Sergio Bolão Souza

"You're back" were the first words  Bolão said when I showed up Monday evening August 20, 2007, at Corpo Quatro, where his team is based.  Bolão was on his way downstairs. Cell Phone to his ear, something urgent had come up. Bolão would not be teaching that night. Instead 222 lb. (100 kgs.) brown belt Leo took over. Like Bolão, Leo is very much into body building. Whether or not it helps your game is unclear, but it doesn't hurt to have muscles in the right places, the theory goes, as long as you don't substitute weights for live opponents. I had figured out previously that if I asked anyone a technical question before the class, Bolão, or Cazuza, whoever was teaching that night, would probably pick up on it and focus on the technique and variations. A few years back, Margarida impressively finished Saulo with a baseball bat choke. Any technique that you (or Margarida) can finish someone as good as Saulo with is a dangerous technique, and a technique that it would be worthwhile being able to defend.  After watching this fight, I was inspired to delve into the defenses and counters. Not being in Rio at the time or anywhere near anyone who could throw light on the problem, I came up with some empirically based solutions of my own devising. They worked adequately on the guys I tested them on, but none of these guys were named Margarida or had black belts. Innovation is wonderful, but you also have to validate. Validation, in fact, is what distinguishes the scientific method from all others. Not where the knowledge came from but how it is validated. In this sense, jiu-jitsu really is a science. So this is what I asked about and what Leo taught that night. Additionally, I was curious about the process of technique creation. Is it really possible to "invent" a new technique? Or have all the techniques already been invented, as some people say? Obviously it is easy to demonstrate that a technique has already been invented (find one person who has already done it) but pretty much impossible to show that that it hasn't. Not that it's a big deal. You can't patent or copyright techniques, so what matters is whether  and how well you can do it, not who did it first (Brazilians are eclectic pragmatists---they adopt and adapt anything that "works"). Leo taught two defenses. These defenses seem effective I told another brown belt, Ricardo (a future Supreme Court judge, if God is willing). I wondered aloud rhetorically why Saulo didn't do them.  "He was late" Ricardo explained..

Neither was very similar to those that I had come up with. I decided to use my "new" moves later in sparring to see if there were holes that I hadn't spotted before. Bolão's fighters roll hard (only with your arm in a sling or foot in a cast can you roll "a leve") and most were perplexed when I let myself get put in the joelho na barriga (knee on belly) position--so that they could do the choke, so that I could escape and counter. Otherwise, I would have to wait until someone forced me to be there. That might take a while, who knows, and in the meantime I might forget what it was that I wanted to test out, and also, very probably, anyone who could do it could also block my escape. I needed someone who would pull out the stops to finish the choke, but wouldn't be good enough to anticipate and block my defense (yes, that could happen, but it isn't the point of the test because someone who is good enough will block you no matter how good your technique is). I believed the escapes were good ones, but not good enough that I could escape Margarida. A more realistic level of testing was called for. This is where lower belts can be helpful. Bolão recommends trying out a new technique on lower belts, working your way up the belts as you refine it, until you have it dialed in and are ready to try it on someone your own level or above.  

So how did my  moves work? Well, let's just say these were beta versions. But I am confident that the bugs can be ironed out. This is how new moves (assuming there are new moves) are developed. Or rediscovered, as the case may be.

Bolão's teaching philosophy is to keep it simple, and connect the dots. One technique leads to another technique. Don't assume the opponent won't defend the first attack. Don't assume that he'll react in the way you need him to react to do your next move. He might, but he might not. It might require a long sequence of moves and counter-moves to circumvent his defenses. Jiu-jitsu is a game of maneuver and presupposes an intuitive grasp of your opponent's options and a sense for his intentions. This comes only from many hours of rolling with many opponents of all levels. Good fighters in any style are good because they train the way good fighters train. That sounds like a tautology, but all tautologies are true by definition, and this one is no exception. The take-away message is that if you want to be as good as these guys, you should train the way they do and as much. That means lots of rolling. Most of their training consists of sparring. Granted, all black belts by definition already know the fundamentals and have a game and don't need to spend huge amounts of time mastering every possible new variation. But even the lower belts focus more on dialing in the basics and a few personal favorite techniques via lots of rolling, adding new moves on an "as needed" basis. And the need is identified from mistakes made, or opportunities missed, in rolling. No one is ever going to get good at jiu-jitsu by taking privates or buying DVDs without also putting in the mat time, lots of it. This point is so obvious to the Brazilians that they often don't think to mention it, assuming that what is obvious to them is obvious to everyone. It isn't. 

　More about: Bolão:

Original 1999 GTR Bolão article

2006 GTR Bolão article

Bolao's web site: http://www.bolaojiujitsu.com/http:/

　Global Training Report 2007.　　(c)2000-2007, Roberto Pedreira. All rights reserved.

