Interview - BlogChat #5: Georgette Oden on Rape Culture & Journalism

Following on from last week, Georgette moves into some more serious topics, related to the increasing role her blog has taken in addressing important social issues.

CAN: Has the online aspect of jiu jitsu been important as a support network, especially the large community of female BJJ bloggers?

GEORGETTE: I don’t really attribute a whole lot of extra support from people based on their gender. I think there are some women out there who are blithering idiots, just like there are men out there who are blithering idiots too. Fortunately there are also some really sharp, astute people as well, of all genders.

I’ve never really felt that being a woman in jiu jitsu makes me feel picked on or in need of any additional, special support. I tend to look at it more like that there are some jiu jitsu people who are more aware of social issues and how they affect the community, then there are people who just don’t care about social issues, they only want to put their head down and train. I gravitate more towards the socially aware group, the socially conscious and interested group.

CAN: The other big thing with your blog is that it’s shifted in content and tone over the years. It used to be a diary, then you added reviewing, but more recently that’s changed. It’s become more about broader social issues. When did that start happening?

GEORGETTE: I would say that really took off after the Team Lloyd Irvin scandal, when two of his students were accused of gang raping a third. I’ve always considered myself to be a journalist. Before I went to law school and during my studies, I worked as a photojournalist. As cheesy as it sounds, I do think that my blog is a form of media akin to journalism.

So, there was a time when I understood I couldn’t continue writing really personal feelings about training, competition, partners and educators, because I finally realised that there were a lot of people at my academy that did in fact read my blog. If I wrote something in a moment of frustration or sadness, it could strike somebody the wrong way and create a lot of friction in relationships that I didn’t feel was worth it.

So, I guess I started seeing my blog as a vehicle to potentially positively impact the community without hurting people’s feelings unnecessarily. A way of reaching a broader span of people, I guess.

CAN: Does that mean your blog has essentially become a news outlet?

GEORGETTE: Yeah, for me anyway. Especially when it’s Presidential election season. When Sarah Palin was out and about, she gave me so much material!

CAN: That’s true, you do often have non-jiu-jitsu material on your blog.

GEORGETTE: I just haven’t had as much time to blog, lately. My real job has gotten in the way of my fake job. But I love to write about cooking, politics, current events, all that kind of stuff as well. It used to be that I could get in an hour or half an hour of blogging every day, on my lunch break, in the evening or whatever. Now, I’m back to training as much as I used to and it’s hard.

CAN: Getting back to what you were saying earlier today about rape culture, you’ve really become a spokesperson within the BJJ community on that topic. Is that a role you welcome or one that has been thrust upon you?

GEORGETTE: I welcome it so long as I’m able to do or say things that are helpful for the community. I do feel like it has kinda been thrust on me, but I’m not unwilling. I think I offer a unique perspective because I’m an assault survivor and a crisis counsellor, as well as a prosecutor and a woman who trains jiu jitsu. So I think, at least based on some of the things I’ve been told, I’ve become a voice for other people who may feel the same way, but don’t have a soap box, a platform to stand on.

CAN: How much of an issue do you think it is within jiu jitsu specifically?

GEORGETTE: I’m sure that it’s representative in a typical proportion to the regular community. I don’t think there is anything about jiu jitsu that makes people more or less likely to be sexually assaulted, except possibly the fact that it is a community predominantly made of men and it does tend to reward a certain level of aggression, I think. There’s cliquishness too. A lot of people say that it’s important BJJ incorporates Brazilian culture and that this is part of a more ‘Brazilian’ attitude towards women. I don’t know enough about Brazilian culture to agree or disagree with that, but I don’t like the idea that Brazilian jiu jitsu ‘causes’ rape, or allows it in any greater proportion than regular society.

I don’t want that to be true. Even if it was, I don’t want that theory getting out and being publically acclaimed or confirmed. I want to think of jiu-jitsu as a safe place for everybody that trains in it, male or female, straight or queer. If we can’t police ourselves and make it a safe place, something needs to be changed. But I think it is the same as it probably is in any other community.

CAN: Do you think that there are any particular steps that can be taken to make it a safer environment?

GEORGETTE: I do. I think there is a lot of talk about creating ethics codes or policies, instituting background checks, things like that. Sadly, Brazilian jiu jitsu does not have a national governing body the way that some other sports do, which could institute a top-down policy. I think it needs to come from the bottom up. Individual students and teachers need to create policies, try them out, try different variations to see what works. Grass roots change, as trite a phrase as that may be, is nevertheless the way to go.

