Turtle Choke Rommel Choke

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In this video I show a unique choke from the Turtle position. I learned this choke in Brazil from one of the head instructors at Gordo’s academy (his name is Rommel, thus the choke being called the Rommel Choke).

I really like this choke because it has an easy setup from behind the armpit. Very often when you try to insert the hand in front of the shoulder to get a Clock Choke, or any variant, people fight like crazy to stop that grip. When you lead behind the shoulder I find that people are much more likely to let it happen.

Once you’ve placed that setup hand in it’s time to place the finish hand. If you get a deep grip with the setup hand then the collar will be tight against the neck and can really prevent you from putting your fingers in the collar. Make sure to reference the video and see how I make space for that second hand, it’s a sure way to get your 4 fingers in the collar.

Now that we have our grips it’s time to proceed with driving my elbow into the chest. I do not emphasize enough in the video that you need to have good inward pressure with that elbow.

When you rotate your body to drive the elbow into the chest you’re also going to take your inside leg and lift it towards the ceiling. This will prevent people from stepping over to side control on the other side.

Stepping over is really the only thing that I’m worried about. If they try to hop, or jump over, the pressure that you’re applying with that setup hand, combined with the pushing power of that elbow, will rotate them while they jump and angle their back towards the floor. If that happens you can come back up top and often times, get the choke from a top Side Control position.

In the event that they try to step over to Mount because you did not get the leg up in time it will increase the power of the choke. Opponents will often tap during this transition as it can get extremely tight. In the event that they start to mount DO NOT let go of the grip. Instead continue pulling and combine a bridge with the pushing of that elbow into the chest. Again, as they are elevated it will often rotate their body and you can get a reversal off of it.

This is a fantastic choke and you can have a lot of success with it. I highly recommend repping it out before using it in sparring, but once you get a good grasp on this choke and how it works you’ll find that it appears everywhere and there are way more applications for it than just in this video.

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