Marcelo Cazuza

Leo describes his personal game as "brutal." Cazuza (Bolãos assistant instructor) doesn't approve of "brutal" jiu-jitsu, Leo said, laughing, but sometimes it is necessary to be brutal to make the technical moves work. Personally, since I'm built more like de la Riva than Leo or Bolão, I gravitate more to the technical side of the game. Fortunately, Marcelo Cazuza was regarded as two-legged cornucopia of technical knowledge, according to some. Cazuza taught every Tuesday and Thursday, and when Bolão couldn't make it, and was usually available for advice and tips on Friday, the free training night, too.

According to Bruno, Cazuza is a good friend of Ricardo Vieira. His style is similar with the difference that while Ricardo is a small guy, Cazuza is 211.2 lbs (96 kg.) and very tall, hence his nickname. Cazuza was the name of a popular Brazilian singer who lost a bit of weight, as AIDS sufferers usually do, before succumbing to the disease. You might think that no one would want to be nicknamed after an AIDS victim, but Brazilians accentuate the positive, and anyway, anyone can die from anything, if that's God's will. How people get their nicknames in Brazil is something a sociolinguist should study. Superficially, it could come from anything. Comprido Medeiros and Magrão Gurgel (Fabio's older brother) acquired their apelidos (nicknames) because they are tall and are (or were) thin. Jacare (the original) because he liked shirts that had the alligator logo, Nino because he likes Elvis Presley and so on. None of the Gracies have nicknames that I know of, but most of their names are already so distinctive they hardly need more names.

In any event, Cazuza might be called the best kept secret in Rio, a walking store-house of jiu-jitsu knowledge. Now (in 2007) 34, He started jiu-jitsu 17 years ago with Bolão, and I would guess has been training with the black belt for at least the last ten of those. I have been at it since 1994, possibly earlier if you include the training I did with guys who knew some jiu-jitsu but called it something else (such as Erik Paulson, who taught me some basic  Brazilian jiu-jitsu while describing it as shooto). I have also watched almost every tape ever made. I have been used as a training dummy by some excellent black belts, and that too was an educational experience. Cazuza taught twice a week, and sometimes four times depending on his own and Bolã'o's schedule. Yet he never taught any technique that I had ever seen before. But the strangest thing about this is that it isn't strange at all. Rio is full of guys like that. The breadth and depth of jiu-jitsu knowledge in this small area of one city defies belief. However, to put it in perspective, this is counter-balanced by an equal lack of breadth and depth in the striking arts. There were a few exceptions in the past and there are a few more recent stand-outs, but by and large, Brazil is as strong in striking as Thailand is in ground grappling. Outside of Thailand and Holland, Muay Thai has been pretty much neglected. One reason may be that, despite its undeniable effectiveness (as effective standing as Brazilian jiu-jitsu is on the ground), it is hard work to train and most people don't like doing things that are hard, particularly when there are no extrinsic reinforcements, for example, in the form of belts and certificates. Also, Muay Thai has never had an inspired entrepreneur like Rorion Gracie able to persuade  ordinary Joe's and movie stars that it is worth 150 dollars a month (or more) to work up a sweat and learn how to spank mostly imaginary assailants. If you want to train real Muay Thai, you pretty much have to go to Thailand. Cazuza has never been to Thailand, but he would like it if he did, and he would be good at Muay Thai. He has the perfect shape for delivering devastating kicks and knees, and he would adapt easily to the game of clinch. About once every two weeks, Bolão conducts a class that begins with an aerobic circuit, which includes punching and kicking various bags and dummies. Most of the guys, black belts included, seemed like fish out of water. But Cazuza has a natural sense for striking. While he prefers the  technical jiu-jitsu, he clearly has what it takes to administer a  Muay Thai style spanking as well. Granted, some of Muay Thai training can be boring, since most of it is running and kicking inanimate objects. But Muay Thai sparring is essentially grappling--stand up grappling, without gi of course. It is doubly unfortunate that the science of the Muay Thai clinch  has been ignored, compared to judo and American wrestling, because the clinch is where stand up and the ground meet. Neglecting the clinch is not only unfortunate, but potentially devastating. You can't benefit from your superiority in ground fighting if you can't take the combat to the ground in the first place, and as so many legendary jiu-jitsu fighters (most recently Marcelo Garcia, but before him Royler, Ralph, Saulo, Renzo to name a few) have shown us, trying to tackle people who have knee caps can be a high risk gamble. The risk of losing due to a cut from a knee is dramatically reduced if you start from an upper body clinch (like Rickson does). Certainly, every jiu-jitsu man practices pummeling from time to time and knows a few take downs from a bear hug position. They just don't drill it hard enough or realistically enough. It isn't fun enough. But getting into that position when someone is intent on smashing your face is not a simple matter. It requires practice. A certain amount of pain must be expected. When I saw Saulo practicing his clinches a few days before the fight with Yuuki Kondo, I anticipated that he would have some problems--his training partner was making it much too easy to get in. Kondo was not going to make it easy. We know the result. Saulo now sticks to submission grappling. It doesn't have to be this way.  

