The rear naked choke: how it works and how to do it

Technique guideUpdated 25 Oct 2026

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By Scott Flear, founder of JitsAI. Steps from Henrique Rezende’s fundamentals course.

What is a rear naked choke?

The rear naked choke (RNC) is the classic choke from the back in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. You wrap one arm around your opponent’s neck from behind, lock it with your other arm, and squeeze. “Naked” means you don’t need the gi: there’s no grip on the collar, so it works the same in no-gi and MMA. In Brazil it’s the mata leão, and in judo it’s hadaka jime.

It’s a blood choke, not an air choke. It works by cutting blood flow to the brain, not by closing the windpipe, which is why a well-locked RNC is fast and a badly locked one just hurts. The triangle and the arm triangle are blood chokes too; the guillotine leans more on the throat.

How does a rear naked choke work?

Your arm goes under their chin with their throat in the crook of your elbow. Your biceps is on one side of the neck and your forearm on the other. Under both sit the jugular veins, which drain blood from the head, and the carotid arteries, which feed it.

• The veins close first. Blood still comes in but can’t drain out.
• Then the carotids close. Blood flow to the brain drops, and that’s what puts someone out. Researchers put it down to the compression itself, not the carotid-sinus reflex (Mitchell et al. 2012; Nimura 2022).
• The windpipe isn’t the target. It sits in the gap at the crook of your elbow and is the hardest part to close. It gets squeezed, but it isn’t what makes the choke work.

The force comes from leverage, not grip strength. The hand of your choking arm holds your other biceps, your other hand goes behind their head, and then you bring your elbows together and push your chest out. That closes the gap between your biceps and forearm from both sides.

Two episodes from our Anatomy Series. A snake squeezes the whole chest; the RNC only needs the two arteries on the sides of the neck. And a gorilla has the same two carotids, but you couldn’t get your arm round its neck.

How do you do a rear naked choke?

The choke starts with the position. Without control of the back, your opponent turns into you, gets their back to the mat and escapes. These four steps follow Henrique Rezende’s lessons on back control and the rear naked choke:

1. Step 1: Secure the back. Chest tight to their back. One arm over their shoulder and the other under their armpit, hands together on their chest: that’s the seatbelt. Put your heels inside their thighs as hooks so they can’t slide away.
2. Step 2: Get the elbow under the chin. Slide your top arm across their neck until the crook of your elbow sits under their chin. Your biceps is on one side of the neck and your forearm on the other.
3. Step 3: Lock it. Put the hand of your choking arm on the biceps of your other arm. Bring that other hand behind their head.
4. Step 4: Finish with your whole body. Bring your elbows together and push your chest out, so your back and chest do the work along with your arms. Squeeze steadily, and let go the moment they tap or go limp.

Common rear naked choke mistakes

• Arm on the jaw. If your forearm is over their jaw instead of under the chin, you’re cranking the jaw and neck, not choking. It hurts, it doesn’t put anyone to sleep, and it’s easy to injure a partner. Adjust until the elbow is under the chin.
• Squeezing with the grip. Crushing with your hands doesn’t close the neck. The pressure comes from elbows together and chest out, with the grip only holding the shape.
• Crossing your feet. With hooks in, crossed ankles in front of their body give them a foot lock: they cross their legs over yours and squeeze. Keep your heels inside their thighs, uncrossed.
• No elbow under the chin. A shallow arm sits on the throat with the elbow out in front. It’s uncomfortable for them but rarely finishes. Go deep first, then squeeze.

The same grip-and-lever idea runs through the kimura: control the position first, then let the lever do the work.

What happens if you don’t tap to a rear naked choke?

You go to sleep. Across 81 chokes in real fights, people went unconscious about 9 seconds on average once the choke was fully locked (95% confidence interval 8.3 to 9.9 seconds; Stellpflug et al. 2020).

Being choked out in training isn’t rare. In a self-reported survey of 4,307 grapplers, 27.8% said they’d been choked unconscious, and 2 people (0.05%) reported symptoms that didn’t go away (Stellpflug et al. 2020). That survey was self-selected, so treat the numbers as a rough picture.

Serious injuries are rare, but they happen. One case series described 10 injuries from grappling chokes, including 5 carotid and 3 vertebral artery dissections, tears in the wall of a neck artery (Stellpflug et al. 2022). A 2025 case report described a BJJ athlete with a torn internal carotid artery after a rear naked choke (Martinet et al. 2025).

How to train the rear naked choke safely

• Tap early. Tap when you feel the choke lock, not when you feel yourself going.
• Let go on the tap. Release straight away when your partner taps, or if they go limp or stop responding.
• Train under a qualified coach. Learn and drill chokes in a class, never as a game or a dare.
• Get checked if something’s wrong. Seek medical care if you have neck pain, a headache, or changes in your vision or speech after a choke.

Does your rear naked choke land on everyone, or only on beginners?

Finishing a white belt from the back and finishing a resisting blue belt are different results. JitsAI scores each technique against a nine-level ladder by partner size and experience, so you know who your choke really works on.

• One Focus a week, with pinned lessons from Henrique Rezende’s 74-lesson fundamentals course.
• A nine-level ladder for every technique, from partners less experienced than you to more experienced ones, each split lighter, same weight and heavier.
• Land it once and it’s a hit; 3 wins across 2 sessions and it’s proven.

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1. 1Pick ONE thing One position for the week: an escape, a guard, a sweep.

2. 2Test it on everyone A quick check-in after class: who each round was against, and whether it worked.

3. 3Hit, then proven Land it once and it’s a HIT. Three across two sessions and it’s PROVEN.

4. 4Know what works See what holds up, against whom, then pick your next Focus.

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