NORTH-SOUTH KIMURA

The north-south kimura is the figure-four shoulder lock executed from the north-south top position, attacking the opponent's arm from a perpendicular angle rather than from inside the guard. The technique is one of the most reliable submissions from the north-south position and one of the few top-position shoulder locks that works equally well in gi and no-gi formats.

The entry is established when the bottom player's near-side arm has been pulled or pushed across their own body — typically because the bottom player is defending a north-south choke setup or has reached up to frame against the attacker's hips. The attacker traps the wrist of the exposed arm with one hand, threads the other arm under the elbow and over the back, and locks the figure-four grip. The finish involves walking the hips perpendicular to the trapped arm and rotating the shoulder toward the bottom player's head — the standard kimura finishing direction, but executed from above rather than below.

What makes the north-south kimura particularly devastating is its position within the north-south chain (north-south choke, north-south kimura, north-south armbar) where any defensive response to one threat opens the other two. Marcelo Garcia's north-south game featured the kimura as the natural follow-up when the choke was defended; Roger Gracie's kesa-gatame and north-south top control used the kimura as the primary submission from the position. Defensively the technique is escaped by preventing the wrist from being trapped (keep both arms tight to the centerline from the bottom of north-south), by rolling toward the attacker as the figure-four closes, or by tap-to-grip when the rotation has fully engaged.