Aesopian

I want to show how I’ve redefined the trigger position for myself and what this means to how I’m getting the choke.

For the longest time, I thought of the brabo as only being available when they underhooked me. This is how it’s taught from half guard and when they escape side control. So the trigger position I came up with was “they underhook, I whizzer”, but that didn’t seem complete to me. As I learned more and more setups from all kinds of positions, I kept looking for aspects of the choke that stay true regardless of the particular setup. They didn’t always need to underhook me. In fact, it’s even better when they don’t since then I can skip crossing their arm. So what am I really looking for?

Last week I got together to train with a friend. Normally I restrict myself to a few techniques, since I know I can go nuts and pull out a bunch of moves and have a lot of fun and learn nothing. But on a whim, I decided to run myself through an inventory of every brabo choke setup I know. Not to drill each one, but to refresh myself on all the ones I knew. To my surprise, rather than getting lost in techniques, I started consolidating my knowledge. The different setups started blending together and I saw how to take from one and apply it to another. The next day I was hitting brabos from all kinds of positions I normally never tried, since my arms were just finding the grips on their own.

When I sat down and thought about it, I realized my arm was automatically going for this trigger position:

My arm reaches through their armpit and grabs behind their neck. Them underhooking me is definitely one way to get there but far from the only way.

This is good news, since people are already afraid of underhooking me, and now I don’t really care since I can work towards the choke without them feeding my the arm.

Side Control Armdrag

Let’s look at how this bears out in action. You can make them give you the trigger position even if they don’t underhook.

I’m in side control. They have their arms in good posture and aren’t trying to get the underhook to escape.

I give them some room to turn into me but they still don’t want to escape that way. Instead they are framing my neck and pushing away. My hand slides across their chest and grabs their triceps just above the elbow. I want their hand resting in the crook of my elbow, so we’re actually sharing a mutual grip. This traps their hand so they can’t circle their arm out.

I drag their arm across, crossing their elbow over their chest. I pull them to me slightly to turn their shoulder up. Then I lay my chest on their arm and use my chin to trap it. Keep control of the elbow since they’ll be fighting to pull it back or circle their arm out.

I keep pulling their arm to me as I swim and uppercut my other arm through to the “new” trigger position.

I pull my arm out then shove their elbow in with my palm. They may try to swing their arm over their head to escape, so I need to make sure I keep their arm trapped with my chest and head in the moment when I let go to switch my grips. Once I’m shoving their arm in, I give myself enough room to put their arm on their neck (since it’s going to be up by their face at first), then I lay my chest on it again once it’s in place.

From here I simply close the choke and do the usual to finish.

You can do similar setups by grabbing their wrists or their sleeves and dragging their arm across.

This also works from half guard when they are afraid to underhook.

The next point to cover is how to deal with their underhooking arm.

Like in the triangle, you want to cross their arm. Also like the triangle, it’s not completely necessary, but it’s best form, the cleanest technique and makes for the smoothest finish. They can use that arm to create a little space (so their shoulder doesn’t squash into their neck), or they can do Jeff’s escape of throwing the elbow back and grabbing their leg and kicking out.

I’ll show how I prevent those escapes while adjusting the choke even deeper.

Here you see them trying to escape with an underhook, grabbing my leg as they come up for a takedown. The hand on my leg is my problem, so I’ve got to kill it somehow.

Sprawling

A simple and natural reaction is to sprawl like you would to defend a takedown. Throw your legs back and drop your hips to the floor. You may need to turn your hips from side to side and bounce a little to shake their arm off. Stay on your toes and drive in to put pressure on their triceps with your chest to help crush their arm and prevent them from reaching up (and maintaining their grip).

You can finish from the sprawl too, but I’ve found you’re more likely to just crush their neck without choking them. As you’ll see, there’s still more adjusting you can do for a cleaner choke, and other finishing positions give you better pressure for the blood choke.

Mule Kick

The problem I have with sprawling is that people can often hold on to my pants even with their arm stretched out. Or I’ll break their grip, but they get it again as I come back to my knees. This is why I prefer to do a mule kick. I switch my legs so the knee near their head is on the ground, then I kick my foot to the sky. I’ll keep kicking and shaking and lifting my leg until I feel their grip break and their arm fall between my legs. Put you chest on the back of their arm to press it down.

After I’ve broken their grip one way or another, I’ll come back to my knees, trapping their arm between them.

Try walking slightly towards their head, but not all the way to north-south. Changing this angle between your bodies will let you reach your choking arm deeper since you’re not stretching it so far. The reason we didn’t do this earlier is because it gives them a better angle to get to their knees, but that’s less of a threat now that they don’t have the underhook any more.

Take this moment to adjust and tighten your grips again; there is now usually an inch or two of space around their neck that you can close up now that the arm is crossed. Drop your shoulder, uppercut, wiggle deeper.

You can finish fairly well from here by crunching them into you, pressing your elbow in like you want their head to meet their belly, and dropping your shoulder to the mat.

But I like to take it even further since I’m going to sit-out to finish.

I step up with my leg near their hips to give myself space.

Then I step in with my other leg, putting my knee up past their elbow, so my thigh is pressing on the back of their arm. Their arm is now crossed all the way to the other side of my body. I may even take a second here to adjust my grips even a little deeper.

Now when I sit into them, my body (ribs, stomach, hips, thigh, knee, something) is blocking their elbow and pressing their arm across their neck. My top foot comes to their hip to prevent them from getting up. I keep scooting my hips into them, dropping my shoulder to the ground, twisting my upper body and squeezing the choke.

