I remember my beginning in Jiu-Jitsu, back in the early 1980s. I was a newbie at Carlson Gracie's team in Copacabana, and I witnessed several guys from other disciplines show up at the academy to test what "this Jiu-Jitsu" was all about.
Most of them were karate fighters.
They showed up for a first training session, a "check-up", and Carlson always assigned one of us, still newcomers, to take care of the job: Murilo Bustamante would come, or me, or Wallid, among others from that bunch of newcomers.
The newcomers, in fact, knew nothing about the ground, and those were challenges that made us feel what Jiu-Jitsu was capable of, against those athletes who were good on their feet. We would just put them down and finish them. These were the preliminaries of vale-tudo. And it was all-encompassing.
More experienced, in 1996, I fought the first IBJJF World Jiu-Jitsu Championship as a black belt, and had the honor of winning, on the legendary tatami mats of the Tijuca Tennis Club, the first gold medal in the super heavyweight category, the division of 100kg big guys like the now famous Roger Gracie, Zé Mario, Bernardo Faria. I was about 85kg.
And do you know what I learned, after more than 35 years of Jiu-Jitsu? That, much more than unforgettable victories, Jiu Jitsu teaches us how to lose. Yes, to lose.
I am not talking about losing and enjoying it, about accepting defeat.
You always have to go into the fight with the maximum intention of winning. But you have to understand that you can lose, that you can beat it, and know how to manage the bitterness of defeat.
The business is to train thinking about overcoming the other and, of course, having some fun. The lesson is: train hard, understand the value of sacrifice, and overcome defeats. And the main thing: learn to adapt this philosophy to your own life outside the gym, because only then will it get a little easier.
A few years ago there was an event that fell like a meteor in my life, a drama that occurred with my daughter.
I had to slow down my travel schedule because of this, to take care of her. Look, this is one of the things I am most grateful to Carlson Gracie for. Because if I hadn't trained Jiu-Jitsu with him all my life, I wouldn't hear him whispering in my ear to this day things like "Come on, my brother! Keep going! Don't give up!"... Well, I might not have held it the way I did.
Life kicks us a lot of ass, but the Jiu-Jitsu philosophy of life, combined with the strengthening of character, integrity, and honor, keeps us going. Just sitting down and crying is not the answer.
In Jiu-Jitsu, we learn in every training session that it is normal to lose, and that if you lose and don't give up, you win in the future. Just don't give up!
What happened was that, when she was little, my daughter went blind.
It was a blow that came on all of a sudden, all at once.
When my little girl, Bella Libório, was only one and a half years old, the doctors began to suspect that there was something wrong in her neurological part.
The reason was a malformation: the soft part on top of her head had closed prematurely. With this, her brain started to grow but there was no room, which compressed her optic nerve and caused her blindness.
Do you know what it is like for a Jiu-Jitsu teacher to run out of floor? That's what happened to us at home.
But I never gave up, despite the pain - thanks to what I learned from Jiu-Jitsu and from Carlson, who has always been our great inspiration, the great hero of us all. Just look at the number of disciples who decided to dedicate their lives exclusively to the sport. He was a great master, in all senses.
I remember him giving us a hard time: "Have you stopped coming to train because you hit my son? What kind of man are you?"
Jiu-Jitsu ultimately taught me little by little that you can take a very bad thing and turn it into something at least positive. The only attitude you can't have is to give up.
Let life take its course and believe in a higher power.
That's what happened to me from all this. I had contact with institutions that help the blind here in the USA, and we started to encourage young blind people to train Jiu-Jitsu with us in Florida.
So we started to schedule summer camps every year to train Jiu-Jitsu and other martial arts with more than 15 blind children. At a state championship here, we enrolled three blind kids. And two of them were champions.
Felipe and George, in fact, beat competitors who can see and won the blue belt. This is more than gratifying. It was when I finally understood that Jiu-Jitsu can be the light that many people lack.
