Deconstructing the Triangle Choke under Pressure (diary entry)

12.04.17

  Tonight’s lesson continued my client’s series on chaining together of submissions/sweeps from closed guard. We are currently going back over individual techniques as they fall within possible combinations. Tonight we mainly looked at the triangle choke and looked at how it linked in with arm-bars and the oma plata shoulder lock.   We warmed up with mobility exercises and specific callisthenics. Whilst looking at ground movements I focused on the essence of bridging and snaking/shrimping. These are the strong foundations for fighting from underneath an opponent. Both escapes and fighting from the guard need strong bridging and snaking movements to be successful. We began with glute raises.  This is an excellent compound movement that can work well as a callisthenic and requires little warm-up as a strength resistance exercise. It works all the muscles required for the bridging martial arts technique. We looked at other variations on the move, including one-legged lifts (recommended by Martin Rooney as an excellent muscle activation exercise for MMA) and neck-bridges (a staple wrestling and common BJJ exercise). This was then turned into a partner exercise. Then we moved onto more specific repetitions of arm-bars, triangles and oma plata movements. This brought us onto drilling the moves in sets. The natural progression here was to chain the movements together. This began as a freestyle flow drill, encouraging the fighter to respond to the opponent’s reactions. Then we focused on springing a triangle choke trap when an opponent counters the oma plata. A combination such as this is great for examining any existing issues with the leg triangle’s setup. We then isolated the choke and applied specific training with progressive pressure. This was done at different stages of the technique’s execution. We began with the technique just shy of submission and then re-set it a stage further back and so on. After each time, the fighter was able to make an assessment and readjust accordingly.   Photograph of a vintage judo match taken from Wikipedia's entry on the triangle choke.