A tough submission hold, the legspread starts out the same way a spladle does. The attacking wrestlerette hooks one of her opponent’s legs with her legs and the other with her arms from behind. Then, instead of flipping her opponent backward and pulling her legs over, she leaves her in an upright position and pulls her legs apart.

A legspread can be applied in different ways too, like when the victim is on her back on the mat or in just about any other position, depending on how the attacker can slip the hold on her.

Possible escapes: If you’re put in a legspread, you’d better show extreme flexibility or you’ll very soon find yourself extremely eager to declare your surrender. Once the hold is locked on and sunk in well enough, you won’t really go anywhere without a submission, unless you are very flexible and it doesn’t really bother you to sit around like that all day long. In that case, your opponent may notice she’s not causing you any distress and might break the hold on her own.

Rating: Normally, I’d say this hold is an extremely efficient way of squeezing a submission out of your opponent. However, given the fact that being extremely flexible completely defeats its purpose, and that many female wrestlers have dance or gymnastics backgrounds, I’ll have to say it is very efficient in some of the cases.