ARM TRIANGLE (KATA-GATAME)

The arm triangle, called kata-gatame in judo, is a blood choke that uses the opponent's own shoulder to compress one carotid artery while the attacker's bicep closes the other. The technique is structurally identical to the triangle choke from guard, but executed from a top position with the arm rather than the legs as the locking limb. It is the highest-percentage submission from the mount in modern competition and one of the most reliable finishes from side control once the angle is established.

The entry is established when the opponent's arm has been forced across their own neck — typically because they have reached for a cross-face defense or framed against the attacker's chest. The attacker traps the arm against the opponent's own face by clamping the head and arm together with one bicep, hops the legs to one side to create the 45-degree finishing angle, locks the hands in a Gable grip or palm-to-palm, and squeezes the elbows together while driving the shoulder forward. The finish takes five to ten seconds when the opponent's arm has fully crossed the neck, and the technique is one of the few submissions equally devastating in gi and no-gi.

Anderson Silva's UFC mount-and-finish style featured the arm triangle as a primary attack, and Roger Gracie's IBJJF career used it as the natural follow-up when the cross-collar choke was defended. The technique is legal at every belt level and works in every ruleset including MMA, making it one of the most universally applicable submissions in the BJJ library.