How to Escape the Triangle Choke from Guard

Chris and I were rolling Wednesday night, when he almost caught me in a triangle. It was a decent triangle too – almost decent enough to finish it off.

Now, we were only playing around and training for Chris’ competition this Saturday, but whenever I get caught in any type of triangle setup, I’m a bit disturbed. I usually get out of it by using one escape or another, but afterwards, I wonder how I got in that trouble in the first place.

For years, Jeff has been demonstrating techniques and escapes and many times, during his demonstrations, he’s asked questions regarding various scenarios. It’s like, “Well, what do we do if this happens?” or “What do we do if that happens?” I’m not big on asking questions, but many of his students are. I like to get creative with situations I find myself in, but for the others, Jeff often replies, “You have to go back and find out what you did to get yourself in the mess your in. It’s usually a few steps back – did you leave one arm in and one arm out when trying to pass guard? If so, you’re going to find yourself in a triangle choke.”

During Wednesday’s go round, I escaped Chris’ triangle setup by grabbing onto the pressure leg – the one he threw over my neck – and driving it to the ground. Once there, I crept my legs around Chris’ body and threw my leg over Chris’ head. From there, he knew he lost whatever he was going for. What I did was very similar to what you see in minute 3:20 in the video I’ll post below.

The trick with Jiu-Jitsu is to not only continuously attempt what feels most comfortable to you, but to stop attempting those things and train your body into using proper technique. I’m finding some challenges with this lately because I’ve gotten fairly comfortable with my game. I need to kind of break out of that and try new things.

Anyway, check out the video below. It’s Stephan Kesting doing what he does best – training people.

How to Escape the Triangle Choke from Guard

In the series below, I’m rolling with my good buddy John and I attempt a somewhat non-perfect triangle setup. I apologize early for things kind of moving off the screen, but you just never know where it’s going to end up at times. It does though give you a piece by piece breakdown of what happens when someone does something like this to you and how you can defend against this.

Now, here’s my question – If John had watched the video above, could he have used any of Stephan’s defenses in his situation?