I was feeling pretty comfortable with my game when I arrived at Bolão's this year. I didn't feel like I was too far out of my league with most of the black belts.  Chico raved about how much I had evolved since in the past year ("I'm going to tell Sergio [Bolão] about you," he said), which stumped me, because  he had tooled me twice as completely as last year. But with Cazuza, I was never in my game long enough to get started, apart from the times he let me in. I felt like I knew nothing about Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I couldn't apply pressure from any position, even if he gave me the position. I was sweeped from every angle. I couldn't pass no matter what move I used. The only reason I wasn't tapped more was that he didn't see the point, the way you would do with a hintless beginner, which is about how I felt. After 13 years of training (a lot of it in Rio), feeling like you suddenly know nothing is a cruel experience. But also a positive one. There is so much more to learn and nothing stopping you from learning it. Unlike some styles, you can't reach a plateau because the plateau keeps rising. Whoever is the best at any given time is not as good as someone who builds on what his predecessors knew. Roger Gracie, who some think is the best now, is not as good as he will be. The knowledge that some of these older guys, who have been training and teaching for 30, 40, or more years, must be immense. 

　　Global Training Report 2007.　　(c)2000-2007, Roberto Pedreira. All rights reserved.

Additional Reading:　Science of the Muay Thai Clinch

The Path to Success　

The temporada apartment I rented close to Corpo Quatro needed some minor repairs, and Ana, the  owner, or agent, said she would send her father Aureo to attend to it. When Aureo showed up, he handed me a DVD. It was called "The Path to Success" by jiu-jitsu 2 times  black world champion Felipe Costa, who turned out to be Aureo's son-in-law. (The south zone of Rio is a small world . A couple weeks later I almost literally bumped into Ricardo de la Riva  on  Av. Copacabana, at Rua Bolivar. "Whoa, de la Riva, what are you doing here? I thought you were in Miami?""Delayed," he replied. He would be going  next month instead, if God was willing. Of course, he invited me to stop by Equipe One and train.)

Back in Japan, I watched the DVD. The first part is Felipe explaining how he went from being terrible at jiu-jitsu, really sucking bad, as his brother says on the DVD, to world champion. Felipe emphasizes many times how bad he was to highlight the big gap between the before and after. He was 28 when the DVD was made and has been training since he had 12 year of old, in 1991. In that epoch he would everyday pass on his way to school the academia of Jacare (one of Rolls Gracie's original black belts) on Rua Visconde de Piraja. He didn't know what jiu-jitsu was--no one in Rio did either, back then, Felipe says. But he decided to do it. During his first three years he entered many competitions. He NEVER won a single match. Footage from that period shows that indeed, he was not a natural born superstar. If someone like him can become World Champion, not once, but twice, than what is stopping YOU, Felipe seems to be asking.

It is more a memoir than an instructional DVD, but it does have several educational sections. The first is an analysis of errors that Felipe made when he was a blue and purple belt. He thinks that blue and purple belts in general might benefit from seeing these mistakes analyzed by experts, including Demian Maia, who has himself recently been busting out in the jiu-jitsu circuits and word on the street is that he has his own DVD coming out.

Michelle Matta dissects how Felipe used his foot incorrectly when he played spider guard with foot on the biceps which allowed his opponent to remove the hook and easily pass for three points.

Demian Maia analyzes how Felipe executed the shoulder pass incorrectly as a blue belt, and explains how to do it correctly. This is useful, because the shoulder pass is a great pass, as long as you don't make the mistake that Felipe made.

Next Caio Terra points out that when Felipe's opponent in a purple belt match put a triangle on him, Felipe tapped fast. This is an interesting example. Felipe's position wasn't that bad--he was in the center of the opponent's legs and could have based up well. Once in base, there are many defenses, escapes, and counters to the triangle.  Assuming that Felipe didn't just panic, this suggests that perhaps he didn't have a good enough command of the relevant escapes. He seems to be a spider guard, half-guard type of fighter. Maybe he was so good at these positions that he neglected some of the more pedestrian, ho-hum moves. It often happens that guys focus on what they do well and neglect what they don't. The difference between guys who never progress and guys who end up winning gold medals in the black belts division is that some people don't boldly confront  their weaknesses, while some do. Obviously Felipe did.

Finally, Bezinho Otero analyzes Felipe's wrong technique in the outside trip take-down. Felipe put his head on the same side as the hook, which as Bezinho points out, usually means you are going to smash your own face when you hit the mat (you should put your head on the opposite side).

