Chokes or Joint Locks in Jiu Jitsu: Which Submission Is Really More Effective?

By Professor Itay Leibovich | 3rd-degree black belt, Gracie Jiu Jitsu | October 2026 | ~14 min read

"Which is better, a choke or a joint lock?"

I hear this question at least once a month, usually after class, usually from a new student who is still catching their breath, and usually in the tone of someone looking for a one-word answer. (The person asking is a composite character for illustration. But if you train with us, there's a good chance you've asked it yourself.) They want to know where to invest. What they'll learn fastest. What works best. And, if we're honest, what will impress people in Thursday's sparring (a training match).

So here's the one-word answer: it depends.

I know. It's the most annoying answer there is. But unlike most of the "it depends" you hear in life, this one comes with a precise follow-up. Because "effective" hides three different questions: what works in competition, what works on the street, and what works on someone bigger than you. Each one has a slightly different answer.

There's an old saying in the jiu jitsu world: Tap, Snap or Nap. Either you submit (the tap: a light slap on your opponent or on the mat, the signal that you give up), something breaks, or you go to sleep. I wrote a whole post about submitting, Tap, Snap or Nap: To Tap or Not to Tap. This post is about the other two options. The Snap is the joint lock. The Nap is the choke. And between them lies a difference most beginners never notice, and it's the whole point.

What Is a Submission in BJJ, and How Is a Choke Different from a Joint Lock

A submission is any technique that forces your opponent to give up. In Brazilian jiu jitsu (BJJ) there are two main families of submissions, and they work on two completely different principles.

A joint lock attacks a joint. You take an elbow, a shoulder, a wrist, a knee or an ankle, and bend or twist it in a direction nature never intended. The armbar straightens the elbow past its limit. The kimura and the americana rotate the shoulder. A foot lock stretches the ankle and the tendons around it. A knee bar straightens the knee, and the heel hook, despite its name, twists it. In every case, what makes the opponent give up is pain, and behind the pain, the obvious threat: one more centimetre and something tears.

A choke attacks the neck, and through it, the brain. Most good chokes in jiu jitsu are blood chokes: the arm or the legs press on the arteries at the sides of the neck, blood flow to the brain drops, and within seconds the opponent starts to lose consciousness. There are also air chokes, which press on the windpipe from the front. They hurt more, work less well and are more dangerous to the throat, which is why at our academy in Tel Aviv we prioritise blood chokes.

And that's the whole difference: a joint lock gets the submission through pain. A choke gets it through physiology. And pain, as we all know, can be negotiated with. Physiology can't. (In training, nobody ever gets to the edge of either. More on that later.)

The Night Helio Didn't Tap

In 1951, at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Helio Gracie stepped in to fight Masahiko Kimura, the great Japanese judo champion of the era. (I told the full story in my post on Helio Gracie, the man who turned weakness into a system.) Kimura was much heavier and much stronger. At some point in the fight he locked a shoulder lock on Helio, a reverse ude garami, and twisted.

Helio didn't tap.

According to Kimura's own account, the bone in the arm broke, and Helio still didn't tap. Only when Helio Gracie's corner threw in the towel did the fight stop. Ever since, in the jiu jitsu world, that lock has been called the "kimura", after the man who won with it.

I tell this story not because of the courage (although there was plenty of courage there, and plenty of stubbornness, and we'll leave the difference between them for another time). I tell it because it teaches something important about joint locks: you can refuse them. At a price. A very heavy price. But you can. A joint lock doesn't force you to give up. It offers you a deal: give up, or pay. And Helio chose to pay.

With a choke there is no deal. You can be as stubborn as Helio, as brave as him and willing to pay any price, and it won't change a thing. When blood stops reaching the brain, the brain switches off, no matter how much you want to keep going. That's also why in training we tap long before that happens, and let go the moment someone taps.

Then It Happened Again: Roger, Jacaré, and One Arm Tucked in the Belt

53 years after Helio, the story repeated itself, this time in an IBJJF world final.

In 2004, in the final of the open class (no weight limit), Roger Gracie, grandson of Carlos Gracie, faced Ronaldo "Jacaré" Souza, who later became one of the great fighters in the UFC. Jacaré was ahead on points. With about a minute left, Roger caught him in an armbar and locked it all the way. Jacaré didn't tap. The arm broke, and according to Jacaré himself the elbow was dislocated and the muscle torn as well. He still didn't tap. He managed to pull the arm free, tucked it into his belt, and held out against Roger with one arm until time ran out. Jacaré won on points, and became world champion with a broken arm.

