Jiu-jitsu, Accelerated 112421
Making your Strangulations more Effective: Understanding where to put pressure and how to leverage your body
Hey there, hope you’re having an incredible week!
This week’s email is going to go in depth into my favorite category submission: Chokes. Well, to be fair, wristlocks are a little more fun but strangles are where I get most of my successful submissions from, much more than armbars, shoulder locks, etc.
Chokes are an incredibly effective way of getting someone to give up. The idea is true that yes, you can still fight with broken limbs but you cannot fight when you’re unconscious. Therefore, chokes, in my opinion, will always be the best option for any fight/self-defense situation.
Now, most beginners have problems with chokes…
There’s some nuance behind them that goes way beyond just squeezing your arms together. Flexing your biceps won’t get you the choke and if it does, then congrats, you’ve probably got stellar biceps from being good at lifting weights. But, those biceps won’t get you good at strangulation if all you’re doing is flexing.
With that said, here are a few problems beginners have when attempting to choke:
Using too much strength, just flexing muscles and squeezing neck
Not understanding how to leverage your body
Weak grips [I actually didn’t cover this but I will write a note towards the end + another quick video!]
Not knowing where to apply pressure
Not understanding that “soft spot” where chokes happen almost instantly
In order to better explain, let’s clear something up:
A big misconception is that "chokes” are restricting air flow to the lungs. In other words, some people think that you’re looking to cease oxygen from getting to the lungs but this is false. You’re actually looking to restrict blood from getting to the brain from the heart via the carotid arteries.
With that said, chokes need to be applied to the carotid arteries and it needs to be done in the most effective way possible.
What you’ll find in this week’s email are 3 videos that will walk you through various principles regarding strangulations and how to apply them more effectively.
The first Video will be approximately 8.5 minutes walking you through some choke basics as well as how to leverage your body better with chokes from the rear.
The Second video will elaborate on some of these concepts with regard to the “North/South” choke.
The third will take you into some of these principles from the closed guard (Triangle and cross collar) which will show you how best to apply pressure on the neck. This should clean up your triangle SUBSTANTIALLY
BONUS: This week I also had a lesson with a student who wanted to learn how to train with less strength. I made a 10 minute video showing some ideas on how to better use redirection and off-balancing as well as a HUGE strategy I’ve had some success using with some of my students.
[Note: Going forward, most of the video content will be MUCH better quality unless I’m in a pinch. They’ll be mostly recorded with a more pro camera + a microphone. If I’m jammed up, then the iPad will have to do but for now, expect the quality to be much better]
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