I’ve been watching Josh Barnett’s Attacking the guard, and coupled with something I read from SBGi’s Matt Thornton, I’ve been made a big believer in the department of submission prevention. Its the difference between having a fence on the cliff or an ambulance in the valley.  Practice shutting down submission techniques the moment the arise – it’s a good habit.  Waiting till the submission is set in is the equivalent of the college all-night cram session. Yes, you need to do it sometimes, but why not study attack the problem earlier? It’s a healthier, and more successful.

In this vein, I was thinking about the kimura and how to not let it happen.  Below are a few vids that touch on the “shut down as early as possible” theme.

Also check out Gene Simco’s technique (embedding was not allowed)  here.

Of course the real way to stop the kimura is to nerf the basing structure of your opponent and always maintain dominant grips – which is to say, stay in control.

I’d like to know your thoughts – how do *you* like to avoid the kimura and escape it if you get caught?

In that spirit, we spend last night’s class on only one submission, the KIMURA.  While we used the kimura in several different circumstances (breaking the grip of a back-to-belly hold, from the guard, etc) we spend a good deal of time with the half guard kimura.  Not only do I love the half guard kimura, but so does Krzysztof Soszynski.

Thankfully, the submission is much easier than spelling his name.

First, we over the basic points of the kimura, nicely summarized by Steven Kesting, of grapple arts renown.

To add to this, we discussed some variations.  If your opponent tries to pass to you back underneath your leg, you can use it to sweep or transition to an armbar.  Or if you’re wily enough,  sometimes get your outside leg rapped around the back and into the arm space your attacking, without them trying to pass underneath it.  Kinda like rubber guard … ish.  I love to try it because it baits people to pass under it, which leads to the aforementioned armbar.  Below, a video that explains that pretty darn well (check the last half, it’s 8 minute vid).

So to recap, here are the basic pointers of finishing the half guard kimura.

Keep tight on his arm, otherwise they’ll worm out of it.

After you slap on the kimura, get the wrist beyond (behind) their ribcage fast. Don’t slow down until they can’t grab onto something.  Being slow on the upward motion begs a block.

Keep the hand away from his thighs – even beginning grapplers will block you with the “scratch the groin” defense.  Prevent this in the first place.

After you get the arm on its way behind the back, to painville, get out from underneath the guy and get to the side.  Seeing the videos will make this clear.

Anyway, while rolling with one of the guys post instruction, I get caught in a solid kimura from half guard and was pleased to remember how much it hurts. However, with Christmas right around the corner, remember that it is far more blessed to give, than receive.

I’ve been watching The Ultimate Fighter on Spike and Cody McKenzine’s guillotine choke has been on my brain.  Cody hits the choke with a different grip and elbow position; it’s made me curious to know more.  Since Cody’s explanation of how he does the choke was two-seconds long, I’ve had to look elsewhere. Below, a video from Precision Martial Arts down in Texas, showing the basics of this variation.

The cool thing about this choke is that it just *hits* differently than a normal guillotine.  The top pressure a guy uses to try to escape interacts differently with your grip, you can finish the choke from unusual angles, etc.  One thing I like about it is that you don’t have to have the same hip control to tighten it.

As you can see on the left, Marc Stevens has passed Cody’s guard – and Cody has only partially kept Steven’s hips from swinging around by getting a hook on the outer leg (I think this is what’s called empty half guard). I’ve even seen guys tapped from clean side control, no hooks attached – although that’s uncommon.  On the right, you can see how a lot of guillotine’s from the guard get finished; by compressing the choke-arm’s elbow towards your own hip.

Another detail – the position of the supporting arm in the choke is varied.  On the right, you see how the elbow flares up and comes off the body while on the left (it’s sort of hidden) the supporting elbow can stay down and still provide leverage for the choke, as well as keeping the head caged up. From my experience, if the guy on the right sucked in his elbow towards his hips, it’d be easier to wriggle the head free.