Years later, in a 2026 interview, Roger described the decision in his own words, and it's impossible not to hear Jacaré in them:

"After that I'm like, no, I have to start choking people out because then they had no choice. I mean, they're just going to go to sleep. If I go for locks, you know, people sometimes they don't tap for foot locks. They can resist. They can injure themselves for the sake of the match. They're not tapping, but they're still mobile, they're still functioning. Chokes, if you get choked and you don't tap, it's like good night."

And the numbers show it: most of his submissions, on the way to ten world titles, came by choke, led by the cross collar choke from mount that became his signature. In his entire black belt career, nobody ever submitted him.

Two stubborn fighters. Two perfect joint locks. Two broken arms. And neither of them tapped. That is exactly the difference this post is about.

Two Thirds to Three Quarters: What the Numbers Say

Ask the UFC what's more effective, and the answer is pretty clear.

Two medical studies looked at this, and each counted a little differently. The first, by sports physician Samuel Stellpflug and colleagues, was published in The Physician and Sportsmedicine and covered every fight in UFC history through 2020: 904 fights ended in a choke, 76 percent of all submissions. Almost half of those chokes were rear naked chokes, from the back. The second, a 2025 study, counted only the big Pay-Per-View events, 3,123 fights from 1993 to 2023, and found that chokes made up 65.5 percent of submissions, with the rear naked choke alone about a third of all of them. 76 or 65, depending on what you count. Either way, a clear majority.

One more number from the first study that surprises people: only 11 percent of those chokes ended in unconsciousness. All the rest ended with a tap. In other words, even UFC fighters, who are willing to pay a lot, choose to tap when a choke is locked in.

Another study by the same researcher measured how long it takes from the moment a choke is fully locked until a trained fighter, resisting with everything they have, loses consciousness, in fights that ended that way: about 9 seconds on average.

And it started on the very first night. At UFC 1, in 1993, Royce Gracie won three fights in one evening against heavier, stronger opponents. He finished the first, against the boxer Art Jimmerson, from mount (sitting on top of the opponent) without throwing a single strike. He finished the other two with chokes. (I wrote about that night in my post on the difference between MMA and BJJ.)

And if you think that's only because of the strikes in MMA, where whoever protects their face exposes their neck, and whoever turns away from punches gives up their back, not quite. In pure grappling competition too, with no strikes, the choke from the back leads. According to the IBJJF's own analyses of its 2023 black belt championships (the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation, which runs the major tournaments), chokes from the back made up 45 to 50 percent of submissions from the quarterfinals through the finals. The armbar took a decent share there, but a much smaller one.

And one more caveat, from a coach rather than a statistician: champions' numbers tell you what works on champions. They don't tell you what will work for you, in your first year, against a training partner twenty kilos heavier than you.

Three Questions, Three Answers

So let's go back to the three questions.

In Competition: The Choke Finishes, the Joint Lock Opens

In jiu jitsu competition, the joint lock is the submission of opportunity. You can lock an armbar from mount, from guard (lying on your back with the opponent between your legs), from side control (lying across the opponent from the side), from the back and even standing. You can catch a kimura almost anywhere the opponent's arm is away from their body. Joint locks are waiting around every corner, because arms and legs, unlike the neck, are in motion all the time.

The choke, on the other hand, usually needs a better position. The neck is protected: the chin goes down, the shoulders come up, the hands guard. To choke a trained opponent you usually need to get to their back, or to mount, or lock a triangle from guard. In other words, more work to get there. But once you get there, it tends to end the fight. That's why, as the numbers showed, it's precisely at the higher ranks, where everyone knows how to protect their arms, that the choke from the back dominates.

On the Street: The Choke Ends the Confrontation

This is where the gap widens. In Gracie Jiu Jitsu we always ask what happens when there's no referee, no points, and someone is really trying to hurt you.

Someone attacking you on the street may be full of adrenaline, drunk, or simply unusually resistant to pain. A joint lock may not stop them. They may not feel the pain in time, or may keep going even after the joint is damaged, the way Helio kept going. And then a serious injury has been done, and the problem is still there.

