I’ve wanted to do a piece on the harness grip for a while, and it seemed like a good topic for the first new content on the just-launched journal.

First of all, watch this excellent instructional video on the harness grip and finishing the rear naked choke by Stephan Kesting of GrappleArts.com. This will fill you in on all the issues I’ll address later (and probably improve your RNC).

When Stephan posted this on the mma.tv, I replied with this:

When I went to Marcelo’s seminar and he covered how he grips, he made a point about how he doesn’t grab his wrist, but over the back of the hand itself. He felt it was important to hide your hand, since if they grab your wrist or forearm, you can still tiger claw their shoulder and the leverage on your arm won’t be as great.

Does that make sense?

I am aware that Marcelo likes to grab the hand, not the wrist, and I’m not saying that I could defend his RNC, but I currently prefer to grab my wrist not my hand.

The reason is that it forms a tighter loop around his neck and upper torso, giving him less room to twist, turn and insert hands between my arms and his chest. Perhaps this is because I have fairly long, skinny arms and gripping the wrist takes up more of the slack in the system. If my arms were shorter, if I was more barrel chested, then perhaps grabbing the hand would be tight enough.

Jiu-jitsu is like cooking, and everyone has a slightly different way of preparing the same dishes.

Stephan’s Grip

Let’s start by taking a look at the grip Stephan shows and my main concern about it.

I’ve got the harness and I’m gripping my wrist, as shown in the video.

Because my hand is exposed, my opponent can grab it and defend against the choke.

Gable’s Grip

Stephan also shows the gable grip, which is how it is commonly taught in most instructional books and DVDs.

I have the gable grip (palm-to-palm, no thumbs).

Because it’s on top and exposed, my more important choking hand can be grabbed by my opponent to block the choke.

If I switch my hands around but keep a gable grip, I can hide my hand a little bit better, but like Stephan says, I’m now blocking my own path to his neck and the choke.

Eddie Bravo teaches the harness with a gable grip in his first book, Jiu-Jitsu Unleashed, but has since said he’s switched to Marcelo’s grip once he understood the reasons for it.

Marcelo’s Grip

This is my favorite grip. I’ve come to use it after watching Marcelo Garcia and having him teach it at his seminar.

I have the harness and I’m grabbing over my “choking side” hand with “underhooking” arm.

When my opponent goes to grab my hands and defend the choke, he can only grab the top hand.

When pulls my hand down, my choking arm is still able to punch up and tiger claw his shoulder.

I have fairly long arms too but haven’t found that I have trouble keeping a tight harness using this grip. I just keep pulling my elbows in towards my ribs to cinch up the grip and glue my chest to the middle of their back.

It’s still possible for them to grab the forearm of the choking side arm, but they have less leverage and can’t stop you from getting the tiger claw. This is explained in my notes from Marcelo’s seminar:

At the break half way through the no-gi day, I came up to Marcelo in person and asked him why he grips the way he does on the back, since I’d seen a lot of speculation on it and why he doesn’t gable grip. I had heard some answers (which turned out to be accurate) but I thought I’d get it straight from the source. Turns out that I didn’t need to ask since he told me he’d already be teaching that later, which he did. It was the last thing he taught, but I’ll skip to writing my notes on that now since it’s an interesting topic.

He said that he grips with the arm that is under the armpit. For example, if his left hand is under their arm and his right is over the shoulder, his left hand will be grabbing the back of his right. He says that he does this because if someone is going to try to defend by grabbing his hands, they can only grab his left hand, which leaves his right hand free to attack the neck still.

He said he grabs his own hand, not his wrist or forearm, since that would expose more of the choking hand to getting grabbed. He also keeps his fingers closed because he doesn’t want people to try to bend them. Yes, it’s illegal for them to do that, but people will try it anyway and even if the ref stops it, they defended the choke and can reset to a safer grip.

He said that they can still try to grab the forearm of the choking arm, but that this matters less since what is important is how your hand can still grab their opposite shoulder. Once he’s got the hand on the far shoulder, he can climb higher and higher until he gets the neck.

Once he’s climbing the hand up the shoulder like this, he’ll take his other hand out of the armpit and do a couple things with it. He might pull back on their forehead to open their chin for the choke. But mostly he was palm “striking” their hands off his forearm, pushing their grip down towards his elbow to strip it.

He keeps knocking their grip off and climbing his arm until he’s got the neck and his hand is high enough to grab his biceps. Then he’ll grab his biceps and try to put his other hand behind their head to hide it so they can’t pull it.

Pros and Cons

Let’s take one last look at each of the grips.

So which grip is best?

It should be clear which one I prefer, but Stephan’s words still ring true, and it will still come down to personal preference. You should give them all a try and find what works best for you.

Jiu-jitsu is like cooking, and everyone has a slightly different way of preparing the same dishes.