you’re getting sleepy

Lately when rolling, I have been trying different types of attacks and trying to use them to either setup the submission or attack from the get-go. I was looking at loop chokes which have long time been a favorite starting move for me as they lead into great transitions and the submissions are always there. It made me recall a time quite a while back, I rolled against Forrest Goodwin and hit a great rolling loop choke from the open guard, Forrest tapped and I was stoked, more so because I had already tapped about 300 times in the roll to him but I let go of the choke and he said “That was a great move, it came on…” and before he could finish the sentence, he passed out for a split second. This scared the shit out of me at the time but having worked on these more and more, I now see it was a true blood choke which as most of us know, these are on before we realize and this is quite a common thing that can happen! It has also been a great running joke for both of us, well this was until I got used as the partner for Karl Webber’s brown belt grading way back in December 2013! Karl was going through the techniques under Stacey Wilson’s instruction on Hayden but it was deemed a better idea for Karl to do these on me so Hayden and Stacey could discuss the results. I was happy, being a super heavy 70kg and Karl being…..somewhat more than me, I was not overly unused to being the smaller person in a roll but here, it was knee ride attacks being discussed and the baseball bat choke was the move in deep technical breakdown. If anybody has had the privilege of rolling with Karl, he has extremely good grips, weight distribution and really, all around jiu jitsu skills! Here, in this situation, he was asking about variations he could use. I was happy, just watching from the “uke” position when all of a sudden I was lying on my side, ears ringing with that familiar sound, drooling and had gone to sleep from the deep grip already being a blood choke! From what I recall, I was trying to tap but ended up kind of rubbing my hand on Karl’s shoulder with him asking if I was ok! Obviously I was not and was just really lucky to have a high level grappler putting the submission on me! It may not feel deep when the attacks are put on you but the more you know about jiu jitsu, the more you know in yourself when the technique is sound and they will be going to sleep!
Always apply chokes carefully and check on your training partner like Karl did, be like Karl.

“One day, somebody gonna try take something from you and you gonna hafta choke that motherfu^&er. It’s that simple”. – Ralph Gracie