A secondary anchor stops the opponent rotating out

"The secondary anchor — the point the opponent uses to resist the submission — must be controlled or removed. Every submission has a primary target and a secondary anchor; attacking only the primary without addressing the anchor will fail against a resisting opponent."

Every submission creates a force conflict between attacker and defender. The primary target is the joint, vessel, or airway being attacked. The secondary anchor is the point from which the opponent generates their resistance — where they brace, base, or post to counter the submission force. The anchor is not always obvious. It is whatever mechanical connection allows the opponent to push back: a knee on the mat, a free hand on the floor, a hip connected to the ground, a foot hooked on a limb.

Attacking the primary target without addressing the anchor means attacking against the combined resistance of the joint and the anchor’s structural support. The anchor multiplies the opponent’s effective resistance. A resisting opponent who has a strong anchor can withstand submission pressure that would finish an opponent without one. The practitioner who only attacks the primary target is solving half the mechanical problem — they have the submission but not the finish.

Controlling or removing the anchor changes the force equation entirely. When the anchor is gone, the opponent’s resistance is limited to the structural integrity of the target joint or vessel. They cannot supplement their resistance from a base point. The submission is now working against a known mechanical limit — the joint’s range, the vessel’s tolerance for compression — and that limit will be reached.

Across the system, this principle expresses most cleanly in the following techniques:

Triangle: The primary target is the carotid; the secondary anchor is the trapped arm posting on the floor or the opponent’s hand gripping their own thigh. The hand-fight to break that anchor is not optional — until the post is removed, the carotid is being asked to compress against an anchored structure that distributes the force.

Arm-in triangle: The arm-in version explicitly addresses an in-built anchor — the opponent’s arm trapped inside acts as a bridge between the head and the body. Until the trapped arm is pulled across so it is no longer feeding back into the body, the strangle is loaded but failing. Removing that internal anchor is the conversion to the finish.

Trapped triangle: The trapped triangle keeps the second arm from finding a posting anchor in the first place. By immobilising the loose arm against the body, the lock pre-empts the secondary anchor and the strangle finishes faster than a standard triangle from the same starting position.

Reverse triangle: The configuration locks the arm-and-shoulder unit in a way that denies the opponent any posting anchor on the floor — both arms are committed within the lock or stretched across the body. Without an anchor, the rotation of the head into the strangle finds a target with no supplementary support.

Arm triangle (head and arm choke): The trapped arm is the secondary anchor by default — the opponent uses it to brace against the squeeze. The finish requires either driving the trapped arm across so it cannot brace, or stepping over to the side that removes the anchor leg. Pressure alone with the anchor still active stalls.