The IBJJF, sadly, is a political and financial organisation that operates for its own profit and its own benefit. I don’t think, from watching what they have done over the last year and a half, that they are strong enough or brave enough to make great change happen. So I think it is up to the individual academies, teams and leaders to step up and write policies, require things like background checks.

CAN: Is there anything else you’d like to say to the readers of this interview?

GEORGETTE: I would welcome anyone who has more questions about writing an anti-sex abuse, anti-misogyny, anti-misandry policy for their school. I would encourage them to contact me, because I’ve probably had similar questions. Together we can probably find out the answer.

Photos courtesy of Georgette Oden.

Interview - BlogChat #4: Georgette Oden Talks About BJJ & Blogging

Georgette is one of my favourite people. I've flown over to the USA twice so far to visit her and she has always been an incredible host (amazing cook, too: you haven't experienced Thanksgiving until you've had it at Georgette's house! ;D). She is also among the handful of bloggers I've been following consistently for around seven years at this point, blogging at Georgette's Jiu Jitsu World.

During my second visit to Texas last year, I made sure to get some interview time with Georgette. This first part of the interview talks about her background in martial arts and blogging in general, then next week we'll get a lot more serious and discuss the issue of rape culture (Update: Now up, here). That's an important topic, on which Georgette is eminently qualified to speak. But this week, you'll hear about her beginnings in the wonderful sport and art that is BJJ.

CAN: How did you get into jiu jitsu?

GEORGETTE: I have always enjoyed martial arts, and the only kind of exercise I‘ve ever been able to keep up with is something competitive and social. So, when I knew I was going to get married and I wanted to lose weight, for all the wedding pictures and what not, I decided I would take martial arts class.

I started taking a class in kajukenbo, which appealed to me because it was very social and very competitive. There is a lot of very alive sparring in it, but when we got to the portion of the curriculum that dealt with jiu jitsu, I was hooked. Pretty soon I realised that there were other things in kajukenbo that weren’t jiu jitsu. When we were done doing jiu jitsu for a while, I was forced to move on to punching and kicking things and people: I didn’t like that as much.

I waited until I got my first belt in kajukenbo, then I quit, because every minute spent doing kajukenbo was a minute not spent doing jiu jitsu.

CAN: I think I remember reading about that on your blog: you started it before you began jiu jitsu, didn’t you? So, what was the original purpose for the blog?

GEORGETTE: Just sharing with family, really. It was a way for family to see my garden, my house, stuff like that. Obviously wasn’t very well read, at all! [Laughs]

CAN: So, you started your blog around 2005/2006, then you got into jiu jitsu in 2008, moving on from kajukenbo. How did that impact the direction of your blog, as you began writing a bit more about jiu jitsu? It had a different purpose, I guess.

GEORGETTE: It did. At the beginning of my jiu jitsu blogging, I was writing about techniques that we did in class. It was the same as a lot of blogs, an online technique journal. The first jiu jitsu forum I ever participated in was on NHB Gear. There was a guy on there named ‘Too Old’, who I became friends with. He’s a lawyer and at the time was a blue or purple belt in San Francisco.

He told me my blog was the most boring thing he’d ever read and begged me to write more about the personal side of training, what it meant to me, my emotional reactions. I resisted for a month or two, then I started writing about the issues that came up for me training and started getting more readers. I got yelled at by my instructor for writing all of ‘our’ techniques down on the internet, so I had to take all of that stuff out. I figured, “Screw it, nobody cares about the techniques anyway.”

CAN: So, it became more of a blog about...

GEORGETTE: Like a diary.

CAN: Right, a diary. Was it particularly a diary thinking from your personal perspective as Georgette Oden, or a diary as in “Other women could be reading this, how can I be helping them get on”?

GEORGETTE: I never, especially for the first year or so, thought anybody would read it. Even after I started getting comments, I figured maybe one or two people would read it. I didn’t expect anyone at my academy to find out about it or care. So at the beginning, I was very free with my thoughts, my feelings, my expressions. It was just a reflection of me, not thinking what it did for the community or anything like that.

CAN: When did you start getting into reviewing? Was that early on, or did it take a while before you had enough clout?

GEORGETTE: I think for me, the reviewing came after I was getting sponsorship. I started getting sponsorships because I asked people for free stuff [Laughs]. I bought a rashguard, won a tournament, then took a picture of myself with a medal and the rashguard. I’d write to a company and say “Hey, by the way, I did well and I wore your product. You want to send me some more stuff?” And they did, so I did it again, with a coloured gi. People started coming up to me at tournaments asking where I got those coloured gis, I’d tell them and then get more sponsorships.

It then got to a point...I don’t even remember how I got asked to review the first thing. I think I just started reviewing things that I bought, then people started hitting me up to review other stuff.