Analysis of mistakes is a great concept for a DVD. Carlson Jr. has a tape like this, although the mistakes are deliberately made just to illustrate what not to do. If you are a really good musician, it is hard to play a bad note deliberately---somehow it comes out sounding good. Lesser musicians will think your mistake was a deliberate note choice and end up imitating you. No joke. Music history is replete with examples.  Likewise, when a good black belt tries to demonstrate a mistake, his deliberate mistake usually isn't that wrong. All of his training militates against him genuinely doing what he is trying to do. Better is to have a real person really make a real mistake---like Felipe did--and then show what he did to fix the mistake. It is a little on the short side though--only four mistakes. If I made a DVD with an analysis of all the mistakes I made in blue and purple belt, I would have material for a 5 DVD set.

Next, Felipe shows five of his favorite techniques. Three involve taking the back from half guard. Evidently, Felipe likes half guard. Coincidentally, I watched Ricardo Vieira teaching the third of these moves at his own academy, and also observed some blue belts doing them during rolling at Carlson Gracie Academy. They aren't cutting edge in Rio but they might be new everywhere else. The third move is very gi dependent and a little difficult to see what is going on. I asked one of Bolão's brown belts about the technique (as best as I could describe it). But he said "no one here uses half guard...except one guy who does a guard like this." He demonstrated what North Americans now call the X guard (when Bolão created it,  not anticipating that 20 years later people would be selling DVDs explaining how to do it, Bolão didn't bother to give it a name. I wonder how things would look today if he had called it the Bolão guard?). I'm not a big  fan of half guard.  But some guys are and have a whole game from there. After all, if you do it right, you are half-way to the opponent's back. Guys who are good at it, like Felipe, can make you feel very unstable. It takes the fun out of having a half mount (although strictly speaking it shouldn't be called half mount if the bottom athlete has his shoulder off the mat.)

In the mistakes section above, we saw Felipe having problems with the shoulder pass. Maybe that's why he says he likes to "pass with distance."The last technique he shows is a "pass with distance" that has a nice twist. When you pass from outside and control the guy's hand very well, his option to defend is to turn to the knees. But you will be dominating his sleeve, so when he turns, you will roll to the other side, and then you will be able to take his back. It's easier to see than to  describe. Watch the DVD. 

Being very good at jiu-jitsu is not mostly a matter of buying more DVDs and knowing more techniques, or even having a teacher with a famous name and many medals. What makes you good at jiu-jitsu, and it is the reason so many good players emanate from Rio, is the quantity and quality of the guys you train with. They are the ones who are going to help you grow most. Every time I go to Rio, I realize how true this is. Tapes and DVDs are nice, and having a famous professor can give your self-esteem an indirect boost (so can being a fan of a successful football team, for that matter), but ultimately what is going to dictate your pace of evolution is the other guys you train with. As Bolão said in 2006, one of the most important things in jiu-jitsu training is to be friends with the guys you train with. And this is why loyalty to the team matters to Brazilians.

But what if there aren't 20 black belts for you to train with who will teach you everything you want to know for free and indeed will try to bring you up to a medal winning level to enhance the status of the team? Well, that's why God made US dollars and DVD players.

This is a good concept for a DVD. Instead of a collection of random, or even connected, techniques, a proven winner, a sort of rags to riches jiu-jitsu success story, in this case, Felipe Costa, shares his "path to success," including  mistakes made and infelicitous detours taken along the way, culminating with a semi-instructional of his personal " go to" techniques. In other words, an overview and dissection of his individual game and how it evolved. Felipe is in an excellent position to kick off what GTR hopes will be a trend, because he speaks English very well, having done a study abroad year in an American high school in the middle of nowhere (he explains he wasn't allowed to choose where to go), where he also learned American wrestling. Apparently he was still too terrible at jiu-jitsu to try to teach any one there at the time, or possibly no one cared---since it must have been too soon after the first UFCs to have reached the small towns of the USA. Felipe was not the first Brazilian jiu-jitsu guy to encounter American apathy or incomprehension about Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The list is actually long and distinguished. Rorion Gracie changed all that. Romero Jacare Cavalcanti said it best: "Não se pode tapar o sol com a paneira."  No matter (as Mike Tyson would say), it is now 2007 and GTR recommends "The Path to Success," as long as you understand that it is a personal training memoir and not a compendium of techniques. 

The DVD is an English with Portuguese captions.

GTR has no financial interest in this DVD or any other, but  you can order it below.

Path to Success

Original Alliance academia where Felipe started (then it was called Master)

Alliance acedemia in Ipanema

Interview with Romero Jacare Cavalcanti

　　Global Training Report 2007.　　(c)2000-2007, Roberto Pedreira. All rights reserved.

