (2.3%) are marked "not specified by rulebook": the document does not address the move, so we do not guess.

Download: CSV, one row per cell with the rule reference · CSV as a matrix · JSON with sources. For every Open BJJ submission page under IBJJF rules, see submission legality by belt.

Sources

Every document was downloaded on 2026-10-22. The SHA-256 of each file is in the JSON download, so a changed rulebook can be spotted.

• IBJJF: IBJJF Rules Book (Technical Fouls – Illegal Moves table)Version 6.1, dated 2024-06. Document · Page that links it
• ADCC: ADCC Rules and RegulationsADCC_Rules_2026_10-19, dated 2026-10-19. Document · Page that links it
• ADCC: ADCC Opens Legal Techniques by DivisionUpdated 7/20/2026, dated 2026-07-20. Document · Page that links it
• Grappling Industries: Grappling Industries Rulebook (Legal Techniques chart)G.I Rulebook - 2026/02/09, dated 2026-02-09. Document · Page that links it
• NAGA: NAGA Rules (No Gi and Gi legal / illegal techniques)Copyright 2023 edition (PDF modified 2024-07-11), dated 2024-07-11. Document

Methodology & limitations

• Only official documents published by each organiser were used; no blogs, summaries or forum posts. Each table was transcribed with AI assistance into Open BJJ's data and checked cell by cell against the cited PDF pages in independent review passes. The IBJJF columns use the same illegal-moves table as the rest of Open BJJ (Rule Book v6.1). Every count on this page is computed from that data when the site is built. The JSON download carries every cell's rule reference and each document's SHA-256.
• A move counts as legal or illegal when the document names it, or names a category it plainly belongs to: a rear naked choke under "any kind of choke", a knee bar under "any leg lock". Calls that are less obvious carry a note: an omoplata as a shoulder lock, a twister or neck crank as a spinal lock, a calf slicer under "any leg lock" and a bicep slicer under "any arm bar". Anything else is "not specified by rulebook".
• "Legal with conditions" means the document allows the move only from certain positions or under a stated condition: no guillotine from the top of the mount, the gogoplata only from the bottom, a hand on the mat before a scissor takedown. Limits on how a lock is turned, such as an ankle lock applied to the outside, are given as notes: NAGA's gi ankle lock "to the outside", its teen ankle lock with no reaping, and its brown and black belt toe hold "applied to the inside".
• IBJJF penalises a hold "prohibited for his/her respective division, as indicated in the following table", so a submission absent from the table (armbar, rear naked choke, kimura, gogoplata) is read as legal. The table adds that its images "do not represent the full array of prohibited technical situations and variations", so that reading is ours, not a guarantee. The table has no neck-crank row; we read neck cranks under "Spinal lock without choke", as the site does for the can opener. A crank combined with a choke falls under "Choke with spinal lock", legal from ages 16–17 and adult white belt.
• ADCC: the World Championship and Trials column uses the general section of the ADCC Rules and Regulations as published on adcc-official.com, the site that runs the ADCC Opens; adcombat.com refused automated downloads. The Opens columns use the ADCC Opens legal-techniques grid (updated 2026-07-20). It agrees with the Opens rule modifications in the rules PDF except on reaping, which the PDF lists as legal for teens without the grid's locked and unlocked split; we follow the grid. For adults the Opens modification only removes techniques (p. 14), and its grid lists calf and bicep slicers as legal for every adult and masters division, which supports reading slicers under the general rules' "any leg lock" and "any arm bar". Otherwise the Opens are a separate event tier, so the grid is not read back into the World Championship rules: knee reaping, leg splits, body compressions and scissor takedowns are not a category the general rules name, and stay "not specified". The rules PDF puts masters at 30+, the Opens web page at 35+.
• Grappling Industries heads its chart columns with belt-colour icons; we read them as under 18, white, blue plus purple (gi), and purple (no-gi) plus brown and black. NAGA publishes gi and no-gi charts and about 40 pages of gi rules (pp. 80–119); the cells use both. Neither the gi chart nor the gi rules name the kimura or, for adults, the arm triangle, so those gi cells are unspecified.
• Not covered: EBI and Combat Jiu-Jitsu (ebi.com refused automated requests) and JJWL (jjwl.com could not be reached), so neither is in the matrix. The matrix also leaves out non-submission fouls (jumping guard, stalling, gi grips) and match times.
• Rulebooks change, events can publish their own variations, and referees decide edge cases. Spotted an error? Email contact@open-bjj.com.