I’ve heard some guys call this the prayer choke, palm to palm guillotine, or now – in Cody’s honor – some suggest we call it “the fisherman”.   McKenzine has a nice body for the choke – long, thin arms ; slender core and slightly concaved chest. The Diaz brothers have such frames too.

As I’ve been playing around with it, the grip has intrigued me.  Like Josh Koscheck points out, you’ve got to attack the grip to stop the choke, because hip position won’t necessarily do it.

Anywho, I’d like to know your thoughts and experiences – have you choked or been choked with this? How does it stack up to the regular guillotine? What name would you give this variation?

So I just returned from the movie theater, and let me tell you. My. Mind. Has. Been. Blown.

Enough to over use the periods in a trendy, ungrammatical way, something I almost never do. To put it in non-nerd terms, imagine your brain after seeing The Matrix for the first time.

Yes.

Whoa.

That type of mind-blow.

Anyway, there is this scene where gravity in the dream world has broken down and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Arthur) has have a bad-ass anti-grav fight in a hotel hallway (pictured above).  As the title suggests, there is a choke out via the cobra choke. The cool thing is we just practiced this choke up at the U of U MMA class last week! Fortuitous, right?

The cool thing is that there is an awesome transition from an arm triangle attempt.  Imagine you just can’t finish the arm triangle – it happens.  Instead of losing a really nice dominant position, you just reach around the head and grab the wrist, then feed your hand through his arm to grab your own forearm.

Now to finish, pull your opponents wrist towards the back of his head to snug up things, but don’t roll them over. The real umph is dropping your elbow towards the ground across the neck.  As long as the arm holding your own arm is anchored, you’ll be surprised how quickly cutting your forearm down forces the tap.  Like I said, too much pulling the opponent’s wrist behind the head actually sabotages your choking.  I think that this error comes out from guys who do gi jujitsu, because this choke is a lot like a scissor collar choke.

Remember though, the one arm (at least IMO) does the choking and the other stabilizes.

Here’s a vid showing a guy pulling off the cobra choke from the guard.

If you want more instruction on it, pick up a copy of Karo Parisyan’s book about Judo in MMA.

Image above from pic of the week, www.grapplearts.com

Preamble

The triangle is perhaps the most definitive move in Brazilian Jujitsu. (So say the Gracies, anyway).  In mixed martial arts, the triangle has earned its spot as one of the most effective submissions in the game.

That being said, I’ve been studying the triangle so I can get really good at it.  There are a lot of good resources, and of the ones I’m familiar with,  Ryan Hall’s triangle course is by far the most insightful.  If you’re in the market, I wouldn’t consider anything else – it’s put together well, the instruction is clean, and the tips are great.  A+. Once an assistant instructor started tapping me hard with Ryan’s version of the triangle, I was sold – I’ve escaped a number of triangles, but not these ones. In the video’s Ryan talks about biomechanics of posture, leverage, and other stuff that’ll blow your mind. Of course, if you want a free resource that is also super awesome, you could just consider reading the rest of the post.

Anyway, there are several elements that make a good triangle.  Setups, head control, arm control, attack angle, hip placement, etc.  You don’t have to everything right to tap someone, but the more elements you master, the higher your finishing percentage will be. If you have learned 2-3 things and apply them really well, you’ll be tapping out a lot of dudes. If you have 4-5 elements mastered, your triangle will be feared.

The Basic Move

The essence the triangle choke is trapping the head and one arm between your legs and then increasing pressure on the neck. Yep, that its it. Everything one does should revolve around that. The entry, the positioning, the finishing touches – it should all enable or amplify compression on the side of the neck after you cage up one arm and the head.

Below is a two-minute videos that goes over the basic move, just in case you need to be brought up to speed.

Setting up the triangle

There are many ways to setup the triangle, all of them revolving around the prime directive – to isolate the head and arm between your legs. Here are some of them.

Setup – Stuffing the arm :

Below, Bas Rutten grabs the wrist and jams it into their chest. Then you can pop up your hips and bite down with your legs into a triangle. This is a decent response to guys who try that elbow-grind guard pass.