Paulo Mauricio Strauch Jiu-Jitsu

I had passed by the  Strauch academy of jiu-jitsu in the sobreloja of Av. Nossa Senhora de Copacabana1063/202, hundreds of times over the years since my first trip to Rio in 1997. Why I had never stopped in, I don't know. Maybe because I had never heard of Strauch, or maybe because no one had been there during the afternoons when it was that I inevitably would be passing by.  This time,  the fact that I had still essentially never heard of Strauch was precisely the reason I decided to stop in. When I did it was about 3:30 in the afternoon. The door was locked but through the gate I could see a guy pounding on a heavy bag. Eventually he noticed me and came over and told me that the professor, Paulo Maurício Strauch, would be in soon for the kid's jiu-jitsu class.  The word "soon" in Rio (or the Portuguese equivalent, "logo") doesn't mean what it means in American English. Sometimes it means "maybe latter," other times it means, "I have no idea," and sometimes it means "not at all." There's no way to know, so the best thing is to just try again some other time and take your chances. I said I'd come back tomorrow.

The next day Strauch was there, at his desk (below), rapping with Nelson Monteiro's brother in law, Rogerio. Rogerio studied karate before embarking on jiu-jitsu after enrolling his daughter in Struach's kids program. He liked what he saw and decided that jiu-jitsu was the game to play. Roger runs a tour guide business (www.rogerrio.com) and says jiu-jitsu is good for self-defense, but the need for self-defense in Rio is greatly exaggerated. Rio is as safe as any city in the USA, he says (my hunch is that it is generally safer, but then, it depends on where you go and what you do in both countries.)  Still, it doesn't hurt to be able to take care of yourself. Strauch agrees, but adds that jiu-jitsu is part of an overall healthy lifestyle. Staying in shape is the best way to protect yourself, he says, and he practices what he preaches (unlike, sorry to say, some other older jiu-jitsu professors). Strauch is 55, but has the physical conditioning of a Senior I athlete, judging by appearances. Jiu-jitsu was made for guys like you and me", he said, pointing to me and then to himself. I am physically built like Strauch and no longer compete in adulto. What I supposed he meant was that you do not have to be a monstro or 13 year old Romanian gymnast  to be good at jiu-jitsu. You just have to learn the techniques correctly and practice them appropriately--which of course we know means training, regularly, with prepared, resisting opponents, hard enough to be reasonably realistic but soft enough not to suffer injuries that will make it impossible to train at all.

Jiu-jitsu fighters in Rio seem to like bulldogs, and Carlson's logo features not one but two bulldogs, snarling at each other. Strauch's logo (actually he has two), is hardly an aggressive icon. It is a red pica pau (woodpecker). I asked him what the significance of the logo was. "It's simpatico, kids like it," he explained. Kids like cartoon characters and have little reason to want to adopt the symbolisms of badassness. (Strauch's adult team logo is a more conventional guy doing a arm lock from the guard). Like Saporitio a few blocks away, and Rosado, several blocks further down the road, (both former students of Carlson by the way).   Strauch believes that kids are the future of jiu-jitsu and makes a real effort to bring them on board. He understands very well that parents send kids to martial arts classes to learn how to function effectively in upper-middle class society, and in Brazil, that does not usually  include slamming people on their heads, mounting, and choking them. Kids therefore don't learn much in the way of specific techniques but they do learn skills and general patterns of thought and behavior that will help them in life and in jiu-jitsu too, if they decide to continue, or someday return to the mats. The most essential life skill anyone can cultivate, as Bolão suggested  earlier, is getting along well with other people and good instruction emphasizes this. It is no coincidence that the top jiu-jitsu guys are more often described as nice guys than badasses. (The first time I went to Rio, Sergio Malibu and everyone else who knew Rickson personally described him, not as a legend, but as a "nice guy"). Indeed the advantages to being the king of the beach (or favela, or hood, as the case may be)  are mixed. You will be "respected" but you will also get "shot." In any event, the advantage is limited in geography and time. But having a good cardio-vascular system and being able to get along with other people will pay off for a long time to come.

