Disclaimer: This post contains graphic content focusing on defending oneself in an emergency, aspects of which may be triggering for some people, and considered adult in nature. Defense situations (such as a choke defense) can vary and no one technique will work for every situation. Technique and weapons use are subject to local laws governing self-defense and personal protection. Please consult local and national laws as part of your defense prep. These laws may also vary depending on whether you’re at home, in our car, at work, or out in public.
It is a brisk morning in March. We decide to start our day with an early morning run. It’s about 7:00am here near Central Park in New York City (NYC) and our run is off to a good start. It seems eerily quite this morning, but we do enjoy the peace of the park. In fact, it’s one of the reasons we like to run here. We get to a spot where we slow down a little, when somebody grabs us from behind. What is happening? All we feel is someone’s arm wrap around our neck and start squeezing. We try to scream, but their arm is too tight. It’s hard to breath and things begin to turn black.
Chokes and strangulation situations can be incredibly scary and happen in situations where the attacker may be a stranger or may be an intimate partner. Let’s take a look at choke defense and see what we can do if we are choked.
EMERGENCY DEFENSE PREP: ROPE OR CORD
There are a lot of different methods to choke. An attacker can perform a choke with only their hands and forearms, or can use a tool such as a rope, cable, cord, stick, or even the edge of a book. We need a choke defense that is versatile.
It’s also important to note that chokes are very scary. Why? Because we cannot breathe, a sensation similar to drowning. It is easy to panic when we cannot catch our breath. Panicking can make a choke feel even scarier and for some people this can be a very triggering discussion.
CHOKE DEFENSE #1: PREVENT THE PANIC
When we are choked, it is very natural for our bodies and minds to go into stress and panic mode. Panicking while being choked, makes the choke worse! How so? The answer is oxygen.
Why do we need oxygen? The only reason our body needs oxygen is to produce energy for our cells, including the cells in our muscles and brain. When we panic our muscles tense up and contract and, because of that, need more energy. This means we need more oxygen. Simply put, the more we panic the more oxygen we need. Panicking causes us to breath heavier, hyperventilate, or even pass out from not having enough oxygen.
The best way to prevent panic is to stay calm and, as my wife says, don’t focus on the problem instead focus on the solution. If we think about being choked, we are focusing on the problem. If we are being choked and it’s making us panic, we should focus on our choke defense (i.e., removing the choke).
CHOKE DEFENSE #2: NO ROPE OR CORD USED
A choke works by applying pressure to the front of our neck. This pressure to the front of the neck, by the choke, is a twofold problem: 1) it blocks our throat, so we can’t breathe (no oxygen into our body), and 2) it blocks our blood vessels, so no blood gets to our brain (no oxygen to our brain).
The first issue is apparent, no oxygen to our body is going to be a problem. For our whole body. The second issue, while it can be related to the first issue, is not always the case. Our body can have enough oxygen, but our brain still not get any. For example, during a stroke a blood clot stops blood flow to part of the brain and can kill brain cells because they cannot get enough oxygen.
For a choke, both of these are problems. A choke, if applied tightly and held long enough, causes a person to pass out, this is because of the second issue. If we pass out, we cannot defend ourselves. Separately, if a choke is held too long, it can be life threatening (just like a stroke). An attacker may stop choking when their victim passes out, but they may continue to hold it after their victim passes out. A choke is dangerous!
Chokes using the hands or forearms are a common method of attack. This kind of choke requires no tools, or preparation. Sometimes an attacker may use a flexible (rope, cord, etc.) or inflexible item (stick, edge of a book, etc.) to choke.
Remember, if we panic while being choked, this is worse than just being choked. Focus on the solution, stopping the immediate threat. Remove what is applying pressure to our neck (using our choke defense).
Choked with the Hands
If the attacker chokes us with their hands, then there are a couple of options we can use to stop the immediate threat, discussed below. An attacker may choke us from the front, side, or even rear and can also push or pull while choking. This is where training helps add exposure and experience to our choke defense. In general, if we are being pushed or pulled, we want to keep ourselves from falling. Stepping wide and deep can help prevent going to the ground (this is called basing ourselves).
The first defense option is to grab a single finger and, using a small circular rotation, peel it away from the neck. Small circle! Think, rotate finger to back of hand. This is not a normal range of motion for a finger, so this may break the attacker’s finger. This sounds gross, but it makes it painful for them to continue using that hand for other attacks. Also, we are using the strength of our whole hand against one finger.
The second defense option is to gouge their eye. That’s right I said eye gouge! We will need to reach under their straight arm and up and in toward their eye to gouge it. For an eye gouge, we want to place our palm on their cheek and then rotate our thumb into the attacker’s eye socket like we are scooping ice cream. While we are doing an eye gouge, our body naturally turns allowing our other hand to, in a quick jerking motion, yank the wrist of the choking hand down and away from our throat.
After using one of these options, we will need to finish the fight. Just as with other weapon defenses, pinning their arm limits their ability to attack us.
Choked with the Forearm
If the attacker chokes us with their forearm, we want to reach up and over the forearm and then slide our fingers in between their forearm and our neck. Once our fingers are in place, we quickly jerk the forearm down and away from our neck. This does not remove their forearm from our body, only from our neck. We are focused on stopping the immediate threat first.