Setup – Kicking the face:

Context – a guy is trying to punch in your face and you’re in various stages of the guard. Below, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira gets inside positioning – hands on shoulders/biceps – to block the barrage of punches. He creates space pushing off the hips and then kicks to the face as the attack tries to continue striking. He then drags the arm and pops his hips up to properly cage the head, and finishes.  This upkick-to-triangle is how local fighter DaMarquez Johnson won his break-through fight at UFC 107.

Setup – Open guard/Knee weave to triangle:

Instructor Frank Benn opens his guard and shrimps out his hips to one side. Then, he weaves in his knee under the arm and pushes the arm out with his shin. It’s kind of like pummeling with you legs. Video below.

Setup – Rubber Guard Triangle  “The Meat Hook”:

In the this one get the triangle by breaking down the posture and holding it with the rubber guard. Also, you use your hand to hook the shoulder, which helps you “thread the needle” ie: slip your leg under the armpit and up through. The kicker is how your grab your ankle to and slip it underneath to lock the gate. The video below is one of the best I’ve seen – short, sweet, and tons of technical goodness is going on.  We’ll elaborate on some of those details later.

Caging the Head AKA Sealing the Circle AKA Locking the Gate

Whatever you choose to call it, this is basically the process of locking up the triangle.  After you basically pull guard on your opponents head and arm, you need to get your ankle into the back of your opposite knee.  When the the ankle – or shin – gets there, you fold down your outside leg to keep your foot from going anywhere.

Notice how the fighter above is grabbing his shin and pulling it down.  Even if you don’t have your legs closed via  ankle lock, you can reach up and seal the circle, pull your opponent down into and then get the outside leg up and over to lock the gate.

There are different schools of thought when it comes to pulling the leg horizontally behind your opponent. I really like how Nogueira grabs his ankle from the outside, but sometimes it’s just not going to happen that way. Two tips though – don’t grab your foot (only the shin or the ankle) and grab your leg palm facing down as seen above.  This isn’t rubber-guard mission control – heck even Eddie Bravo grabs palm down. Below is Eddie doing the aforementioned meat hook triangle.

The whole point is to have a locked up close guard around the head and arm, not an open guard. One other thing, if you want the triangle choke, lock your legs towards your outside leg (the one that’s not over the opponents neck).

Get those hips up – butt off the floor.

Don’t try to pull an opponent into a crappy triangle. Lift those hips, bite down, seal the circle if you can, and then pull them down.  Otherwise, your hips will be can easily be controlled, and even if you’ve locked your ankles, the space where the choking is supposed to be happening is huge. “The noose is loose”. Below to the  left, Nogueira is placing his right foot on his opponents hip to lift himself up. Examine how close his hips are to his training partners head. Below to the right, Rich Franklin’s submission coach Jorge Gurgel has popped open his guard and swung his hips high, almost like a jump. You can watch a triangle video here to see the explosive motion to get his hips up.

Bite Down with the Legs / Point the Toes

This is a basic thing – when you get your hips up, point your toes toward your knees, tightening your calf muscles. Above, George McGinnis from York MMA is choking the life out of his training partner, both sets of toes pointed up.

This makes the leg-gate you’ve locked up that much more difficult to break and it allows you to “bite down” with your legs.  Once you get your hips up, your opponents will typically try to get posture and spaz out.  If you point the toes, you can really clamp down on them like a bulldog, preventing their escape – even if you haven’t sealed the circle/caged the head.

Tightening the noose

As I have mentioned before, the triangle choke is a noose around your opponents neck.  Often, you don’t get it tight from the get go – you have to make adjustments to get the noose tight. Above, Erik Paulson is escaping the triangle because the noose is loose.  To prevent a guy from escaping – and simultaneously making it very tight – Steven Kesting gives corrections to the 4 most common triangle errors in the video below.

I’d like to recap the above video as well as add a few things.

Bury the shoulder:

If you can see that shoulder, you have a problem.  Here, even though Dean Lister has cleared the arm across, his training partner Jimmy still picked him up for a slam. Your legs must be over the shoulder. Maybe you can bury the shoulder as you’re doing the move, but most of the time when you start to get the triangle your opponents will freak out and their shoulder will pushing through. Dean Lister solves the problem of the shoulder next.

