The devastating power of strangles – the dark art of strangulation: In all of unarmed martial arts there is no more devastating than a well applied strangle. It is one of the few means of attack in empty handed combat that is reliably capable of killing people should the need ever arise. In combat sports it can overcome even the bravest of souls who simply refuse to submit to other methods – even the greatest bravery cannot make up for restricted blood flow to the brain. Having a good set of strangles in your arsenal is therefore of the first importance. My recommendation is to have one great strangle from the BACK, one from in FRONT of an opponent, one for when you are in a FRONT HEADLOCK situation and one great strangle with your LEGS. These four general scenarios are by far the most common in the sport with regards strangles and hence you must have all four covered if you are one day to be a master of strangulation. Note that these are MINIMUM requirements and it would be a very good thing if you went beyond this. The STRANGLE is the grapplers equivalent of a knockout punch and thus something to be coveted among us all. The good news is that there are quite a few choices of stranglehold among the basic four scenarios I mentioned and even more when you add the gi jacket. It would be a sad thing indeed if you went through your time in Jiu Jitsu without developing the arts greatest weapon. If you are starting out, start researching strangleholds for the four main scenarios and start your quest to find some favorites. If you already have some good strongholds, cover the other main strangle scenarios or improve your performance with those favorites in a wider of set ups and to display increasing mastery. Here, Gordon Ryan shows his python like powers of strangulation in an intense match that shows well the kind of pressure too athletes must exert to get submissions at a high . to be able to get similar strangulation power and you will one day be a master of the dark art.