For today’s lesson, we are going to learn an effective technique that can help you escape a life-threatening rear neck choke. Being in a rear choke hold is a terrifying experience. The choke around your neck makes it difficult for blood to flow to your brain and you’re bound to become unconscious within 14 seconds or so. To make matters worse, you have no visual of your perpetrator.

It is in situations like these that it’s critical to know what to do instantly, because in such moments you will not have the time to figure things out as you go. So, let’s take a look at an effective way to escape this sticky situation. First and most importantly, do not PANIC! Get yourself into a proper posture to gain stability and keep your breath steady. Conserve your energy for the actual fight.

You might have noticed in a physical attack how our hands always tend to go where there’s pain. But that’s not going to do us much good here. The trick is to never focus on what's grabbed, instead focus your attention on what's free and figure out the most effective way to use it.

In this particular scenario, use your hands to reach out and grab the attacker’s hair and squeeze the hair from its roots. The pain inflicted by this move is enough to force your attacker to release the hold on your neck. While he is dealing with this pain, the next critical thing to do is follow up the attack with either a strong chop to the Adam’s apple or a knee to the groin, before you flee the scene as quickly as possible.

While I sincerely hope you’ll never have any reason to use these techniques, I do want to remind you that the most important thing to remember here is to not panic and keep your BREATHING steady. And as I have mentioned before, use these techniques at your own risk.

Having knowledge of these techniques will equip you with stability, preparedness and strength to defend yourself from any serious physical attack. All you need to do now is practise these moves with a willing partner or in front of a mirror, so you don’t panic and/or freeze when this happens in real life.

If you enjoyed reading about these techniques in self-defence, do check out our other blogs. You can also share these blogs with friends and family who you think will find the information useful.