Bow & Arrow to Reverse Triangle Choke

There are only a few submissions used by grapplers that are considered impossible to defend. Sure, every submission can be defended, but comparing the difficulty of defending an armbar from closed guard with a fully locked rear naked choke proves that there is levels to submission defense.

The rear naked strangle isn’t the only choke from back control that is unstoppable. The other two examples, personally two of my favorite submissions, are the reverse triangle choke and the bow and arrow choke.

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The reverse triangle is a submission often used no gi while the bow and arrow is used primary in the gi. Although the reverse triangle can be used in the gi, the bow and arrow cannot be utilized without the gi.

There are a few ways to defend the bow and arrow choke, but they must all be applied as early in to the submission as possible. The most common way is to grab the defender’s sleeve and sneak their head out from under the arm.

If we just allows defenders to proceed as they wish, they will likely be able to escape. If a defender manages to get a good grip on the sleeve of your choking arm, we need to switch the bow and arrow to a different submission, preferably the reverse triangle.

Check out this short video by BJJ Fanatics that shows how easy it is to make this switch:

When attacking the bow and arrow choke, we can often ignore the defender’s outside hand unless it is actively pulling at your sleeve, which will relieve the choke. When transitioning to the reverse triangle, however, it is important to get rid of the arm because as with any triangle choke, you only want to control the head and one arm.

What you do after acquiring the reverse triangle depends entirely on how you prefer to finish submissions. The reverse triangle can be finished as a choke by squeezing the thighs together. Finishing the reverse triangle as a choke can be difficult, however, unless you have thick legs.

Personally, I always hunt for the arm that is trapped as you can use it to finish your opponent with an armbar, americana, or best of all, a kimura.

 

Check out Gordon’s “Systematically Attacking the Guard”, and while you are at it, you should probably pick up “Getting Swole As A Grappler” his complete meal plan and workout strategy that allowed him to pack on insane amounts of muscle and functional strength.  Besides, does anyone not want to be shredded? Yeah…. Didn’t think so.

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