How To Dislocate A Shoulder In A Self Defense Situation

In a street altercation of a self defense situation, dislocating the shoulder of an attacker will usually end the fight immediately. Even if you feel no pain from a shoulder dislocation, it will render one arm completely useless. There are not many men in the world who are capable of fighting well with one arm, so this seriously reduces the risk of you getting hurt.

Shoulder dislocations are extremely painful and can require extensive surgery if there is not a clean break or muscles become damaged. Therefore, it is a very useful tool to have if someone attacks you. You should also keep in mind that if you’re aiming to dislocate the shoulder of an attacker, this is a lot of damage to inflict upon someone. It will take 3-4 months to heal at a minimum and can be up to 1 year if there are any broken bones around the joint.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that if you are interested in defending yourself properly, it is not enough to learn shoulder dislocation techniques from websites such as youtube. You must train properly and have a diversified range of attacks. In any martial art, you cannot simply decide what you’re going to do and execute a straight forward gameplan against a resisting opponent. Instead, you must offer many threats which eventually lead to the ultimate goal.

In short, dislocating someone’s shoulder is harder than you would think and usually requires full control over the opponent’s body.

Ways To Dislocate An Attackers Shoulder In Self Defense

There are four main techniques that can be used to dislocate the shoulder of a potential attacker. It should be noted that the submission holds are much higher percentage techniques, but require full control of the opponent’s arm and shoulder.

Street fights are also unpredictable, so it could happen that a shoulder gets dislocated from simply being kicked. However, this is very rare and not really worth thinking about. The below techniques are a fullproof way to end a fight immediately from a control position.

These techniques are taught in martial arts which use submission holds such as judo, hapkido and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Judo Throws

In all honesty, a judo throw is a good way to end a street fight, but not a good way to dislocate someone’s shoulder. If you’re fighting on a concrete surface, one throw should be enough, even if the attacker posts their arm.

The attacker is caught in a catch 22 situation if they get lifted up by a hip throw. Either break fall properly on the concrete which will hurt a lot and possibly break their ribs. Or post your arm out and land on this instead. By posting an arm they may save their entire body, but there is a good chance that their shoulder will not support their entire weight.

On day one of a judo class you are taught how to breakfall properly on mats – knowing that you can still get injured here. If you are not break falling properly on concrete, this can be disastrous for your joints.

The best example of this would be an o goshi throw which is somewhat common in judo.

Kimura Submission Hold

Illegal in judo, but legal in BJJ and catch wrestling is the kimura shoulder lock. There is no doubt about this submission, if you lock it into place, it will dislocate the shoulder of an attacker.

A kimura can be applied from either a top or bottom position such as side mount, mount, closed guard or half guard. This is good as it shows the versatility of the submission hold as it can get you out of a potentially negative situation.

As shown in the video below, a kimura involves controlling the wrist of an attacker and making a figure 4 lock with your arms. From here you ideally want to create an angle with your hips so that the hand of the attacker can be bought towards the back of their own head. This extension on the shoulder joint will cause it to break and/or dislocate.

Note: If you are practicing this with a friend, apply the hold very slowly. Different people have different ranges of shoulder mobility, so whilst someone may be able to touch their head with their hand, others will only be able to move their shoulder a minuscule amount before tapping.

Americana Submission Hold

Using an americana (also known as the keylock) submission is something you might not want to do. Of course, this submission can break the elbow of the opponent and dislocate their shoulder, but it can only really be applied from top position. Given that you have a variety of attacks such as ground and pound from a mount or side mount position, using an americana as self defense is very situational and could be considered excessive.

By trapping the arm of an opponent away from their body and pinning their wrist down with your own hand. You are then able to create a figure 4 grip on your own arm (the other way around to a kimura).

From this point you are able to lift up your arms and create massive pressure on both the shoulder and elbow joint. It is anybody’s guess which joint will blow out first, but it certainly won’t be pretty.

Omoplata Submission Hold

An omoplata uses exactly the same mechanism as a kimura to break the shoulder of an attacker. The key difference being that an omoplata is far more technical and requires less upperbody strength.

Omoplatas are somewhat risky in a street fight situation since they pretty much require you to start from bottom position – which is not somewhere you want to be.

By controlling a single arm of the opponent, an omoplata requires you to have very mobile and agile hips in order to kick one leg over the shoulder joint. From here, you must maintain control of the adversary’s body so that they cannot roll or cartwheel to escape. Lastly, you must hip forwards and upwards in order to put maximum pressure on the shoulder joint and make it dislocate.

Once again, this is a submission you should practice very slowly and cautiously if you are drilling with friends.