It’s not very often that scientific studies are conducted on matters concerning BJJ, but a recent investigation has confirmed which of several chokes used in the sport put resisting opponents to sleep the fastest. They studied a total of eleven different chokes and found that the time it took before an opponent passed out varied from as little as 6.2 seconds to as much as 10.5 seconds, with the average across all chokes being exactly 9 seconds.
Although they did recognize a difference between the chokes and the speed of inducing loss of consciousness, they concluded that the difference between them wasn’t actually significant in the end. This included a comparison between chokes that involved the use of both the opponent’s neck and arm as well as purely their neck, where they again found no significant difference. They also did not include any gi-specific chokes in their study at all, and this was strictly no gi only.
The information was shared on the official Instagram account of “Dr. Kickass”, Mike Piekarski, a former MMA fighter and BJJ black belt who also doubles as a Doctor of Physical Therapy and an Orthopedic Clinical Specialist. It all comes from Stellpflug et al (2020), a study that was conducted last year and published in the International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport:
Reference:
1-Stellpflug, S. J., Menton, W. H., Dummer, M. F., Menton, T., Corry, J., & LeFevere, R. (2020). Time to unconsciousness from sportive chokes in fully resisting highly trained combatants. International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, 20(4), 720-728.
