A few minutes ago, a student of mine sent me a link to a YouTube video where two girls play with a choking technique. Apparently one of the girls, the one being strangled, is a stuntman or something and numerous videos of herself doing dangerous things like the TV show “Jack Ass.”

This video is a great example of a couple of things like stupidity, natural selection, and of course the fact that if you film pretty attractive girls doing something, people will stick around and watch it through to the end. In this video, the girl is going to knock the other unconscious using a “bare butt choke”. The problem is that they do not know what they are doing and one girl ends up suffocating the other until she coughs or waves her arms and then the first girls let go of her and after a pause they start again. This continues for 12 minutes and the girl never faints. A link to the video will appear at the end of the article.

Here’s the first issue I’d like to highlight, the girl being strangled is named Rachel Star, and by quickly browsing through her videos on YouTube, she appears to have some degree of actual martial arts training. There are videos of her using the nunchacku, owning various other pieces of martial arts equipment, and doing kickboxing. It is very likely that this girl has received some degree of training in some form of art.

So either her instructor wasn’t good enough to convince her that these techniques are dangerous and shouldn’t be played with or she was impressed by that, but she thought she was capable of doing it anyway. The fact that the technique was misapplied and that she was unable to quickly discern shows that she is not qualified to do that technique.

While you should always practice your techniques at home, the parts where you actually inflict trauma on another person should only be done under the careful supervision of a qualified instructor. To do otherwise is to invite serious injury.

The second topic I’d like to highlight is one of my favorite issues when it comes to terms related to marital art, because when people engage in these it shows a lack of understanding that they should have. My first annoyance is when I talk about firearms and someone says that a magazine is a “paper clip.” While minor, this bothers most shooters because it indicates that the person is engaging in a very dangerous activity without receiving proper training. The second is when people don’t know the difference between a “choke” and a “choke”.

The questioning technique is very old. I learned it as the “Thugee Stranglehold”. One of the first mentions of this technique comes from the records of the Thugee, who were a group of murderous bandits who worked along the Silk Road in Asia. They would stalk a caravan of merchants, sneak into their camp at night, silently kill everyone using the Thugee Stranglehold or strangling them with pieces of silk. They then dumped their bodies into previously dug graves and took all the goods away, causing the caravan to simply disappear. This group is where we get the term “bully” today.

Thugee Stranglehold is one of the first known names in the art. When the US Marines first heard about it, they called it “Japanese freehold” and after a while it became known as “marine freehold.” However, the name that has lasted the longest is the name Judo. Judo calls this technique the “bare butt choke.” “Rear” because you do it from behind, “naked” because you are not using clothes or any tools to do it, just your own body, and “Choke” because … I really don’t know why.

The Japanese call this type of technique “Shime-Waza”, which translates to “Constriction Technique”. I spoke with several experts in Judo, Jujitsu and Aikijitsu and some told me that the Japanese made a distinction between choking and strangulation and others told me that they did not, they had 36 techniques that were “shime-waza” and they did not make that distinction. So I just don’t know if the Japanese referred to this technique as a “choke” due to ignorance, non-distinction, or if it was mistranslated and never corrected.

[NOTE: I was just recently told in Jujitsu this technique’s original name was “Hadaka Jime” which means “naked strangle” but when the sport of Judo came about it was switched to rear naked choke. I can’t vouch for this being true, however.]

There is a difference and as martial artists it is very important to know the difference. Simply, a choking technique compresses the windpipe causing the person to have difficulty breathing. From there, they will suffocate, panic, and eventually pass out. Choking is horrible. Depending on the amount of pressure in your windpipe, it may take several minutes for you to pass out and then you will be left with a very bad sore throat. When they wake up, it will hurt to speak or swallow and will often have a headache. Before passing out, they will panic, wave their arms, and can be very dangerous. Not being able to breathe is the most terrifying thing for the human brain.

A strangulation technique, or strangulation, leaves the windpipe alone and is instead compressed along the windpipe to seal one or both of the carotid arteries. The carotid arteries carry blood and oxygen to the brain, and when interrupted, the person begins to feel dizzy and weak. If the restriction is great enough, the person will pass out. A solid strangulation technique like Thugee Strangle Hold can render a person unconscious in about 5-6 seconds and can be fatal if applied for more than 2 minutes.

After a person passes out, they begin to seizure and sometimes even snore. If your intention is to simply knock them out, that is the best time to let them go. If you let them go when their body is weak, it might be a trick to get out of the cellar, but it is very difficult to convincingly fake seizures. The strategy is to let them go limp and then wait for a change in their breathing and the onset of seizures before releasing them.

Usually a person is unconscious for a few seconds to up to a minute and when they wake up they may have a slight headache or feel a little weak, but that soon goes away when they start to move.

The difference between the two is huge; A strangulation causes a person to cough, panic, wave their arms and defend themselves, so it takes time, makes noise, triggers the “fight or flight” instinct, and when a person wakes up they are in a lot of pain. Strangulation makes a person feel dizzy and weak and then passes out very quickly. It’s fast, quiet, and if you wanted to kill someone you can throw it on a person for 2-3 minutes or, which probably happened much more often, just long enough for them to pass out and once they’re out, use a tool like a knife to finish the job.

Choking techniques and strangulation techniques do two different jobs and result in two different results.

The video can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqlze-aPaGY

If you watched the video I put in the link above, you can clearly see how most of the force is in the girl’s windpipe, so she choked and felt pain instead of just passing out.