A choke doesn't care about adrenaline. It doesn't need the attacker to feel pain, and it doesn't need them to agree to give up. It doesn't break bones either, and if you release it in time, it usually leaves no damage. That's why, when we teach self-defense in Gracie Jiu Jitsu, the rear naked choke is one of the first techniques new students learn.

There's a line Helio Gracie coined that I think of every time I teach chokes:

"For the choke, there are no tough guys."

In self-defense the goal is to stop the threat and go home, not to break an arm. A choke lets you neutralise a person without breaking anything. And that's also why it demands responsibility: the moment the threat stops, you let go. Immediately. A choke held too long can kill, and the law allows only reasonable, proportionate force in self-defense. If the attacker has lost consciousness, put them in the recovery position on their side and call for help. And against several attackers or a weapon, you don't choke anyone on the ground. You get up and get away. (I went deeper into this logic in my guide why jiu jitsu self-defense works.)

Against Someone Bigger: The Choke Evens the Odds

Now for the third question, the one that interests me most as a coach.

Try an armbar on a training partner who bench-presses 120 kilos. It's possible, but you feel every kilo. A joint lock means overpowering the muscles that protect the joint, and a thick, strong arm holds out longer than a thin one. In good jiu jitsu, leverage beats strength. But leverage against a lot of strength still demands excellent timing and technique.

The neck is a different story. The arteries in the neck don't get any thicker in the gym. A thick neck and broad shoulders do make it harder to get your arm under the chin, but in my experience on the mat, far less than a thick arm makes a joint lock harder. And in the triangle, the choke from guard where your legs lock around the opponent's neck and one arm, the strongest muscles in your body, the legs, work against the most vulnerable part of theirs. With the right angle, it's one of the favourite submissions of lighter students, women and men alike.

It reminds me of a line attributed to Relson Gracie, Helio's son, who took his jiu jitsu to Hawaii and was known as one of the family's traditional teachers:

"The big, strong, tough guy goes to class, and he keeps getting tapped by the skinny, technical guy. It begins to change him. Makes him humble. That's what Jiu Jitsu does to you. It makes you humble."

And I'll add a small note from 16 years of teaching: the skinny, technical ones, in most of the cases I've seen, finish with a choke.

The Chokes Every Beginner Learns

You don't need to know twenty chokes. You need to know a few, well. These are the chokes you meet in your first year of jiu jitsu:

• Rear naked choke: from the back, one arm wraps the opponent's neck with the elbow under their chin, and the other hand locks it in. The queen of chokes, in the UFC and in self-defense alike. But to get it you need the back, so it starts long before the choke itself.

• Guillotine: from the front, with the opponent's head under your armpit. It usually comes when someone tries to take you down with their head low. One of the most available chokes standing up, too.

• Triangle: from guard, with the legs. The secret weapon of people who like being on their back. (Why would anyone like being on their back? I wrote about that in the guard, and why your back is a dangerous place to be.)

• Collar chokes: gi only (the training uniform). You grab the collar of the opponent's gi and use it like a rope. The cross collar choke from mount or guard is one of the first techniques taught at every academy. It's also one of the reasons I love training in the gi: it adds dozens of choke options, and dozens of ways the opponent can control you, which is exactly why it teaches you to defend better. (I covered the difference in my post on Gi vs No-Gi.)

The Joint Locks Every Beginner Learns

• Armbar: the most famous of all. The opponent's arm between your legs, their thumb pointing up, and you lift your hips. It comes from mount, guard and side control. In my post on the mount I explained why it usually shows up when the opponent pushes with a straight arm.

• Americana: a shoulder lock. The opponent's arm is bent on the mat next to the head, palm up, and you turn it like a key. A classic from mount and side control.

• Kimura: the reverse shoulder lock, the one from the 1951 story. And much more than a lock: the kimura grip is used to control the arm, to sweep and to take the back. My post on side control shows how to reach both of these locks from the side.

• Straight foot lock (also called the straight ankle lock): the basic leg lock. Under IBJJF rules, it's the only leg lock allowed for adult white, blue and purple belts.

And leg locks in general? They're a whole world, and in recent years one of the fastest-developing areas of the sport. But the heel hook, for example, is banned in IBJJF gi competition at every rank, and in no-gi it's allowed only for brown and black belts in the adult division. There's a reason: the damage to the knee ligaments can arrive before the pain does. In other words, before you know you need to tap. In our first year, the only leg lock we teach is the straight foot lock.