Since Strauch has been around a long time, I asked him what the jiu-jitsu landscape was like when he started, 38 years ago. There was nothing here, he said, only Carlson, nothing else. He meant Copacabana of course, because Gracie Humaita was established the same time Carlson's academy was, in 1968. There was nothing in Ipanema for sure because the area was mostly sand dunes back then. Strauch's first teacher was Reylson Gracie, who is now in Las Vegas, according to Strauch. Reylson was a very strong guy, Strauch said, pointing to old photo pinned to the wall. But he wasn't the best of the Gracies. The best were Helio, Carlson, Rolls, Rickson, Royler (the best of all of them with the gi), and the current best, Roger, son of Mauricio Motta Gomes (GTR's Roberto Pedreira's  first jiu-jitsu teacher in Japan). Speaking of Roger, what was Strauch's opinion of the recent decision to move the Mundials to California.  "It is necessary", Strauch thinks. Jiu-jitsu is too local. Jiu-jitsu is a niche sport. Even many Brazilians haven't heard of it and don't know what it is, so who cares if a Brazilian is the "world champion" if almost no one else anywhere else is doing it?  If the gringos don't care, why should we? (Strauch didn't use the word "gringo" which is somewhat disrespectful).This is a typical Brazilian pattern of thought, according to some researchers and even ordinary Brazilians. The implied logic is "If the Americans don't like it, it must not be any good; conversely, if they do, it must be." Not all Brazilians think that, but a lot do. (Note that BJJ didn't become a fad in Brazil until after the Americans started to like it. Similarly, the songwriter Antonio Carlos Jobim (the international airport is named after him), didn't become a national hero until the Americans picked up on his music.)  Now, judo is different. It is truly an international sport. If a Brazilian wins a world title, it carries some weight and foreigners are going to know about it and respect Brazil. For jiu-jitsu to become really international, the top event needs to be held where the best competitors from every country can participate, not only the people who can afford to come to Rio. Of course it means that Brazil will not dominate the gold medals to the same degree as in the past,  but is well worth it in exchange for spreading the art. Brazilians will have fewer medals but the medals will mean more,  since their opponents will not be limited to other Brazilians and a handful of rich foreign fanatics. This will take time but that's the way it is. The Mundials for Masters and Seniors will continue to be held in Rio at last for the foreseeable future which makes sense because there are relatively few strong non-Brazilian competitors in the belt class that really matters (black) .

Strauch bought his academy 13 years ago, relocating from Gavea (an area above Leblon and Botafogo)., where he taught for 25 years.  Cariocas like martial arts, but the demand for pure jiu-jitsu has peaked. Now virtually every academy offers a range of other arts as well as jiu-jitsu. Some people want to cross-train, some don't like grappling, whatever. The academy is unused during  most afternoons and the extra money doesn't hurt. Strauch Academy offers classes in boxing, kickboxing, aikido, and hapkido. Strauch didn't teach hapkido and wasn't even sure what it was. Having lived eight years in Korea and studied hapkido there, I could explain that it is a 2,000 year old indigenous Korean martial art. Ok, I made that up. What it really is is a combination of Tae Kwon Do and the old Japanese version of stand up self defense jujutsu. The hapkido professor was Korean and in Korea at the time. The kickboxing looked rudimentary, as at other places I observed. As far as I could see, none of the instructors had any real Muay Thai background but simply assumed that low kicks = Muay Thai. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Muay Thai looks simple, but so does Brazilian jiu-jitsu to the unsophisticated. In reality, Muay Thai is as subtle and as complex as Brazilian jiu-jitsu. If people want to teach basic kickboxing, I have no complaints, but if they want to say they are teaching Muay Thai, they need to pay their dues in Thailand, just as the rest of us have to do in Brazil. Aikido was taught by Adelino. He had one orange belt student that day. I am no expert on aikido but from I have seen, the training looked like aikido training elsewhere. Unlike some people, I don't think aikido is total BS. A lot of Brazilians don't either. Mehdi teaches aikido for example, and I don't think Strauch would have it in his academy if he thought it was absolute BS. Aikido is ok, in my opinion, but you have to (1) be realistic about what it is good for, and (2) you have to also train Brazilian jiu-jitsu or Muay Thai, during both of which you can experiment with some of the aikido moves. If they work, keep them, if not discard what is useless. The main thing missing in aikido training, the sort that emphasizes harmony, is the sparring, rolling, and randori that makes Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, boxing, judo, and wrestling effective. In actuality the sort of people who train aikido don't want to do that kind of training but that is their problem, not a defect of the aikido techniques. If you are good enough at aikido to make a crazed attacker involuntarily do what your training partner will do cooperatively, then aikido will work. Otherwise, it won't. (Incidentally, hapkido, at least in Korea, has a form of sparring, called daeryon hoshinsul. The problem is that they don't do enough of it.) 

