A kimura is a submission hold that attacks the shoulder by bending an opponent's arm behind their back and rotating it inward past the point the joint can safely turn. What makes it unusual among submissions is that fighters reach it from two opposite starting positions — pinning an opponent from on top, or trapping an arm from underneath — and the setup looks almost nothing alike depending on which one it is.
What the hold actually does
The attacker takes a two-handed grip on the opponent's wrist and forearm, folds that arm behind the opponent's back, and then uses both arms and their hips to rotate the shoulder joint inward. The shoulder is a ball-and-socket joint with a wide range of motion, but internal rotation — the specific direction a kimura forces it — runs out quickly once the arm is pinned behind the back, and the hold finishes by taking that rotation past where the joint, not the muscle, can stop it.
It's sometimes called a double wristlock because the grip looks like it's attacking the wrist, but the wrist is just the handle; the joint actually in danger is the shoulder, further up the arm. A fighter can have a strong wrist and forearm and still be forced to tap, because no amount of grip strength changes how far a shoulder can rotate.
Setup one: from the top, pinning an arm to the mat
The more common setup starts with the attacker on top in a position called side control — lying across the opponent's torso, chest to ribs, with the opponent flat on their back underneath. If the opponent's arm ends up bent with the elbow near their own hip, the attacker traps that wrist, steps or slides a leg over the opponent's head for extra control, and uses that top position's weight and leverage to crank the shoulder.
From the top, the kimura functions as much as a control tool as a finishing one. Even when the opponent manages to defend the actual submission, being caught in a kimura grip from side control pins their arm and torso in place, which can set up a transition to a more dangerous hold or simply stall their ability to escape the position. That's part of why you'll see this version attempted constantly over the course of a fight without necessarily ending it. For more on why side control is such a good base for an attack like this, see ground positions, explained.
Setup two: from the bottom, off guard
The second setup starts from the opposite position entirely. A fighter on their back, with an opponent's upper body between their legs — a position called guard — can trap one of the opponent's arms with both of their own hands and roll onto their side, swinging their legs around to add rotational force while lying on the mat. This version is often called a kimura from guard, and it relies on the bottom fighter's hip movement and timing far more than on pure strength, since they're generating leverage while lying on their back rather than pinning from on top.
A kimura attempted from guard is also commonly used to set up a sweep — reversing position from bottom to top — rather than just the submission itself. A top fighter who feels their arm getting trapped this way often has to choose between defending the shoulder and defending the sweep, and sometimes can't do both.
Why it finishes less often than it's attempted
Unlike a choke, which can work through sheer pressure even if the exact grip isn't textbook-perfect, a kimura needs a specific angle on the shoulder to do anything at all. If the attacker can't get the opponent's arm bent to roughly a right angle and pinned behind the back before applying rotation, there's effectively no leverage, no matter how hard they pull.
That specificity is also what makes the kimura escapable in ways an armbar sometimes isn't. An opponent who feels the grip closing can often rotate their own body toward the attacker, re-bend the elbow to relieve the angle, or use the trapped position to attempt their own sweep before the rotation gets dangerous. Experienced grapplers treat a kimura attempt as a four-way contest — tap, escape, reverse, or finish — rather than a lock that's either on or isn't.
A real example of the top-position version
Kayla Harrison finished Julianna Peña with a kimura at UFC 316 in June 2025 to win the women's bantamweight title, a finish built on Harrison's background in judo, where variations of the same shoulder lock are legal on the feet as well as the ground. The fight is a useful reference for the top-position setup described above: Harrison used her wrestling and clinch control to get into a dominant position first, and the kimura followed directly from that control rather than appearing out of nowhere.
How to tell which version you're watching
| From the top | From guard | |
|---|---|---|
| Who's on top | The attacker | The opponent |
| Primary position | Side control | Guard |
| Main leverage source | Body weight pinning the arm | Hip rotation and leg movement |
| Common secondary outcome | Stalls the opponent, sets up a transition | Sets up a sweep to top position |
Both versions attack the exact same joint in the exact same direction — only the body positions generating the force are reversed.
The takeaway: when a kimura grip appears, check who's on top before assuming what happens next — the same shoulder lock serves a pinning fighter on top as a control-and-finish tool and a fighter on the bottom as a finish-or-sweep option, and reading which position it's coming from tells you what the fighter without the grip actually has to defend against.