How the Joint Lock Opens the Choke, and Vice Versa

Now for the little secret of everyone who submits a lot: they don't choose between a choke and a joint lock. They use one to get to the other.

Let's take the most classic example. You're on your back in guard, going for a triangle. The opponent senses the danger, postures up and pushes on your hips with a straight arm. The triangle is blocked. But a straight arm inside your guard is exactly what an armbar needs. Defend the neck, give up the arm. Defend the arm, give up the neck.

Same thing from the back. You go for a rear naked choke, and the opponent fights your choking arm with both hands to save their neck. Both their hands are busy. And from the back, a hand busy defending the neck is a hand you can take for a joint lock.

That's what I mean when I say "choke or joint lock" is the wrong question. The right question is "what is the opponent defending right now, and what have they left open?" Someone who only knows chokes is predictable. Someone who only knows joint locks is predictable. Someone who knows both, and can switch between them, gives the opponent two problems and only two hands to solve them with.

And it all starts, as always, with position. I wrote about it at length in my post on Position Before Submission: no choke without control, and no joint lock holds without a base. Chase a submission from a bad position and you lose both the submission and the position.

Safety: Why We Tap Early, and Why It's Different for Chokes and Joint Locks

Jiu jitsu is a contact sport, and every contact sport carries a risk of injury. Controlled training, responsible partners and tapping in time reduce that risk significantly. They don't eliminate it. And this is where the difference between chokes and joint locks really matters.

With a joint lock, the danger is in waiting. Many joint lock injuries happen not because the partner cranked too hard, but because the person underneath waited one more second. "Maybe I can still get out." Maybe. And maybe the elbow decides for you. With leg locks, as I said, the pain can arrive after the damage. So our rule is simple: feel pressure on a joint and see no clear way out? Tap. Right away. Nobody gets a medal for a bent elbow.

With a choke, the danger is pride. New students try to "ride out" a choke, hold on a little longer and see whether they can escape. Bad idea. Going to sleep in the middle of sparring proves nothing, except that you didn't tap in time. And chokes carry rare but real risks too. So: choke locked in, tap. And whoever is choking lets go the moment the partner taps, or the moment they feel the partner go limp, even without a tap. And if new symptoms appear after a choke, such as weakness, numbness, dizziness or an unusual headache, even a few days later, see a doctor. At our academy nobody trains to be put to sleep.

All of this, the mental side of tapping and the price of "one more second", I covered in my post on injury prevention in jiu jitsu.

So What's More Effective? My Answer

If you insist on a coach's answer, here it is.

The choke is the more decisive submission. It doesn't depend on pain or on willpower, and it depends less on muscle size. It works on people bigger than you, and on people as stubborn as Helio Gracie. On the street, and especially for anyone lighter than their attacker, it's the submission I'd most want you to know well.

The joint lock is the more available submission. It waits for you in almost every position, it punishes mistakes, and it's what forces the opponent to open up their neck.

So who's truly effective? Whoever understands that the two aren't competing with each other. They complete each other.

So in your first year, here's my recommendation: one good choke from the back, one good armbar from mount, and one triangle from guard. Three tools. Know them so well that even when the opponent knows what's coming, they can't stop it. That's worth more than twenty submissions you saw online and sort of know.

Why This Matters Especially for Lighter Students, Women and Men Alike

At our academy in Tel Aviv, the women's group is the largest in Israel, and women make up about thirty percent of our students. And every time I explain the difference between a choke and a joint lock, I see someone in the back row who understands exactly why it matters to her.

Because if you're smaller than your opponent, you can't afford to build your jiu jitsu on strength. You need submissions that work when strength isn't on your side. A triangle with the legs, a properly locked rear naked choke, a well-timed guillotine. These are the tools that let a 55-kilo woman submit an 85-kilo man in sparring. Not every time. But often enough that it stops being a surprise. (I wrote about this side too in my guide to women's self-defense in Tel Aviv.)

And that's the test Helio left us, the test of every class we teach: a technique doesn't enter the curriculum until we know how to make it work for the smaller person against the bigger one. The armbar too, even though it takes more strength.

How to Start Learning Chokes and Joint Locks in Tel Aviv

You can't learn submissions from videos. You can learn the shape from them. The timing, the right pressure and the moment the opponent opens their neck, you only learn on the mat, against someone who resists.