Readjusting, getting an angle:

Dean has control of his opponents posture, and can safely open the locked ankles. Then, he plants the foot on the floor and pivots into his opponent. Relocking the gate, his triangle is much tighter. Alternatively, he could also hit an armbar as a backup submission.

Don’t be straight and aligned with your opponent, as Kesting explained above in the video. Maybe you can tap a guy with strong head pulling action, but the 6 o’clock position is much easier to escape, and not as tight. Above, Lister is in the preferable 3 o’clock position, below, Kesting in the 6 o’clock position. (Well, he’s really in the 7 o’clock, but close enough.)

Lock the ankles correctly:

Below, the guy has the lock reversed, and although there are submissions from this position, it’s not the triangle. If you don’t do it right the first time, when you switch the locking orientation it gives escape opportunities. If you just proceed with the move, you’re not going to choke them.

“Windshield wipers” the legs:

You want to have your legs “swished” over to one side, like when you turn on the windshield wipers in your car. Your outside leg is using your pointed up toe’s as a fulcrum to crowbar your outer leg into his neck, in turn pressing his neck into the inside leg – making the choke much tighter.

Pulling the head down:

Don’t be fooled, pulling the head down isn’t the coup de grace  of finishing the triangle.  Yes, it works. However, if you don’t already have good mechanics going on, the triangle becomes a smother into your crotch, instead of blood choke.  Again, if you just have the head pull mechanic working for you a grappler can resist the smell of your sweaty crotch and escape. It’s not choking him unless you are pulling your opponents head over something. And no, your crotch doesn’t count as something. Below is the Undertaker pulling a wrestlers head over his shin – aka the gogo-plata aka the devil’s triangle.

Squeezing the knees together- the Teepee:

Ari Bolden from the submission 101 crew goes over a different finish to the triangle if you just can’t seem to lock the ankle gate.

Also, some people have success by squeezing the noose tighter with their arms and extending their legs like the teepee, hooking the head and their inside knee but  keeping their 3 o’clock positioning.

Control Posture/ Get a proper angle:

I know we’ve sort of covered this already, but getting a proper angle is perhaps the most vital tip to tapping someone to the triangle. Not only does it naturally help tighten the noose, but it helps to prevent stacking, slamming, and nerfs strikes to your face.  Your success or failure of the choke will based upon posture control and angle. It is the grand mastery key. I used to think that pulling down the head was the key, but now I’ve changed my tune thanks to one of my instructors and Ryan Hall’s videos.

Arm control

There are three schools of thought to this.

Clear the arm across your body and pull the head down over it – shown above.

Tightly under hook the near side arm and extend your legs.  This type of triangle is currently my favorite, because I can create immense amounts of pressure by using my hamstrings and quads – the strongest muscles in my body. Above, a Sambo practitioner  shows this method.

Who cares where the arm is? method. Just keep it off your body – as to not allow the opponent control of your hips and possibly escape – and pull down on the head like crazy!

Dealing with the Freak Out / Stack:

In the video below, the Gracies deal with how to keep the triangle when an opponent is freaking out, trying to regain posture and escape. The solution? Shoulder-walking.

My favorite Gracie quote from the movie: “People aren’t machines, people are people.”

Conclusion:

There is a ton of information here, I know. There’s even more out there to overwhelm you – but don’t worry. Just pick one or two things and play with them for a few weeks. Don’t worry about doing all the right things all the time.  If you have good training partners, they’ll let you develop skill in these areas without crushing and escaping every triangle you throw up.  Just work an element until you get to know it like a friend. Then move on to another aspect.

If you do want even more (what? you thought I knew it all? hardly!) check out Ryan Hall’s triangle DVD’s.

The triangle choke: Know it, Love it, Do it.

