The Cobra Choke Taught by the movie InceptionFiled Under: Instruction
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.
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Tags: chokes, inception, Karo Parisyan, mma in the media, No Gi, submissions
- Permalink
- BartB
- 16 Jul 2010 11:08 PM
- Comments (12)
July 16th, 2010 at 11:23 pm
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July 20th, 2010 at 10:33 am
Do you have any examples of someone with mid to high level jujitsu pulling this off? Because the two guys in that video were absolutely horrible. Something like an ADCC match, high level Pro MMA, Grappler’s Quest Pro Circuit, etc.
July 20th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
troll alert! lol srsly. judo gene label teaches this choke – and its in karo’s book. say what you want about karo, his judo/jits is good. its also called a no gi front choke in sum circles. my sensei in san fran has pulled it off on me several times.
why don’t you go try it? or make a video why it doesn’t work? or just go to the guys at lockflow (the first vid shown) and explain to them why they shouldn’t record vids like that. or just go tell karo/gene that the tech sucks.
plus – barts not hyping the move like its the best mma move ever, its just cool to see it in the movies.
find me a highlevel grappler pulling off rubber guard ….
oh wait if i asked that a few years ago you cant answer it, but now… RG is creepin in.
anyways go ask ur instructor about the choke and see what he says. that is if you even have one besides youtube. from what i can tell, the move is legit.
July 20th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
Over reaction? Never said the move was bad, just curious to see blackbelts hit it instead of what appeared to be very inexperienced whitebelts.
My instructor will say its shit, just like the nogi Ezekiel. So that doesn’t exactly help your case..
Rubber guard is a position, not a submission. Two totally different concepts. And you could have said that about rubber guard two years ago, Vinicius Magalhaes would have been your example.
Also, I’m not sure if you’re aware of the problem with jujitsu instructionals but they put in a lot of fantasy moves. Go watch a Brandon Quick tape and tell me its all high percentage and applicable.
July 22nd, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Dude I love this choke. Nice post but I can’t help but be a little bummed you are publicizing the not so well known cobra choke. Not a lot of people see it coming I hit it relatively frequently from side control or occasionally mount. Even if you can’t hit the choke the control alone is pretty sweet or nasty and helpless feeling depending on which end of the arm belongs to you!
July 22nd, 2010 at 3:06 pm
oh and i have definately caught some very good guys with this choke…like i said they don’t see it coming … but then very rarely forget.
July 23rd, 2010 at 6:37 am
Holy moly, I too was a little bit too excited by the BJJ being blasted at me from the big screen! Hi-5! http://megjitsu.blogspot.com/2010/07/joseph-gordon-levitt-choke-in-inception.html
July 28th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Yahman!, wouldn’t you much rather use that arm control to hit an armbar or take the back? And when you say high level opponents are we talking brown/blackbelts from competition schools?
July 29th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Not necessarily, often people like to lock down their arms making an arm bar difficult at best to pull off, sure you could muscle one out but thats not my style. Often times the cobra choke sets up the arm bar. Truth be told, sure you could transition to the back but I am not super strong offensively from the back, if we are in a points tournament IBJJF style absolutely you would transition to the back, but like I said i don’t have a lot of high percentage moves from there. In terms of high level, i have definately caught people much better than me with it that are first place athletes with medals to prove it. I have been doing Jiu Jitsu for three years now and competed at a number of different levels, so take from that what you want. In my experiance not many people with three years of experiance hit any submissions on purple, brown and black belts.
August 4th, 2010 at 10:08 am
On topic I just hit this choke last night from side control no gi during open mat granted it was against a new blue however he did see it coming and still got caught. I missed a ton of arm bars, omoplatas, RNCs, baseball chokes, kimoras, vendetta platas, gogo platas, triangles from guard and as my Brazilian friends would say “you know the choke with your foot your forearm and his head” because we were too slippery or it was countered and the dude saw it coming, but the cobra came through. Mostly because that arm control works so well even in a slippery match and from there its not too hard to slip the other hand in, it actually gets easier the more you work and sweat (as long as you can still maintain the wrist control). That control makes the dude constantly worry about getting choked out which makes it easier to transition mount and back (hence the multiple missed rncs and baseball chokes however i did catch 2 subs by triangle from mount)…but perhaps some instructors think that approach is shit…either way i’m glad my instructor showed it to me, i went 4 matches in 30 minutes last night 75% of my subs last night came from that set up or the choke itself, the last one was dude just got tired and forgot he had an arm to watch out for (he was worried about that choke/control).
October 6th, 2010 at 4:56 am
I love Karo Parisyan book……..
February 4th, 2011 at 7:21 am
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