Types of Submissions in MMA: Chokes, Joint Locks and What the Rules Ban

Submissions in mixed martial arts fall into two main families: chokes, which restrict blood or air flow through the neck, and joint locks, which force an elbow, shoulder, knee or ankle past its normal range of motion. A smaller third group, compression locks, crushes a muscle against a bone. Under the current Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts, most of these are legal. The joint-lock ban is narrow — fingers and toes only — and most of the other limits concern how a hold is reached: no fingers in the windpipe, no choking with hair, no grabbing the shorts or the fence.

The version matters, so here it is. This guide uses version 8.2026 of the rules published by the Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports (ABC), amended on August 5, 2026. The document's header gives a requested implementation date of November 2027 for those newest changes, which deal with foul procedures rather than with which holds are legal; the fouls discussed below read the same in the previous edition, 8.2025. Each commission decides what it adopts and when, and that turns out to matter for how a submission is recorded.

The families at a glance

"Not named" is a precise statement about the ABC's list of fouls, not a promise about every event. A commission can add its own restrictions.

Chokes: blood versus air

The useful distinction is what the hold compresses. A blood choke squeezes the carotid arteries or jugular veins without closing the airway, and most chokes in combat sports are of this kind — the rear-naked choke and the triangle are the standard examples. An air choke presses on the windpipe; reference descriptions of the guillotine and the gogoplata describe them cutting off air flow.

The unified rules do not ban air chokes as such. What they ban is narrower: grabbing the trachea, and gouging fingers or a thumb into the neck or windpipe in an attempt to force a submission. A forearm or shin across the throat is a technique; a thumb in the windpipe is a foul. The hair rule is related — a fighter with long hair may not use it as a tool for holding or choking.

Joint locks: the large-joint line

Joint locks isolate a joint and lever it past its range of motion. Reference works divide them into armlocks, leg locks, wrist locks, small joint manipulation and spinal locks.

The unified rules draw one line through that list. Foul 16, small joint manipulation, defines fingers and toes as small joints and wrists, ankles, knees, shoulders and elbows as large ones. Attacking a large joint is legal; isolating a finger or a toe is not. The same rule adds a practical exception that matters in scrambles: grabbing the majority of the fingers or toes at once is allowed.

The spine is protected from strikes, not named for locks

General references often say small joint manipulation and spinal locks are banned in nearly all combat sports. The ABC's MMA document does not say that about spinal locks. Its seventh foul prohibits strikes to the spine and the back of the head, defining a strip about an inch either side of the spine's centreline down to the tailbone. No foul in the list names spinal locks. Nevada's own MMA foul list, in NAC 467.7962, does not name them either. If a promotion or commission restricts them, that restriction lives in its own rules — check them.

Compression locks

A compression lock, sometimes called a muscle slicer, presses a muscle into a bone over a fulcrum — a biceps slicer drives the biceps into the upper arm, an Achilles lock drives a forearm into the Achilles tendon. These can also load the nearest joint, so in practice they often behave like a lock and a compression hold at once.