Strangles

We don't really choke people in BJJ, but somehow that sounds more acceptable than strangle, so it's the become the common nomenclature. No matter what you call it, all we're trying to do is close off the carotid artery on either side of the neck. So how do we do that? Glad you asked, really there's 3 groups we can place chokes in that cover a lot of territory.
1. Naked strangles- chokes that function only utilizing my body as a choking mechanism
2. Gi strangles- chokes assisted by the cloth
3. Triangles- chokes assisted by part of the opponent
As we have seen in recent IBJJF competition the two handed predator choke can work, however it is not the most efficient means of accomplishing the task at hand. When we discuss naked strangles, usually our best tools become the forearm and bicep working in tandem to close off blood flow to the brain causing unconsciousness. In gi chokes the cloth can be both the choking mechanism as well as an accessory to forcing the tap. In triangles we use our opponent's body usually a shoulder or arm to close one side and our leg or arm to shut down the other forcing the panic button shut down and putting our partner to sleep. I think in some ways we often look at grappling to microscopically especially in the beginning, hopefully by categorizing the techniques in a larger sense it will allow you to understand things more broadly and expand outside of the 3 techniques a day model.