Strauch is also a judo man, like most of the old time Brazilian jiu-jitsu guys, but he leaves the teaching to his friend, Valladares,. Valladares was a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, judo, and self-defense (a black belt in self-defense?)  and also practiced shiatsu. He asked if I knew shiatsu. Did he mean did I know how to do it, or did he mean did I know what it was? The former, no, the latter, yes. Shi 指= finger, 圧 atsu = pressure. It is sort of acupuncture without needles, or more accurately, a form of massage.　Let me know if you want shiatsu treatment he said. Vallaraes and Strauch were both loquacious guys, even more than the Brazilian norm. The conversation turned from one training topic to another at a rapid pace, with both acting out the stories they were telling. Some sounded incredible and deserve to be more thoroughly investigated. The story of Joe Moreira for example. Joe was a judo man, but a grande amigo of everyone and also welcome in any jiu-jitsu academy, where he must have learned jiu-jitsu, or adapted his judo, before emigrating to the USA. Joe taught Kimo, they informed me. But that is another story. Anyway, one day Joe met Rickson Gracie. They rolled. The action was riveting. Finally someone tapped. I didn't catch who, because that wasn't even the point of their story. The point was that someone was caught in an arm lock and cleverly escaped, but was re-caught again when the other guy changed the angle of the lock, which they acted out with great zest and many sound effects,  gestures, and facial expressions. It made me wish I had been there. Also that I could understand what they were saying better.

They also re-enacted an incident that allegedly  occurred between George Mehdi and judo instructor Mauricio Sabattini, assuming that I didn't grossly misunderstand what they were talking about, which, given what I know about Mehdi and Sabattini, is highly possible, so I won't even try to describe it.  Sabattini is a tiny little young guy who may be very tough for his  size, but I don't see him challenging Mehdi under any circumstances.

Strauch agrees with Helio. jiu-jitsu is losing it's way., jiu-jitsu is getting too "narrow." There is too much emphasis on sports and on newaza in general. Stand up and self defense have been forgotten. All of the old guys were well rounded. They trained everything and could do everything well. (Strauch also studied kenpo.)  Now it's all points and gogoplatas. Yes, the new generation is very talented, and yes, everyone needs to make their way in life and it can be hard. But the upshot is that jiu-jitsu is changing into something else. If jiu-jitsu becomes just another form of wrestling, it will have lost its meaning. Strauch doesn't think that's good. He isn't alone in this view. Helio Gracie, for one, agrees.

　　Global Training Report 2007.　　(c)2000-2007, Roberto Pedreira. All rights reserved.

More:

Traditional Japanese Jujutsu

Hapkido in Korea

Helio Gracie interview

Ricardo Vieira

Bolão's old academy, before he went to Pennsylvania, was in the subloja of a fitness club on Rua Francisco Sa 36, about a block down toward the beach from Corpo Quatro. Passing by one day, I noticed the sign saying that jiu-jitsu was being offered, along with capoeira infantil, judo infantil, and Boxe Thailandes (Muay Thai). I went in. The room had not changed since 1999 when Bolão was there, but the academy was now called fightzone. A guy with a brown belt was sweeping the mats. He was Alexandre do Santo Machado. I asked him if the professor was there or would be in soon. And by the way, who is the professor?  He kept pointing to the magazines in the glass display case. I didn't want any magazines so I ignored that but finally realized the professor was the person on he cover.  It was Ricardo Vieira, and according to some, even more of a fenom than his brother Leozinho. I didn't have time to hang around but the flyer said there would be treino" at 11 hours the next day (Saturday), so I decided to show up then. "Bring your kimono" Alexandre said. "

Saturday morning there were five guys, purple and brown belts, and Alexandre. One brown belt asked me where I was from. In order to make a long story short, I said "Los Angeles." He didn't know where Los Angeles was, but a purple belt in red kimono explained to him that Los Angeles is in California USA.  The purple belt spoke Portuguese with an accent so I guessed he was from the USA, but in fact, he was from Sweden. Jiu-jitsu is blowing up in Sweden, thanks to the seminars and proselytizing efforts of the Vieira brothers. In Malmo alone, a small city, of not even 300,000, he said, there were four or five Brasa Academies. The Swedish purple belt, Daniel was his name, assured me that Swedish jiu-jitsu reigned supreme in Europe and judging from his guard work that day, I couldn't doubt it. He first rolled with a brown belt who seemed to be intent on giving him some pointers while working on his own half-guard game. But when Daniel passed his guard and got his back, the brown belt obviously became alarmed. Letting people take your back is a good way to practice escapes, but if the opponent is too good, you probably will end up tapping instead of escaping. Not that that is the end of the world but it is generally more productive to be able to execute the move that you were intending to do. If the other guy won't let you do it, then you can't practice it. As it turned out, the brown belt had to tap. Well, it's just training, as everyone says, but what that does not mean is that they don't mind tapping. What it does mean is that for most people, occasional (or frequent) tapping is one of the costs of doing business. It doesn't mean you are going to enjoy it when it happens, particularly when the one who makes it happen holds a belt lower than your own. The brown belt didn't seem to, at least. They began again and this time the brown belt decided to take it up a notch or two and play from the top. But after 20 minutes, he was still unable to pass Daniel's guard and finally called it quits. It was an impressive display of open guard. I complimented Daniel. He said, "Yes, I've been working on my guard lately."