At our academy in Tel Aviv, new students learn every submission slowly and under control, in pairs, with partners who know they're new. You learn to submit, and just as important, you learn to tap. You'll tap a lot in the first months. We all did. It doesn't mean you're bad. It means you're learning, and that your joints will still be with you ten years from now.

You don't need to be fit to start, it doesn't matter if you're 25 or 55, and you don't need any previous experience. You can tap at any moment, and your partner lets go immediately. If you want to know what to expect, I wrote a full guide on what really happens in your first jiu jitsu class.

And if you're comparing places that teach jiu jitsu, try asking one question: how do you teach people to submit an opponent without injuring them? The answer will tell you a lot about the place.

The Israeli Academy of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and MMA is at Yitzhak Sadeh 29 in Tel Aviv. All the details about classes and instructors are on the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Tel Aviv page. To book a trial class, send a WhatsApp message to +972-55-921-2431.

Frequently Asked Questions About Chokes and Joint Locks

What is the difference between a choke and a joint lock in BJJ?

A joint lock attacks a joint, such as the elbow, shoulder, knee or ankle, and bends it beyond its natural range. The opponent gives up because of the pain and the threat to the joint. A choke attacks the neck: a blood choke presses on the arteries at the sides of the neck and reduces blood flow to the brain, and an air choke presses on the windpipe. A joint lock gets the submission through pain, a choke gets it through physiology.

Which is more effective, a choke or a joint lock?

It depends on the context. A choke is more decisive, because it doesn't depend on pain or willpower and depends less on muscle size, which makes it especially effective in self-defense and against a bigger opponent. In the UFC, 65 to 76 percent of submissions were chokes, according to two different studies, and in black belt jiu jitsu competition the choke from the back also leads. A joint lock is more available, because you can reach it from more positions. Well-trained grapplers use both, so every defense the opponent makes opens up the other attack.

How long does a choke take to work?

According to a study of MMA fights that ended in unconsciousness, about 9 seconds passed on average from the moment the choke was fully locked until the fighter, resisting with everything they had, lost consciousness. In training you never get there: you tap as soon as the choke is locked, and whoever is choking lets go the moment the partner taps or goes limp.

Are chokes dangerous?

As in any contact sport, there is risk. A choke released in time usually leaves no damage, but there are rare, real risks, so you never train to unconsciousness, you let go the moment the partner taps, and you see a doctor if new symptoms such as weakness, numbness or dizziness appear after a choke. With joint locks the main risk is tapping too late, which can end in a joint injury. Controlled training, responsible partners and tapping early reduce the risk significantly.

Which submissions do you learn in your first year of jiu jitsu?

In the first year you usually learn the basic submissions: the rear naked choke from the back, the guillotine, the triangle from guard and the collar choke, and among joint locks the armbar, the americana, the kimura and the straight foot lock. It's better to know a few submissions well than many submissions roughly.

Why are leg locks restricted in competition?

Because with some leg locks, such as the heel hook, the damage to the knee ligaments can arrive before you feel pain, meaning before you know you need to tap. That's why, under IBJJF rules, adult white, blue and purple belts may use only the straight foot lock among leg locks, and the heel hook is allowed only in no-gi competition, for brown and black belts in the adult division.

Do chokes work for self-defense?

Yes. A choke, especially the rear naked choke, stops an attacker even when they are full of adrenaline or resistant to pain, and without breaking a bone. It also demands responsibility: you let go as soon as the threat stops, because the law allows only reasonable, proportionate force, and against several attackers or a weapon the goal is to get up and get away. In Gracie Jiu Jitsu in Tel Aviv we teach it in the very first weeks.

Bottom Line: Snap or Nap

A joint lock asks your opponent how much they're willing to pay. A choke doesn't ask them anything.

The choke isn't better in every situation, and the joint lock isn't redundant. They're two tools with two jobs that work best together. And in your first year, they also teach you the third tool, the most important of all: tapping in time.

So next time someone asks you which is better, a choke or a joint lock, tell them "it depends". Then send them this post.

See you on the mat,

Professor Itay Leibovich

The Israeli Academy of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and MMA, Yitzhak Sadeh 29, Tel Aviv

To book a trial class: WhatsApp message to +972-55-921-2431.