After all these obstacles in my family's life, we realized that, in the end, we began to improve the lives of many other young people with similar problems. We soon offered Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, and grappling to visually impaired youth here in Florida.
We know that because she is blind, Bella, who is now 11 years old, will certainly suffer bullying, which has already happened. Thanks to Jiu-Jitsu, however, I have full confidence that she will be able to defend herself naturally from this type of aggression, which makes me more serene.
I don't see any sport more perfect for the visually impaired than Jiu-Jitsu, with or without kimono. One reason: thanks to the need for contact and grip all the time, you don't need your sight to practice it.
Of course teaching a visually impaired person is not simple - the teacher should not expect the students to understand everything just by listening, but imagine how easy it is for a visually impaired person to fight, feeling the balance on the ground and holding the opponent the whole time.
After what happened with Bella, we all changed. Literally: we left Coconut Creek, also in Florida, and moved to Orlando, where the education for blind children is one of the best and most respected in the USA, and consequently in the world.
After moving away from home, I took another turn in my professional life, when I left American Top Team that I helped found due to disagreements with my former partner.
As Jiu-Jitsu taught me again, there was no time for regrets: always move on.
Today, my main focus is to be a consultant for teachers and administrators of martial arts teams, from Saudi Arabia to Brazil. There are many talented black belts who set up their teams with no idea how to manage them.
That is where I come in, with my experience and that of other consultants who work with us.
To make things better, I was invited by the University of Central Florida, considered the second largest public university in the country, with more than 65 thousand students, to give theoretical and practical Jiu-Jitsu classes.
It was an idea that came from the students themselves, and it is a challenge that honors me greatly: I will teach in the classroom, and I hope the idea spreads throughout the USA, Brazil, and the world.
The secret to being successful in Jiu-Jitsu in the end is the same as always: a lot of effort and total confidence in your ideas.
I have been working since I was 13, I know what it is to persist. In the USA, to top it off, there is a science of business that helps a lot. There is even a Martial Arts Business Association that lives only to create ideas and systems for micro-entrepreneurs and gym owners to be successful.
Another ingredient of ours was the belief that MMA and Jiu-Jitsu are team sports.
When you see a champion on the podium or with a belt, understand that it was not the work of one person. This is impossible.
That athlete has a lot to thank to other teammates. He has all the support, from the coaches, from the administration, responsible for taking care of everything on a daily basis. Without a good staff, the teacher doesn't disconnect from the accounting, lawyers, cleaning, etc.
Jiu-Jitsu reinforces this union. Because the good athlete understands that he needs the coach all the time, because it is a very emotional profession, it is normal for the fighter to be very sensitive before the fights.
There is a suffering that has to be accompanied with emotional support, even spiritual support, and not only from the technical and tactical side. Being successful in a fight is a reflection of the companionship and the work of everyone.
One of the great examples I always cite is Mike Brown, who started working at the front desk of ATT and went on to become a UFC superstar and Jiu-Jitsu black belt.
For gym owners, I advise them to take good care of the program and the communication with the student. The white belt needs to know what he will learn, what will be taught, how it will be taught, and how it will have an educational character in the children's development.
Remember that you can't depend on the fighter's scholarship to be successful, because at one time everything will be blue, and at another time it may decrease. The academy has to be well structured, with branches and a good number of students.
Teaching Jiu-Jitsu is a gift, and a privilege. Note that striking and grappling you can learn in arts originating from any corner of the globe - there is wrestling in Mongolia, there is striking in India, there is grappling in every corner of Europe. But high level ground fighting, with guard and efficient finishes, only Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
I just cannot understand how Jiu-Jitsu is still not in all schools, colleges, and even universities in Brazil. But this day will come.
Casa De Luta FightKlub (Eingang im Hinterhof) Mainzer Str. 30 66111 Saarbrücken Website: https://www.bjjsaarbruecken.de/ Email: acasadeluta@gmail.com
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