• Head control -> controlling opponents posture.
• Grip the triceps -> attempt to get opponents arm into dangerous territory (the wrong “body-hemisphere”)
• Angle hips so you are attacking from the side (3 o’clock positioning)
• Keep knees tight (thighmaster squeeze) and ankles seperated.
• Pull arm towards their hip, bridge up elevating yours.

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Each video shows a different take on the armbar, but notice what they do that is the same.  As a professor might say, compare and contrast them. Anyway, enjoy.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to more videos from them.

30 minutes is quite a long time (for web surfers anyway), so I’ve listed the techniques in the video below. The video has nice technique recaps, so it’s easy to navigate to any distinct part of the video.

1. Omoplata to foot lock.
2. Omoplata attempt, transition to back control, and finish via armbar from the back.
3. Armbar finish when opponent is resisting. This is a really slick move; he switches the arm he attacks.
4. Standard Kimura arm lock.
5. Sweep from blocked kimura.  Look how he bases strongly and really pushes off that back leg.
6. Kimura attempt to back control, finishing with a rear naked choke.
7. Open guard ground and pound defense, up-kicking into a triangle.
8. Closed guard ground and pound defense, transition to a belly down armbar.
9. Half guard G&P defense, sweep into side control, finish via headlock.
10. Attacking within the G&P, then defending the calf crusher.
11. Sprawl counter to a low single-leg take down, finish via a gator roll/anaconda choke.

I’ve seen Big Nog use almost all of these moves in MMA fights.  Watch one of his highlight vids and you probably can check off more than half of the above list.  (There is even an amusing compelation named after the anaconda choke he uses).

If enjoyed that kind of material, I hear that Big Nog’s book, “Mastering Mixed Marital Arts: The Guard” is excellent.  After reading the amazon reviews, I’m saving my extra pennies to buy it.

Brazilian Jujitsu and UFC fighter Demian Maia applying the Mata Leo, or rear naked choke.

It seems like 10-15% of MMA fights end via rear naked choke. At first blush, 15% doesn’t seem like a lot. When looking at the whole picture, however, you realize that there are hundreds of other workable submission techniques, in addition to ending fights with strikes. By comparison, you notice how pervasive the rear naked choke really is.

It’s frequency in MMA is due to it’s utility – it works against strong opponents, when fighters are sweaty and slippery, it works for guys with short arms or long arms, first round and last round. Because it is a difficult submission to escape, once a guy locks in the choke, most fights end.

There are several good video tutorials, but this is by far my favorite one on the internet right now. It runs about 10 minutes and covers a lot of details that will make you sharper in this choke.

Steven Kesting’s Step by Step Rear Naked Choke

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One point in particular – how to tighten the choke and keep it with the palm to palm grip, has really been useful to me while attempting the submission. It’s rare that your opponents neck is stretched out, ready for you to easily put the choke in place. As soon as you threaten the choke, expect that your opponent will divert attention to defend it.  Expect that if you can’t make step by step progress, you’ll probably lose the choke.

Also, learning to get your leg hooks in is a whole lesson in itself. It’s an area that I’m excited to learn more about.  In a class down at Fusion BJJ, Dayne Aristizabal showed how improper hooking critically destabilized your position, opening yourself up for unhappy endings.

One last thing. The squeeze. Some guys have killer arm chokes – they latch onto your neck and get tighter and tighter until you tap. I’ve heard that Marcello Garcia is one of those kind of guys, once he gets one arm under you chin its like an anaconda mercilessly sqeezing a guinea pig. No escape.

Anyway, the power squeeze isn’t something your born with. You have to develop a power squeeze in the same way you sharpen you technique – practice and effort.

Be careful, and happy choking.

Some times called the straight ankle lock, or the Achilles hold, this ankle submission is a bugger. A guy can stack you in the guard, pop up and grab a leg as soon as your ankles become uncrossed. When he does, he basically puts a guillotine choke on your ankle and finishes the submission. It can happen really fast.

Just like this vid shows.

If you want to learn more on how to apply this ankle lock, look over at this instruction by Steven Kesting.

The real video gem is watching Carlos Machado go into the details of escaping and blocking the submission. The vid below is 8 minutes and goes into a lot of specifics.