Rear Choke Defense
Step one; Protect your neck! Anytime you feel an arm slip in for a choke you immediately commit both of your hands to the choking arm. One hand grabs at their wrist closest to your neck, the other grabs by their bicep at the elbow. Don’t use just your arms to defend. As you see Professor Easton do in the video, you use your entire back and core to peel the arm away from your neck. From there you have two basic options. A) you can get your base beneath your partner-if so you use the basic hip throw. B) they have pulled you off of your base and thus you can not lift them. In this case you will take a big step to get around their supporting leg. If done correctly you are set up to hit the basic Osoto gari.
Mount, Front Choke Arm Bar
As always, position before submission. If you get to anxious for the tap you will most likely lose the position. However, if you can learn to hold to position and methodically attack your partner, they will certainly tire and you will get the tap. Both of our attacks this week use the hand in the collar to set up the attack. Both attacks come off of the same grip. The method of attack is called the “double attack”. You are always trying to get the choke, however if they put their hand in to defend the choke, (and thus lift their elbow), you attack the arm WITHOUT giving up your progress on the choke. The key is to learn to maintain the position AS you threaten both attacks.
123 Scarf Hold Escapes
It is important to understand what separates this escape series from the simple head lock. In the Scarf hold the top guy has control of the bottom persons arm. This gives the top person a much better lever to hold the bottom person. If at any point you are able to get your arm back, do so immediately. If you are escaping a headlock make sure that you dont turn it into a scarf hold by giving up your arm. In escaping the scarf hold you have two semi safe places to put the trapped arm, both involve linking your hands. In the first posture you frame against the top persons neck. With this posture you can escape your hips enough to either put the top persons back on the mat, or allow you to use your leg to do the same. The second safe place for your trapped arm is hugging your partners waist. In this posture you will need to bridge and hoist your partner towards their head. Once they are off balance it is very important that you do not allow their weight to settle back down. Use the moment they are off their base to roll over your shoulders and move them to your opposite side.
