What happens physiologically to make someone unconscious during this kind of hold? How do you know you’re not suffocating someone or causing serious damage?
In: 53
You compress the arteries in the neck to cut off blood flow to the brain, and they pass out.
If you were to continue the hold for much longer they would suffer brain damage and quickly die. Combat sport athletes will typically tap out before they actually lose consciousness completely, otherwise the referee or the other fighter will stop the fight once they see you go limp.
When the person is still fighting the submission, they’re still getting blood flow.
To kill them you’d have to continue the hold long after it’s obvious they’re out cold.
There are two kinds of chokes: blood chokes and air chokes. Blood chokes target the arteries that carry blood to your brain. Air chokes target your airway, suffocating you. It’s just a matter of technique using your arm to cradle someone’s neck so that you’re squeezing on their carotid arteries instead of their throat.
It constricts the arteries that carry blood to the brain. No fresh blood = no fresh oxygen = brain goes night-night.
Those holds absolutely can cause serious damage. They’re not really about choking and denying the person the ability to breathe. The holder is pressing on major blood vessels in the sides of the neck to cut off blood flow to the brain, which causes the unconsciousness. Bad things happen when you cut off blood to the brain. DO NOT TRY THIS without professional instruction and supervision or unless your life depends on it
The purpose of a sleeper hold is not to cut off air to the lungs, but to cut off blood to the brain. You squeeze from both sides, not from the front. Call it around 10:30 and 1:30 if it were a clock face. It only takes a few seconds to make someone lose consciousness, with no known long term consequences, at least when conducted properly.
There are 2 types if chokes: blood choke and air choke.
Blood choke stops blood flow from the heart to the brain by compressing the carotid arteries. No blood equals no brain activity and lights out. This can happen in seconds and you can’t even feel it if done correctly.
Air choke stops the air flow through the throat completely. This is extremely painful and can take more than a minute to make you pass out from lack of oxygen.
Brain needs blood to be awake. Squeeze neck, blood can’t move to brain, brain can’t be awake.
> What happens physiologically to make someone unconscious during this kind of hold?
If it’s properly applied, the arteries that provide blood to your brain get constricted, and your brain will lose consciousness to conserve oxygen. Assuming the hold is released quickly (within a few seconds) the blood flows normally again and you wake back up. If it’s improperly applied, then your trachea gets crushed, you might not be able to get air into your lungs, and you will probably die without immediate emergency medical treatment. If it’s properly applied and then held for a long time (like more than a couple of minutes) you get permanent brain damage and shortly after, death.
> How do you know you’re not suffocating someone or causing serious damage?
You don’t really ever know for sure, but with practice and understanding of how to apply the technique you can feel when it’s right and when it’s wrong. You can tell a lot by how your opponent struggles. If they are frantically trying to pull your arm off of their throat, then there’s a good chance you are crushing their trachea. If the choke is applied properly, they won’t feel a sense of urgency to release it, and instead will just feel very calm and quickly fall asleep. If it’s done properly, it should take almost no effort to apply the choke and it should work within about a minute the first time, and much faster if there is a second time. With training, you can use references in body position to figure out if the choke is correct or not. For example, in a rear naked choke, your opponents chin should be lined up with your elbow point and the meaty part of your forearm and your bicep should be lined up with either side of the front of their throat. Your choking arm should be relaxed and just held in position so that it molds to the shape of their neck. Guillotine chokes are much harder to apply as blood chokes, but there are similar feedback mechanisms you can use.
Chokes in general are very, very risky because the difference between “everything is fine I just took a quick nap” and “permanent brain damage or death” is literally just an inch or two, or a few extra seconds. They can be an excellent alternative to breaking someone’s joints or beating them to get them to stop being a threat, but the tradeoff is that if you make even one small mistake, there is a very, very real risk of death.
Anyone who intends to use chokeholds for any reason needs to get training from a qualified instructor who has a very good understanding of the details involved. Then you need to practice _a lot_ with a training partner who knows how to give good feedback so you can develop the muscle memory to apply the choke properly in the middle of a life-or-death situation, where adrenaline is surging and you are not likely to be able to consciously pay attention to the details.
As someone who did bjj for a year, blood chokes come on INCREDIBLY quickly. They aren’t really painful, but a well applied choke will almost instantly make you lightheaded. When I was rolling with someone good, I’d usually only get to try to fight the choke for a few seconds before having to tap. It’s also not uncommon for someone to go unconscious while thinking they still have a chance to escape. In terms of safety, messing with the carotid arteries is always going to be dangerous. The reason why blood chokes come on faster is because with an air choke, you’re essentially “holding your breath” but blood is still flowing to the brain and you’re getting some energy due to the anaerobic part of cell respiration. With a blood choke, the brain uses up all its energy in a few seconds, and is prevented from being resupplied with fresh oxygen.
You are suffocating someone . If you continue the hold after they are unconscious, you will cause serious damage and they will eventually die.
There’s two different ways to accomplish this depending on the hold. Cutting off the airway and the blood supply. Cutting off the airway prevents you from inhaling oxygen. You have several minutes of oxygen in your brain so this takes longer. After a few minutes you will deplete the oxygen in you bloodstream and your brain cells will be unable to undergo cell respiration causing them to die.
Cutting off blood supply basically involves a hold where the flow from your corotid arteries (which feed blood from your aorta to your brain) is obstructed. With this, your brain can get all the oxygen that’s in your blood stream so they will be starved of oxygen in a matter of seconds.
Latest Answers