The “best” time to cross the arm is when you’ve got the figure-four grip, since it’s the most secure. But you can do these steps while you’ve still got other ones. It depends on what they are defending. If they are blocking your next grip in the progression, start trying to cross their arm. Either you get that or they switch to defending it and you go back to working your grips. The idea is to be aware of your multiple goals and work towards each one, intelligently switching from one to the other so they’re trying to catch up.

More notes from my brabo choke homework.

Thinking Like It’s a Triangle

This may seem obvious to you, but it took me a while think of the brabo as a triangle choke. Yeah, I knew literally that it’s an arm triangle—that’s not what I mean. I had a “just slap it on” attitude towards it, where I’d give up if I didn’t hit it in one shot, which isn’t how I think about the triangle choke with the legs. With that move, I know to be patient while I work towards my ultimate goal, fixing several points at once: maintaining position, breaking their posture, getting the correct angle, getting the proper contact with their neck, working to close the full figure-four, crossing their arm, etc. You have multiple simultaneous objectives, and which one you’re working on changes depending on its importance and how well they’re defending it.

Once I started looking at the brabo along similar lines, it started clicking more and my success rate with it has gone way up. The main points I fleshed out were 1) how to get the arm triangle tight using progressive grips, 2) how to cross their arm and 3) how to apply finishing pressure.

First, I want to go over the idea of using a series of grips to work towards tightening and closing the final choke.

I’m big on giving people credit if they gave me ideas or teach me. I didn’t come up with any of these grips, but I did collect them from scattered resources and put them together. If you’re been following my brabo choke homework, you know the usual suspects for my inspiration/plagarism, so I don’t feel like re-re-recrediting them again here. It gets tiring to have to keep citing sources, but it’s a habit since people go “HURR RIGAN DID THAT FIRST” if I don’t. Or if I do. Doesn’t really make a difference.

Anyway.

Let’s start off. Assume we’re joining a brabo already in progress. They are trying to escape side control with an underhook, and I’ve whizzered my arm in for the brabo.

Notice how I lay my head on them like I’m listening to their shoulder. This helps me drop my shoulder and reach deeper. I want to get my hand all the way to the back of their neck. If I don’t have my whole fist seeing the light of day, I won’t be able to get the choke.

An important detail you’ll see in the photos below is how I keep pressure and weight on them so they can’t get to their elbow. They need to post on that elbow before they can get up. While I want them turned on their side enough to exposure their head and arm, I don’t want them to turn to all fours, since they have a better chance of taking me down or escaping then.

Progressive Grips

You hopefully won’t need to use all of these grips to get the choke. You can usually skip ahead if you’ve got good timing and are quick, but I think the best way to approach a subject like this is to work from worst cases scenarios. Some of these grips are stronger than others, but each has its time and use. Each grip has the purpose of cranking their head in and bending their neck (or at least prevent them from straightening it any further).

Pulling the Head

This is one of the weaker grips but it’s also often one of the easiest to grab right away, particularly if you already had a crossface. It’s not very good for forcing their head in, but it’ll prevent them from stretching away too far. It’s also useful for maintaining control and contact if they start trying to bring their knee into your hips and stretch you out (like in z-guard) since you can reach farther with it.

Stuffing the Head

By rotating your palm on the back of their head, you can switch to one of the strongest grips. Shove their head in like you’re trying to stuff it down to their hips. You can really cram their head in with this one.

Trog showed me how he was taught to use this grip to pass half guard by sprawling until their legs open and walking around. I can understand why, since it feels to me like the most pressure on the neck.

Darce Grip

Keeping constant pressure, slide from your palm to pushing with your wrist and grab a palm-to-palm grip. This is the famous D’arce grip. It offers a lot of control without being tiring to maintain. Scissor your forearms together and pinch your elbows. Pull their head towards you like you’re trying to shuck it under you.

Short Man’s Brabo

From the darce, you can shoot your outside arm through and grab your wrist and forearm. Keep your elbow in tight so you don’t give them room to pop their head out. You can use this to crank their head in as you slide your hand up your forearm towards your biceps. You can also use your outside hand to grab their shoulder and prevent them from getting up or (if they do get to their elbow) grabbing their triceps and breaking it down so they fall on their side again.

Shove and Uppercut

One of my goals is to get the crook of my elbow tight to their adam’s apple and my forearm along the side of their neck. It’ll neck crank them more if I don’t get that deep since it’ll just be my forearm crushing their throat or muscles.

As I’m progressing through all of these grips, I am constantly trying to shove my choking arm deeper and deeper. The motion is like doing an uppercut as I drop my shoulder. You can see this in the above photo. I’m doing it while I shove the back of the head. This is my favorite time to uppercut since I feel I can get really deep, but you can do it (to greater and lesser degrees) while holding any other grip. Try to do it any time you can, but the best times are right as and right after you’ve cranked their head in. In the moment it takes from them to try to straighten out again, you can shove and wiggle your arm through a little more.

Finishing Grip

Once you’ve got your choking arm deep enough, you should be able to put your wrist in the crook of your elbow. Your palm and fingers should actually reach around to the back of your triceps. If you’re only just grabbing your biceps with your hand, you’re more likely to have the grip break or slip off, and you can actually hurt your fingers. It also probably means you didn’t get the choke tight enough.

Your outside hand reaches up and grabs their top shoulder as high as it can. My personal trick for making sure I’m doing this right is to try to bring my hand up until I can put my chin on it. Doubt the chin really helps but it feels proper.

That’s it for now. The next point I’ll go over crossing the arm.