I’ve recently had the opportunity to cross train with members of various other local jiu-jitsu schools. It has been quite an interesting experience training with students of other styles and understanding their fighting mindset. It allows me to broaden my jiu-jitsu by trying out my techniques on someone who would not react in the same [...]
(by James Smart, co owner and head instructor at Gracie Jiu Jitsu Cape Town) In the Jiu Jitsu world, we know about the changes that Helio Gracie made to Japanese Ju Jitsu. By using leverage he made it more useable by a smaller weaker person and he incorporated live sparring. Some also know that [...]
2009 was a great jiu jitsu year for me. I attended two awesome black belt seminars, one by Ryron Gracie himself, the other by South African black belt Nicolas Gregoriades. I was tested for (and was awarded at the beginning of this year with) my blue belt and I have trained with some great jiu [...]
Rener Gracie discusses the Gracie Jiu Jitsu Academy philosophy. This is why I train where I do… Last week on The FightWorks Podcast we heard from New York-based Renzo Gracie, who helped fill in our knowledge of the late Rolls Gracie. Renzo went on to make some comments regarding the Gracie Academy in Torrance, California, [...]
I recently had a conversation with Gary about the reasons various people do jiu-jitsu. Some are there to learn to defend themselves. Others are into the competition aspect. Still others do it simply as a form of exercise. It got me thinking as to why I do it. And specifically why I do Gracie Jiu-Jitsu [...]
Something I have always struggled with is this concept of learning to relax while sparring. It is always easy to relax and practice a technique slowly in class, your training partner is usually as focused on the learning of the technique as you are, so you can take your time and make sure you have [...]
Last night I got into a conversation with James about how I train against certain attacks. There are certain types of submissions that I personally feel are not something that I would ever come up against in the street. My main purpose for doing jiu-jitsu is street self defence, and if someone manages to submit [...]
Shifting the goal posts The other night whilst driving home (yes, I even get jiu-jitsu revelations while driving) I came to the realisation of why I struggle to learn and remember newly taught techniques. It’s all to do with my current way of approaching sparring. I have been forcing myself to be completely relaxed and [...]
Lately Gary and James have been focusing on some of the more basic elements of jiu-jitsu. Getting back to basics, as it were. Revisiting elements of the Gracie combatives, working on basic things like maintaining position and not being to attached to a technique or submission. Sometimes in the heat of sparring and day to [...]
So the Renzo Gracie invitational is over and I didn’t do half as well as I intented. My consolation is the fact that I was knocked out of the first round by the eventual 1st place winner, he spent all his time defending my submission attempts and only won due to points from one successful [...]