The triangle choke is my go-to BJJ submission. It’s my A-game. I’ve been honing it since white belt. I even tapped black belts with this exact sequence — as a blue belt!

It’s one of the 6 submission holds that John Danaher teaches for a reason. And it’s consistently rated as an S or A-tier submission in both gi and no-gi jiu-jitsu.

In this article, I’ll share the easiest setup to hit the triangle from closed guard.

Triangle Choke: Table Of Contents

• How To Do The Triangle Choke
• 3 Tips To Make Your Triangle Choke Unstoppable
• How To Defend The Triangle Choke
• Takeaway Thoughts

How To Do The Triangle Choke

There are hundreds of different setups to hit the triangle choke.

Here’s my favorite way to hit the triangle choke from closed guard.

It’s simple, easy to remember, and also helps you set up other attacks: like the omoplata or armbar.

Step 1. Get The Overhook

Starting from closed guard, start by breaking the top player’s posture by pulling your knees towards your chest.

Get an overhook by wrapping your arm over and around their tricep.

To hit the triangle choke, you need one arm in and one arm out. The arm you have trapped with the overhook is your “one arm in.”

With your other hand, monitor their non-trapped arm and hand.

Step 2. Get On Your Hip & Create An Angle

Once you have the overhook, open your guard and shrimp out onto your hip.

Closed guard submissions are all about breaking posture and creating angles.

With the overhook, you have the ability to break their posture. Now, you’ll create an angle by getting onto your hip.

This gives you much more mobility with your legs to start attacking.

Step 3. Push Their Hand To Their Stomach

Once you have gotten out on your hip, bring your inside knee towards your chest.

Push their hand towards their chest.

You want this arm outside of your triangle.

Step 4. Shoot Your Leg Over Their Head

As soon as you push their hand towards their chest, swing your inside leg up and over their head.

Now, you can get rid of your overhook. Use your leg to pressure down on their head and neck to keep their posture broken.

You can either cross your ankles, or grab their head to apply pressure and keep them broken down.

Step 5: Create A Perpendicular Angle

Now, before you try and finish the triangle, create a perpendicular angle.

So instead of having your body facing their body, you want your body to be facing the side of their body.

Technically, you can finish the triangle by facing them and pulling down with your legs and hands.

But if you create this perpendicular angle, you’ll make your triangle choke much tighter — and make it much harder for the top player to escape.

TIP: I like to reach underneath their leg during this step. It makes it easier to use their leg as a grip to get the angle more easily.

Step 6: Lock Your Legs & Finish

Lock your legs into the triangle position.

Get the tap by squeezing down with your legs and hamstrings.

With the proper perpendicular angle, you probably won’t need to pull down on their head with your hands.

But if they’re very strong, create additional force by pulling down on their head with your hands.

3 Tips To Make Your Triangle Choke Unstoppable

1. Break Their Posture (& Keep It Broken)

As the top player, one of the best ways to prevent the triangle choke — and escape out of it — is to bring your head up to the sky. Like you’re doing a deadlift.

So, as the bottom player, you want to make sure you always break the top player’s posture — and keep it broken — if you want to successfully hit the triangle choke.

This is why we pull our knees towards our chest, grab the overhook, and pull down on their head: to break their posture and keep it broken.

It’s much easier to hit the triangle when their head and back are angled down.

Before you even think about going for the triangle choke, focus on breaking their posture!

2. Focus On Your Angle

My coach Ritchie Yip has a great quote.

“It’s called a tri-ANGLE, not tri-in-front-of-the-guy.”

This is the tip that revolutionized my triangle choke.

An inescapable, air-tight triangle choke is all about step 5: creating that perpendicular angle.

If you have long, strong legs, you can get away with a triangle where you’re facing your opponent.

But if you want a truly deadly triangle, you’ll create that perpendicular angle.

It works so well because it makes your triangle much tighter. It makes you harder to stack. And it takes away easy escapes.

You don’t need to focus on their head or even their arm. Once you’ve gotten in the triangle position, focus solely on creating a perpendicular angle.

3. Use The Specific Training Approach

If you want to get better at the triangle choke, you have to practice the triangle choke.

Here’s a challenge for you: in your next class, make it your focus during each roll to hit a triangle.

Trying to hit specific moves during sparring is called “specific training” — and it’s how Gordon Ryan masters submissions.

Then, after class, write down in your BJJ journal…

• What worked (example: “During one roll, I was able to get into closed guard, grab the overhook, and set up the triangle.” )
• What didn’t work (example: “During another roll, I wasn’t able to get the angle so my training partner postured out and escaped.”)
• Questions or notes for next class (example: “Ask coach how to create the proper angle so I can get the finish.”)

Ask your training partners if you can start from the bottom closed guard position. This will make training your triangle choke much easier.

Do this for 4 weeks, and I guarantee you’ll get much better at the triangle.

NOTE: I teach this specific training and journaling process in my BJJ Journal Of Champions Course.

How To Defend The Triangle Choke

Learning how to defend the triangle choke is one of the best ways to improve your attack.

The more you understand what the top player should do to prevent and escape the choke, the better you can anticipate what they’ll do — so you can counter them.

1. Triangle Choke Prevention

Preventing the triangle choke — and other attacks from closed guard — comes down to good posture.

From top closed guard, you want your head and chest to be high. Imagine you’re doing a deadlift.

Don’t let the bottom player bring you down towards them.

And don’t forget the grip fight as well. As soon as you feel them go for an overhook, push them away.

If they get the overhook, limp-arm out.

Closed guard can be exhausting to be in. Make sure you keep your posture strong so you don’t have to escape an even worse position or submission.

2. Early Stage Triangle Escape

If the bottom player has gotten the triangle position — but hasn’t yet gotten a good angle — you still have some time to escape.

What I do from this position is still posture up.

If we’re rolling in the gi, I’ll reach in towards their collar and apply pressure to their neck as I posture up.

If we’re rolling in no-gi, I’ll bring my shoulder in towards the bottom player to try and create space. And then I’ll posture up.

If they haven’t gotten the angle yet, look towards the ceiling and posture up!

3. Mid & Late Stage Triangle Escape

If they’ve gotten the triangle choke locked up — and they have gotten a good angle for the finish — it’s time to panic.

You don’t have much time left to escape. But what you can do is roll onto your back.

Sure, you’ll now be in bottom mount — but you will create some space within their legs to decrease the pressure on your neck.

This is a Hail Mary escape that you can use to create a scramble.

The earlier you prevent and defend the triangle, the easier it is to prevent yourself from being submitted.

Focus on keeping a strong upright posture, keeping their grips off you, and disallowing them to create advantageous angles.

Takeaway Thoughts

So there you have it: the triangle choke setup that enabled me to punch above my weight.

There’s a reason why it’s one of the most popular submissions in BJJ.

Remember to focus on the angle, and you’ll make your triangle choke unstoppable.

What is YOUR favorite way to set up the triangle choke?

Leave a comment in the section below and let me know.

And if you hit this setup in class tonight, share your story in the comments!

Happy rolling. 🤙

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Tsavo Neal

Tsavo is the founder of BJJ Equipment, author of BJJ For Beginners, creator of the BJJ Missions app, and a brown belt instructor at InFighting. He launched BJJ Equipment to help grapplers at every belt level train smarter, make faster progress, and find the best gear for their game.