Master The High Elbow Guillotine with Mike Palladino

By Fanatics Authors, April 05, 2018

The guillotine choke is one of the highest percentage chokes in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, MMA, and No Gi grappling. This choke has been used for hundreds of years, granted there are different variations of this positions such as the arm in guillotine, the high elbow guillotine choke, the 10 finger guillotine choke, the one handed guillotine choke and the list goes on and on. This is one of the most valuable submissions in grappling for so many reasons.

People tend to perceive the guillotine choke as a submission, but the guillotine is far more. This position is extremely efficient and we call it a position because you can use the head and arm control or head control of a guillotine to pass guard, to defend, to sweep, to transition to other submissions, or to submit. The guillotine is also excellent because you are able to use it for self-defense, MMA, no gi, and in the gi.

The high elbow guillotine was popularized by Marcelo Garcia. Marcelo is considered by many the greatest grappler of all time given his success in multiple weight division, submission rate and overall style. Marcelo has finished some of the best competitors in the world with high signature high elbow guillotine. The high elbow guillotine was originally popularized for the ability to nullify the infamous Von Flue choke. Today we are going to look at one of the best high elbow guillotine instructional videos with Mike Palladino. It is short, simple, and to the point. Check it out below and then we will do a breakdown.

High Elbow Guillotine by Mike Palladino:

Breakdown of the High Elbow Guillotine by Mike Palladino

So as you can see in the video above Mike is going to be setting this position up from the turtle. This is an excellent way to set up any guillotine. This position occurs very often in bjj. We see the turtle occur in point tournaments because you do not get points for turtling, we also see this occur off of sprawls and we get into this position when passing the guard.

There are so many things that you can do from the turtle position, in the video Mike talks about how he likes to enter this guillotine by using a chin strap. The chin strap is one of the best ways to get into the guillotine because it will allow you to secure a position underneath your opponent’s chin. Once you have the chin strap you are going to want to use it to pull your opponents neck up and make even more space.

The part of your arm that you are going to want to finish this choke with is right by your thumb and wrist, the chinstrap will allow you to take a little bit more time to establish your final grip. Once Mike has secured this he is going to connect his hands and be able to strengthen his grip. Once his hands are connected he is going to fall to his back to finish the choke.

Many traditional guillotine chokes are taught from the closed guard but if you notice here Mike is not really even falling into a guard. Mike falls into a position where his knee is across his opponents hip to control the distance and his leg opposite the side of the arm that is choking will go over his opponents body. This is because he does not want his opponent to hop to the other side to defend this choke. He has to make sure that the leg blocks that. The leg is also over his opponents body so that if his opponent decides to fall to their back, he is able to follow through and still get the choke from the top. You can use this guillotine from mount, half guard, bottom, quarter guard, and like we saw here from the turtle. Try it out!

If you want to learn more of Mike Palladino’s vicious turtle attacks, check out his new DVD set “Killer Turtle Attacks.” Mike is one of the best submission grapplers there is and he is an absolutely excellent instructor. Mike has a way of breaking down things so that they are easy to digest and he always puts a new spin on things.