As a reminder, a choke requires that the attacker apply pressure to our neck. If their forearm is even one inch from our neck, then they are not applying pressure to our neck. This means we have stopped the immediate threat.
Once we quickly jerk the forearm away from our neck, our next job is to remove their arm from being anywhere near our neck. If the attacker is behind us, we will step and rotate our body and head under their arm so that we face them. If the attacker is in front of us, we are going to grab the elbow of the choking arm and shove it past us in a quick jerking motion. Stepping the opposite direction helps too.
Finish the Fight
After we stop the immediate threat, we need to escape (if we can safely do so) or finish the fight another way. This is where we use our hand-to-hand combat skills.
A few things to keep in mind. First, if we defend against one choke, the attacker can choke us again, and again. Second, the attacker can switch to a different attack, such as a punch. Third, the attacker can actually do both (choke and punch us). The attacker would choke us with one hand and punch us with the other.
Okay, what if they punch us while also choking us? The simple answer is defend both, since both are immediate threats. If we address the choke, but not the punch we may eat the punch. If we address the punch, but not the choke we may pass out. To deal with both attacks, we use one hand to break a finger or peel a forearm (addressing the choke). We use the other hand/forearm to block (addressing the punch).
CHOKE DEFENSE #3: ROPE, CABLE, OR CORD IS USED
Just as with a hand or forearm, an attacker can grab a rope, cable, or cord (power cord, phone charger, etc.) and wrap that around our neck and choke us. For this situation we still focus on stopping the immediate threat. That means we focus on removing the choke (pressure to our neck) applied by the rope, cable, or cord.
To stop the immediate threat, we want to slide our fingers, or our hand, in between the rope or cord and our neck. Once we get our fingers or hand in between, we want to pull the rope or cord down (away from our neck) and towards our chest. While this is still tight and uncomfortable, it allows us to get some oxygen to our body. As long as we continue to work to pull the rope or cord down towards our chest, we make it easier to breath.
We stopped the immediate threat. Next, we need to get the rope or cord off our neck. We will do this by getting our chin under the rope or cord. During the first step when we pull the rope/cord down to our chest we also try to make enough space so that we can quickly stick our chin under the rope.
Once we have done that, we want to get the rope/cord all the way off our head. We will rotate our body so that we face the attacker, and the top of our head is briefly pointed at the attacker’s torso. Then we slide the rope/cord off our head.
As discussed above, after we get the rope/cord off our necks we need to escape (if we can safely do so) or finish the fight another way.
CHOKE DEFENSE #4: AN INFLEXIBLE ITEM IS USED
While a rope, cable, or cord can be wrapped around the neck to choke us with, so to can a stick, the straight edge of a book or clipboard, the edge of a folding chair, etc.
The defense is the same here, stop the immediate threat and finish the fight. The primary difference is that the hard, inflexible nature of these object can crush or collapse our throat or break the bone in our neck (hyoid bone). Just to be clear, this can still happen with a flexible item such as a rope, cable, or cord as well as a hand or forearm. It is more likely with a hard object though.
If our throat is crushed or collapsed, it can mean that even after we “stop the threat” we still cannot breathe. We would need medical care immediately and hopefully we could get that care in time. The best course of action is to respond immediately and aggressively when a choke is applied. It can be life threatening!
When I teach students choke defenses, I focus on two things. First, repeat the defense A LOT. Muscle memory developed over lots of repetition helps build in an automatic response to a choke, even under stress. Second, the person acting as the attacker will apply a very slight amount of pressure (not enough to hurt the person) when pretending to choke so that students can get used to that uncomfortable sensation. This should be done safely (do not try without a qualified instructor present). We do this to help with recognizing a choke sensation (so we defend as soon as we have that sensation, even before we have thought through what is happening). This also helps prevent shock and panic because the choke sensation is not totally foreign to us.
WRAPPING UP: CHOKE DEFENSE
Back to our story, a woman in her 20’s was in Central Park one morning when she was grabbed and choked from behind. She lost consciousness. When she awoke, she had cuts, abrasions, and had been rapped. Unfortunately, this story was even more disturbing in that about an hour later, a different attacker (unconnected to the first) choked and sexually assaulted a second woman very near to where the first woman had been attacked. Police were able to arrest the second attacker.
Chokes are not uncommon in attacks. For example, an attacker rode up in a bike, choked and then sexually assaulted a 39-year-old-woman, then used the bike to get away. In another situation a man assaulted a woman with blunt objects, sprayed the woman in the eyes with paint, strangled her to the point of unconsciousness, then threw her down the stairs.
Chokes can be fatal. In one situation, a man strangled his girlfriend to death using a rope as their four-month-old baby lay near to them.
I highly recommend Krav Maga (Israeli Martial Arts) training as it is the most real-world training system that is also widely available and includes defense against chokes and weapon attacks. I would make sure the instructor teaches weapons defense at the beginning of the program.
Check out the other posts in this blog series:
- Fundamental defense prep ideas (post 1),
- Defense against weapons (post 2),
- Gun threat or active shooter (post 3)
- Knife (post 4)
- Rope or cord used to choke (post 5)
- Using a defense weapon to survive (coming soon).
If you’re looking for more on emergency prep, check out the emergency prep strategy blog series (with a closer look at day-to-day prep, and coming soon: cyber prep, shelter-in-place prep, and evacuation prep). Other blog posts.
