Brazilian Jiujitsu in Life

A Big of Head Start

Brazilian Jiujitsu: a big of a head start

Even though I never talk about it, I’m often asked about our competitive advantage.

I’m very thin and I prefer to speak with a low tone of voice. Despite all that, I have spent twelve years of my life as an affectionate competitor at Gracie Barra team, the top BJJ school in the world.

What most people are not aware of is that between the ages of 12 and 25 years old, the decisions I made and the life I lived were all determined by a training schedule. I used to spend four hours early in the morning and three hours late at night on Gracie Barra’s mat. That was my routine Monday through Saturday, every day except for Sundays, which I was usually competing. Doing quick Math, I have spent about thirty thousand hours practicing.

Throwing some numbers out there and Math has always been the easy part, the hard part was being the skinny one sharing the same Mat with my idols who I have the honor to call my best friends. To name a few of them: Roger Gracie, Gregor Gracie, Roberto Gordo, Igor Gracie, Rolles Gracie, Kleber Oliveira, Rafael Ramos, Bruno Fernandes, Leandro Slaib, Luca Atalla, André Laport, Carlo Malta, Ralph Gracie, Kayron Gracie, my brothers who I miss from the bottom of my heart Ryan Gracie and Pedro Brandão, and the Master of All Times Renzo Gracie. I was lucky enough to spend all these hours training, learning from and having fun with these guys.

I’ve learned more about life on the mats than from any other endeavor I’ve undertaken. I’m pretty confident that there’s more philosophy on the Jiu-Jitsu mats than in any Ivy League school in America.

First and foremost, I’ve learned the biggest lesson which is that I’m not special. We are all equal and far from deserving special privileges. Once one realizes it, we learn that you have to work very hard to get better at anything.

People can get into all kinds of weird stuff. People get into surfing, people get into skiing, people get into rock climbing. But there’s something else about Jiu-Jitsu that gets into people’s minds and it definitely happened to me.

About twenty years ago, when I was Purple Belt, I used to teach BJJ to children at the Gracie Barra headquarters. I’d see the knucklehead children, the kind of knuckle-dragging kids who don’t really get it, and then others, often smaller ones, who showed up and you can tell they were the smart children. Those were the kids that got really into Jiu-Jitsu because they realized early on: “oh, if I learn this I can beat the big kid”.

And that’s where it starts. But yeah, Jiu-Jitsu can definitely be addictive.

And that’s how I think that addiction starts. It is a brain reaction where an uncontrollable real force shows up.

Just travel back to the days before Jiu-Jitsu became popular, whoever knew a little tiny bit about it would become unstoppable and that one human being would be able to stop others. This is awesome.

The other great thing about Jiu-Jitsu is that combat reflects life. Similarly to what happens in Jiu-Jitsu, the day you start believing that you are ready to undertake a leadership position or whatever challenge comes next for you, when you believe that you have learned everything that is out there to be learned is the exact same day you start to lose. In Jiu-Jitsu after training so much at some point you think you know, you think you’re good, you think you’re doing pretty good and then you just get smacked.

Humility is something that you have to keep yourself in check in business, in Jiu-Jitsu and in life. I was asked the other day about my high leadership point and my immediate answer was that “I never had experienced a high leadership point”. As someone who is always seeking to learn and always trying to figure out what are the mistakes that I am making, I learned that the ones who don’t do that are going to get passed by, and others are going to figure out a new way of doing it and you’re going to be left in the dark. This lesson I have learned from Jiu-Jitsu, specifically from Renzo and Carlos Gracie.

As much as I caught myself saying the word “perfect” and seeking “perfection”, ain’t nothing perfect in human beings. There’s always room for improvement, there’s always a shorter path, there’s always a quicker victory, there’s always new things to learn and, as soon as you start thinking that you mastered something to the point of an end, you’ve totally missed out what this is about in the first place.

Once we are constantly feeling uncomfortable, every little victory or milestone is a big reward. I remember the feeling of people tapping me on my shoulders and celebrating those small wins, and I’d think “here we go again”. The point is that it is a long path, a long arduous path, and I think anything that’s worth doing is probably like that.

Different life stages help put things in perspective. When you were 20, you would think: “I’m pretty good to go”. Then when you turn 30 you’re like: “I didn’t know anything”. And this is true! One of the small signals that tells me about a human being’s maturity is the ability to acknowledge that you don’t know everything. You change the way you look at yourself and think: “I do need to get back on training. There are no excuses because I still have so much to learn in the next three, five years and beyond” . Once you come to that realization it’s a very positive feeling. Instead of turning you down, it shows you that it took a while to figure out that you don’t have to have everything figured out. In fact, you’re pretty stupid right now, even though you don’t think so. Hopefully less stupid than yesterday, but more stupid than tomorrow. And it’s only up to you to change that.

What also amazes me about Jiu-Jitsu is that you can go real deep into it being in your 50’s. Take Antonio Saldanha as an example, who is approaching his 70’s and is practicing it. Even though he wouldn’t likely become a world beater these days, this wouldn’t be the point either. The point is that he can get the most out of it. Conserving the capability of doing the same wonderful things in the mat with a more mature mental state is getting the most out of it.

Independently of the results, whether you are getting tapped or being successful, you know you are doing your best. The sensation triggered by overcoming and improving upon what your best was yesterday every single day is a self rewarding practice. You are also doing so in a situation where there are extreme consequences, you’re subject to getting strangled, or you may have your arm broken if you don’t tap. Is not as extreme as combat obviously, but it is as extreme as you can get in a sport that you’re participating in voluntarily.

Another kind of primal piece that makes Jiu-Jitsu so intense is that if you and I roll and you get me and I tap, in my heart I know that if you and I were fighting for survival I just lost and you killed me. I see this happening with little kids when they compete, you tell them “just go out and have fun, go out and do your best, I don’t care if you win or lose, just go out and have a good time”, but if they tap they start crying. Why is it so emotional? Because somewhere inside their minds, a part of their head they don’t even know that exists, is aware they were facing a mortal struggle.

Once I heard the questioning of “What all sports escalate into?” or “Well, what does happen if basketball escalates?”: into a fight. And if you get rid of the ball and whatever else, let’s just fight.

That’s why I don’t often talk about it. It’s not talking about a sport, it’s as broad as talking about life. Thanks to BJJ, I had a big of a head start.