Cross collar choke from knee ride

Today we worked with the cross collar choke from knee ride.
This is one of those which works as a good strategy to lure an opponent into moving the way that you want them to.

Starting from knee ride, using the same arm as knee, grab their lapel on the opposite side. So right knee ride, grab their right lapel (on your left) with your right hand, fingers in. Elbow should be down on the same level as your knee. Don't put it too high or they'll know you're going for the cross collar choke. From there, if they hip escape away from you (so facing you), lean forward to stop them from escaping and at the same time, punch your hand gripping their lapel through towards their far ear. This is integral or you won't create a grip point for your other hand. Also, they are not likely to hip escape towards you as this will expose their back and a potential arm bar. As you lean down, reach behind their head, grab with your thumb in the lapel and bring that arm down around their head and below the jaw. Pull back with both hands whilst pushing your knee forward and them flat onto their back. Most of the time, you'll get the choke here.
If you don't get the choke, you can transition to mount, tripod with your head above their head and tighten the choke. This should usually get it, even for those with really thick necks.

I had a lot of trouble finding anything from knee ride, but the concept is the same from mount as it is from knee ride. In this video, he actually gets the opposite grip in first, but this is a consequence of starting it from mount.

The alternative to this is if you can't get the 2nd grip behind their head, you don't even need it. As long as you control his shoulder, you can still get your wrist across his neck and complete the choke. A general rule of thumb here is to maintain a 90 degree angle with your wrists. From here, we worked with rolling them into your half guard and trapping them there. If they don't want to move, you can always push them onto their back and finish it from mount as above.

From guard, you can also execute this move. If you control their opposite lapel like before (deep is best), break their posture with your legs and reach around and grab their opposite lat or shoulder with the free arm (like you're climbing to back mount). This breaks their posture and brings them down towards you. Though it's not a cross collar choke like before, their priority is to regain their posture. They do this by pushing across and under the arm holding onto their lat. From there, it's just a matter of controlling their shoulder and completing the choke again. There should be almost no escape for them from this position as if they pull back, push forward or try to stand up, they will have to tap out.

So Cross collar choke...another choke to play around with!