Are chokes and armlocks safe?

Yes. The tap is why.

Every choke and every joint lock in jiu-jitsu gives you a warning before it does any damage. You feel it arrive, you tap, your partner lets go. That loop is the safety system, and I drill it before I drill anything else.

Worth clearing up, because the movies got this wrong. A proper jiu-jitsu choke is not a throat crush. The good ones close off the blood on the sides of the neck and leave your airway alone. That is why they feel less dramatic than people expect, and why they work so fast. Nobody is trying to make you gag.

Joint locks go on slowly on purpose. An armbar takes a second or two to arrive, and your elbow tells you long before the elbow is in any trouble. What hurts people is never the technique. It is ego: somebody who will not tap, or a partner who cranks a hold on fast. Neither happens in a session with me. There is one person on the mat with you, and I have been coaching this since 2008.

Some holds give less warning than others. Neck cranks. A few of the leg locks. Those I hold back until you have the mileage to feel them coming and the sense to quit early.

If tapping is new to you, read what tapping means and when to tap before anything else on this site. Nothing else works without it.

The submissions you meet first are chosen for the same reason. The rear naked choke, the armbar and the guillotine all announce themselves, and all of them release clean. See what submissions a beginner learns first.

You will still get sore, and grappling leaves bruises in odd places. That is normal. Anything sharp, anything that clicks, anything still there two days later goes to a doctor, not to me and not to a page like this one. The rest of the sensible stuff is in how to avoid getting hurt.