Sometimes you have to go to Plan B because Plan A just ain’t workin’. A few weeks ago... on our ground fighting night... we were practicing a shoulder choke. This choke works like the leg triangle choke except you're using your arms instead of your legs. The choke is sometimes called an arm triangle choke. In Judo, it’s called a Kata Gatame. When using this choke, your opponent’s arm restricts blood flow on one side of his neck and you use an arm to restrict blood flow on the other side of his neck. You want to make sure that your opponent's arm is trapped between your head and his.
So... I’m practicing the choke on a person that weighs 275 lbs. He has… at least… a 19-inch neck and arms almost as big as my thighs. My preference for applying this choke is to use a reverse lever. For example, if my right arm is around my opponent’s neck, I place my right hand on my left forearm. I then move my left hand up to the side of my head and squeeze. I get a much tighter choke this way... 99 percent of the time.
One of the problems that I encountered with this individual was that my 80-inch reach (measured from fingertips to fingertips) hardly got around him to apply the choke. Another problem was that when I attempted to apply the choke... I couldn’t finish it. I called over another person... a 300-pounder (I’m a 240-pounder)... to attempt the choke. He used a gable (palm-to-palm) grip instead of a reverse lever. He… also… couldn’t finish the choke.
So... what’s the moral of the story? You can’t expect every technique to be effective on everybody. If something doesn’t work, switch to something else. Go to Plan B. Don’t waste your energy trying to make the technique work. The idea is to make your opponent waste his/her energy thereby facilitating your victory.
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