(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 [...]

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will have by now noticed a common thread in most of my posts. You should be familiar with phrases like “respect the punch” and “the self defense philosophy”. All these things point to what I see as the key aspect of Gracie Jiu Jitsu; that [...]

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, [...]

James has started posting some of his thoughts about the mindset required to train effectively in jiu jitsu. You can read them on the Academy’s Facebook page. I chatted to James about taking these mindset moments and expanding to give us a better understanding of the mindset and how to acheive it. To do this [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

On Friday I had the opportunity to take part in my first Fight-Sim class. There were only about 6 of us, on a wet, windy, winters evening, but the lessons I learned were some of the most profound in my (short) jiu-jitsu experience. As much as we train the Gracie Combatives for street readiness and [...]