The guillotine choke is an incredibly powerful choke that is both easy to do and hard to escape, making it one of the most popular choke submissions in BJJ, MMA, and real world street fighting. The high elbow guillotine is one of the many different guillotine variations for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu that is available when you have access to your opponent’s head and neck but have not secured control of their arm. For variations with the arm secured, see the arm in guillotine or D’Arce choke.
This great video by John Danaher has a lot of details for getting the guillotine from half guard, but the high elbow guillotine can be reached from several positions.
Start: headlock position with opponent’s neck exposed
Step 1: Grip opponent’s chin with strangle hand (non-high elbow side hand) over their head and neck
Step 2: Slide support hand in between opponent’s shoulder and head alongside their neck and grip your strangle hand with your support hand palm on the back of your strangle hand
Step 3: Push your strangle side shoulder forward into your opponent’s creating space for the guillotine submission
Step 4: Bring your support side elbow back to your body to prevent opponent from securing control over it while shifting your head over toward strangle side
Step 5: Drag both hand up and to support side inside opponent’s clavicle, then turn support side elbow forward and onto opponent’s back
Step 6: Secure opponent’s body and rotate towards strangle side, raising support side elbow towards sky
End: Submission via guillotine