Ricardo wasn't there. He did his own training somewhere else, Alexandre explained, so I came back the following Monday to meet him at the academy. I rolled with Ricardo in 1998 at Alliance. when he was still a skinny purple belt. He was good, but not yet  the fenom that he had become. "I remember you" he said when he saw me. If true, that surprised me because a constant stream of foreigners were showing up. Brasa was a well known brand name in some places. In fact the guy at the desk that day was an American named Steve,  a student of Romero Jacare Cavalcanti in Atlanta, USA. He planned to spend a year in Rio and Ricardo's academy was the best place, he said. One might think that in the year 2007 there would be no one left in the world who did not know exactly what Brazilian jiu-jitsu was. But a guy from South Africa showed up, apparently unclear about the matter, but with a definite interest in training with Ricardo.

After 25 minutes of jogging and push-ups, Ricardo and his black belt assistant Chico taught several half-guard sweeps and some nice details on how to prevent the other guy from doing the sweep, assuming you were on top. They worked on these positions for 27 minutes and then  began sparring, from the half-guard position and switched when one guy either passed or was sweeped. By that time 18 people had shown up with a mix of belts from white to black including one purple belt female who was surprisingly good and didn't take any prisoners. White belts in an academy are a good sign of healthy growth and by that measure Fightzone is among the healthiest that I saw in the summer of 2007. They also welcome the youngest generation. The picture at the top of this section was taken during the kid's judo class.

With Chico supervising the rolling, Ricardo sat down with me to shoot the breeze. For the sake of having something to write about, I asked him how Brasa came about--why the split from Alliance in other words? "It was a revolt against Fabio Gurgel" he told me. Some of the Alliance guys had issues with Fabio's control over their opportunities to earn money. I didn't press for details. As Daniel summed it up, "There is a lot of politics in jiu-jitsu." As if to confirm that, Ricardo said that he even more recently split from Brasa. Why? Too much confusion and chaos. If his brother gets things more organized, he will come back, until then he's going to be following his own road. He also had some problems about belt promotions. He seemed to feel that belts were being given out too generously. He didn't specifically mention it, but I had been hearing rumors about a certain organization whose black belt promotions were questionable, people with little or no actual training, at all, period, let alone in Brazil, being promoted to black belt. Now it must be said that non-Brazilians tend to have grossly exaggerated ideas about what a black belt in Brazil really represents, and some Brazilians outside of Brazil have encouraged this misperception. On the other hand, giving people who don't train at all black belts can't be a good thing for the long term development of the science and business of jiu-jitsu as a whole. Belts have value because they are hard to get. You can't internationalize a sport or martial art and at the same time monopolize the belts and medals. On the other hand, promoting people for winning medals only encourages them to focus on points and gogoplatas and neglect everything else, exactly as Strauch and Helio Gracie complain about.

　　Global Training Report 2007.　　(c)2000-2007, Roberto Pedreira. All rights reserved.

Kazulu Clube de Lutas

It isn't easy making a living teaching Brazilian jiu-jitsu in Rio. The competition is intense. Some academies maximize profits or just make ends meet by leasing out space to professors of other martial arts (or yoga). Others operate out of fitness clubs (Bolão, for one example, at Corp Quatro, de la Riva, for another, at Equipe One). Kazulu Clube de Lutas is a specialty fitness club, offering only martial arts, as can be seen above. I stopped in one afternoon. A boxing class seemed to be in progress, but the door was closed and the Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor was at the desk by the entrance so I talked with him, Cesar Augusto, a member of the Brasa team, which as Ricardo Vieira explained, broke off from Alliance. There are Brasa academies everywhere and in some respects seems to have surpassed Alliance. Although the flyer says classes are offered in the afternoons, none were on that day, so I said I'd come back another time. Unfortunately, time did not permit, so I can't provide any details about training there. If I had to guess, I would say that it is probably pretty similar to the way training is done in every other academy in Rio, since I rarely, if ever, saw any deviation from the established training pattern.

Before leaving for Rio, I formed a detailed Japanese style plan for training and meeting the people I wanted to meet. None of it happened, apart from training with Bolão. I had thought it would be great to train with everyone who I anticipated would invite me to train. But I soon realized it would be impossible. A normal drug-free person cannot train the way they train in Rio four times a day five or six days a week (maybe a few guys can, but they are by definition not "normal".). Likewise, planning to meet people is an exercise in folly. No one will be where you expect them to be. That is offset by the fact that you will meet people when you don't plan to. The best way is to be like a good jazz musician, keep your ears (or eyes) open, and be ready when it's time to stand up and take your solo. Come to think of it, this is a lot like what you do in jiu-jitsu fighting. .Maybe that's why Brazilian jiu-jitsu developed in Brazil rather than Japan.