Like everyone and their mom, I've been working on the "Monson" choke, the reverse guillotine from north-south. It became the New Hot Thing again after Marcelo beat Avellon and Popovich with it.

Even though I call it the Monson, since he was the first guy to showcase it with his win in UFC, it was because of him that I thought the choke wasn't for me. I'd played around with it some and all I ended up doing was face cranking, so I chalked it up to his monstrous biceps.

I later saw Rani Yahya pisschoke a Japanese fighter in MMA with it. Since he's a light weight, I gave it another shot but I got the same results. His RNC-style grip just face cranked even worse.

It didn't start feeling like a real technique until I began drilling it off this tutorial by Marcelo:

http://www.graciemag.com/data/images/news/categories/cat_149/Marcelix_1.jpg

The points that made the difference were how he shows starting in side control and wrapping the head, dropping on one hip and circling to drive the armpit into the neck. When this is done right, you get deep under their chin, so there's no face crank, just a blood choke.

I'm still in the very early stages of working on this so I'm not going to do any big tutorial on it. Luckily, I have a research team working with me on this.

Jeff Rockwell, Leo Kirby and I have been having a three-way email conversation about this. It started with me asking Jeff out of the blue if he'd worked on the Monson choke. By coincidence or fate, he sent this back to me:


Funny you should ask, it’s actually been a project of mine recently, and I finally hit it in a competition this past weekend. I just put up the video footage up on myspace here:

Kumite Classic - Advanced No-gi - 3rd Place match (http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2032496085)

In training, I’ve been using both the “arm in” and “arm out variations. In the tournament I did it with the arm in. The keys for me are aggressively turning his chin away from me, using my ribs to push until I can really settle his chin under my armpit. Then I just keep sliding back down away from him, keeping my head low, and slowly squeezing. I always have to remind myself to keep making little adjustments and be patient – don’t give up the choke just because he isn’t tapping in the first few seconds.

Seriously, I have still been having mixed results with this in training. I wasn’t really planning on going for it, but the guy just put his neck in the perfect spot, and I just thought “what the hell, I’ll try it and see, it’s not like I’ll lose position if he doesn’t tap”. So I just settled into it, and kept sliding back. He bridged hard once to try to break lose, then tapped. I don’t feel as confident with it as some of my other chokes yet, but this has at least encouraged me to keep refining it. Leo, when you go to that Marcelo seminar in GA, you have to get him to show you the inside scoop on this. I know he just did an article on it and everything, but I think a lot of this choke is “feel”; how you turn the chin, how you set it up, when and how to squeeze, etc.

We've been putting a lot of thought into how to explain "the feel" since that's the most important part of getting this choke. It involves a lot of things that are hard to demonstrate in pictures or even in person. For example, "smearing" into position, finding a balance of driving in (to pin them and open their neck) and sagging away from them (to slide your armpit into place), wiggling, shaking and "the snake move" to get snug, and dropping flat, melting to the floor and sinking away to finish.

Then there are details on how to grip, arm-in or arm-out, what pressure to do with your arms, etc.

For a seemingly simple move, it has a surprising depth of technique.

Sweet. You assholes take note.

We were working this a couple of months back. I too and up having it mainly be a facecrankcrush, look forward to your expanding on your discussion.

The piece of this that seems to make the difference with me is "falling into the hole" - getting your shoulder to drop into the "hole" between his shoulder and neck.

That sounds like what my coach was saying. My response was along the lines of "uhh..... what?"

hehe, we call that the Papa Serra in our gym. Apparently Matt's dad does it all the time.

I love this choke. It took me forever to find someone to actually teach it to me though, because it seems that no one knows how to do it.

Is it possible to open the hole up by slipping the arm around their neck for the choke and pushing their forehead with your free hand when they tuck their chin?

We did this three weeks ago. My big problem is really using my hip to push the chin.

The trick is in getting under the chin...

Wierd thing is I've been able to do this one but it's been a pain for me to show people. I'll show them this, sounds better than the way I do it.

Is it possible to open the hole up by slipping the arm around their neck for the choke and pushing their forehead with your free hand when they tuck their chin?
You're going to have to pass your arm under your body and between your body and their head, creating space. So, I don't see that helping.

I went over it briefly with my instructor today. He did it. The girl I was rolling with did it drilling. I crushed her head. Stupid choke.

Am I correct in thinking your ribs are the tool you use to move the guy's chin, once you're under it? Once you feel his face along your ribs and his chin on your arm when you push with your left foot you've got it?

Maybe, but your arm is almost perpendicular to your spine. Youre pretty far out.
FYI Monson does this twice and Fowler once on 101 v2.

good stuff

Hmph; when I learned it (I can't pull it off effectively except maybe on opponents who aren't trained in grappling) we just called it the north-south. I've never heard of it referred to as the monson choke until now.

But, more importantly, where'd you get the images from? Are they from Marcelo Garcia's X-guard book? I was thinking about getting it, but I don't know that I would trust myself to be able to use the x-guard without live instruction, which would leave me with just the butterfly guard stuff to look at (and even then, probably still not use effectively without live instruction or an intense number of attempts during rolling). I also have no idea whether the book is primarily gi or no-gi or both. Anyone want to weigh in and help me feel like a smart consumer?

P.S. I'm probably not skilled enough to use any of the more advanced stuff in the book. The real reason I'm interested is because I was told that it was one of the best books from a learning perspective; the steps for each technique are laid out in a manner that makes things easy to follow, as opposed to some books that don't really show transitional steps. As that is the case, I'd also really appreciate anyone pointing me in the direction of any books that are good because of the reason that I just stated.