 Scorch 1028 asks I hope the light of the recent NYC subway chokehold tragedy that you might weigh in on the issue of martial arts schools teaching and allowing chokeholds This is an excellent excellent question, and I actually sat and thought about it for a little bit because I wasn't sure how to approach this I'm not gonna get into the specifics of what happened I'm not sure a lot of you saw in the news about an incident where you know There was an incident on the New York subway where a mentally ill man was put into a chokehold for restraint and he ended up dying and It's brought up a lot of controversy about chokeholds in general because it's been in the news We've seen police brutality with it. We've seen we've seen a lot of instances of this being applied and the person dying Address the question of how do I feel about the chokeholds being taught? honestly, I See no problem with it being taught because like any other martial arts technique You are taught a proper way to do it. You are taught or you should be taught appropriate times to do it and You learn a lot of stuff the martial arts that are brutal that are you know striking to the throat breaking legs breaking limbs breaking necks That's all in there You know none of its bands or shouldn't be banned to learn but the difference is how you choose to use it You are learning Ways to destroy a body like any other technique that you learn in the martial arts It is your responsibility to take that knowledge and make good choices on how if and how you're going to apply it in real life The bottom line you are handling someone's neck. This is a very very vital part of the human body It's very easy to injure. You know, you've got blood vessels. You've got your trachea and airway There's a lot of ways you can injure a person You've got your spine and spinal cord It is so easy to hurt someone's neck for those of you who are watching earlier in this live stream I cited an example of a co-worker of mine who in a bar a guy came up behind him grabbed him to a choke hold a choke hold Grab them put them off a stool threw him outside and twisted and broke his neck Thankfully, he made a full recovery But anything you are ever going to do with the human neck you have to understand the responsibility You are taken in your hands in the case of the New York subway incident from what I've seen and what I read of incident reports is that this guy Held mentally ill man for about 15 minutes in the choke hold You can't do that. It takes seconds You're not cutting off airway when you do like the rear neck of choke or you do like the digits you choke holds You are not cutting off the airway, you know, you know, I mean the airways involved But you're also cutting off blood supply to the brain that carotid artery if you pinch that carotid artery off You're cutting off oxygen to the brain and blood flow to the brain about four to five seconds You black out. There's a debate on whether or not the guy in the subway was actually aggressive or not I'm not gonna get into the politics this I'm not gonna get to the specifics of it from what I saw be personally I felt it was unnecessary now or unnecessary to hold them so long If it only takes a few seconds to pass the person out or knock a person out with a choke hold What do you think happens after hold them for 15 minutes or even five minutes? You're gonna kill them. You get a brain cannot are very very least give them brain damage The brain cannot go more than a few minutes without oxygen without having some severe repercussions If you think a person is a threat and you have to use a choke hold I my personal opinion is you have to apply it knowing that one you're taking a great risk And you have to assess that risk based on how much of a threat are you in if this guy was waved around a knife and trying To kill someone different story. He wasn't doing that If you knock up behind him and he tried to submit someone once he stops fighting back once he's once he passes out after Those few seconds especially with a lot of people around there is an opportunity there to reposition him and put him in a Safer hold the submission. There's a lot of different locks and holes Especially for you grapplers out there if you're gonna sit in the ground and hold someone in a grappling position Or a hold someone in a hold so that they don't move you have a lot of different options And I'll give that to my BJJ brethren out there Who excel at this and they know how to restrain a person and if you just do a Google search or YouTube search of Anyone using BJJ in a real-life situation You're gonna find people who are restraining Individuals who are violent in my jiu-jitsu class We we have like kind of a standard locking and we do takedowns we roll the person over and we do an arm lock behind the back I'll tell you right now in that lock I can't get up and it's one of things that is either using their shoulder against you and the wrist against you It's a lock and the more you fight all it takes is a twist of the wrist and it hurts and it drives your shoulder down I know for a fact that if I struggle to get the more I struggle I can't get out of that lock we do that lock in class as a regular training basic So if you have to choke someone out and you don't want to kill them and you want to make sure you're safe There are plenty of it locks you can put them in especially with the help of other people that you could hold them Still until help can't arrive, but I think it's absolutely vital to know and You have to make sometimes you don't have the time to make a quick decision But you have to assess the risk versus what your response is going to be Someone's in your house. Someone's trying to kill you you do what you have to do If that's the only way you can save yourself you do what you have to do But if you don't want to kill the person you have to understand that by holding their neck You by manipulating someone's neck and manhandling someone's neck You are taking great risk in your hand great liability in your hand And you your chances of hurting somebody severely or permanently skyrocket So my take on choke holds is I think it's fine to teach them, you know Please have to use them sometimes they're very very they're used because they work, you know That's why BJJ guys do use them they work But they like any other weapon on your body or any other weapon that you have to learn to use There are consequences and there are risk factors involved and I'm not advocating one one particular lock over another particular lock All I'm saying is any technique you learn in martial arts you have to understand You could potentially kill someone you can kill someone by punching them in the face You can kill someone by hitting the back of their head a kick You can kill someone by hitting them they're growing hard enough if you cause a rupture You just have to understand and that's why I'm a proponent of avoiding fights whenever possible I don't want to get hurt. I don't want anyone else to get hurt. Sometimes both of those things happen It's not worth it if it doesn't have to happen. So that is my take on a choke hold I of course, you know, if anyone disagrees with me, I absolutely invite Any debates, you know, if you feel differently or if you've got suggested holds that would work better Please put them down in the comments below I just felt that this was an excellent question I wanted to address it and I definitely opened up the floor to you guys on that one