CAN: Were you still a white belt at this point, or had you gotten to blue?

GEORGETTE: I got my blue really fast. I was sponsored as a white belt, but I got my blue after training four months. I was still a white belt, even if I had a blue belt around my waist, I was still a white belt! [Laughs]

CAN: That reminds me. One of the main things that impresses me about you is the sheer amount that you train. Did that start pretty early, that it became an obsession?

GEORGETTE: Oh yeah. If I couldn’t train every day, I was very frustrated.

CAN: I think you said this to me earlier, but have you always had some kind of activity that you get into really heavily?

GEORGETTE: Yes. I always have an obsession, that’s my trend.

CAN: How have you managed to get in that much training, in a very physical, difficult sport like jiu jitsu?

GEORGETTE: Hmm. I just don’t care if I’m injured. I sometimes say that if I had a superpower, it would be fast recovery and that’s true. I do recover very quickly. I’m also not keen on babying myself, so I don’t mind being tired and I don’t mind being sore. If I’m having fun doing it, I’m going to do it as much as I can. I have an addictive personality, I guess.

CAN: Do you think your training would have been the same if you hadn’t had a blog and interacted so much? Has it had a big impact in terms of actually improving your jiu jitsu, helping you progress faster?

GEORGETTE: I would say that the way it has helped me has been much more of a ‘big picture’ help. Because I blog and I’m active in the scene on an internet level, I’ve reached a lot more people than I would just as an individual. I’ve met a lot of people, so that when I travel, I feel like I have an academy everywhere I go, they're like family. I think that has helped my jiu jitsu, but I don’t think blogging about the techniques any kind of help to me.

CAN: And I guess that is something you stopped doing fairly early on.

GEORGETTE: Yeah, it is. I know other people write technique blogs, it depends on how you learn. I just don’t have time. I take notes and I have little scraps of paper piled in a box in my office, but that’s as close as I get. I don’t digest it again, though I know that would probably improve my retention.

I think I’m an aural learner, as I need to hear someone describe in words what they’re doing. I very rarely remember the details of what it looked like. I can remember what it felt like, but unless I can put it in words, I can’t reverse engineer it the next time. If I have a question, I have to remember if they said, “The leg closest to the head, grab the top leg,” or whatever. I have to remember the words to be able to recreate the position.

Part Two is coming next week. In the mean time, why not check out the chat I had with another awesome blogger, BJJ Grrl?

Interview - BlogChat #3: Val Worthington

Continuing with my selection of "cool BJJ people I met in Virginia and interviewed", next up is the mighty Val Worthington. As I told her, although she may not personally claim the title of BJJ historian, she is herself an important part of BJJ history, particularly the online community this BlogChat interview series is focused upon.

I remember reading Val's excellent blog back when I started. She was also all over the forums, always putting out great advice. Val has since become a hugely influential figure in the development of the sport, perhaps most notably through the Women's Grappling Camps she's been running alongside a number of other female instructors for the last few years (which have recently grown further into a co-ed model, as of last month, run through Groundswell Grappling Concepts).

I managed to grab Val for around thirty minutes just before she was due to head home, providing me with plenty of content. The first part is up on Megan's (who will be appearing in a BlogChat of her own later) site, Groundwork BJJ. Part two will be appearing in issue #21 of Jiu Jitsu Style. Finally, this is part three, covering Val's thoughts on blogging and the online BJJ community.

Can: Having started training in 1998, you were also around at the beginnings of the online BJJ community, especially sites like NHBGear. What importance do you think online forums and the like have had both in your personal jiu jitsu journey and on jiu jitsu in general?

Val Worthington: The impact of the forum and the opportunity to communicate online with people was huge, in my personal development. I mentioned earlier that I had an insular experience, but when I got on the forums, I realised that there were tonnes of people, relatively speaking, doing jiu jitsu, that they were far flung and that there were women doing jiu jitsu. Some of the people that I would consider to be my best friends in jiu jitsu now are people that I got to know on the forum before I ever met them in person.

Being connected to that community was incredibly helpful for me, because it helped me see that even if I was insane, there were other insane people like me. They would accept what I was doing, support it and help me find ways to pursue it.

In terms of the sport itself, my perception is that the phenomenon which happened to me, of being able to connect with people, also happened with many other people. It also seems like it made jiu jitsu more open source. Way back in the day, I've come to learn subsequently, people didn't train at other schools, they didn't share their technique, they would keep it very close to their chest until they were competing.

So, there were lots of particular personalities from academy to academy. The internet has facilitated, with things like MGinAction, the sharing of knowledge. I personally think that is good for the sport, as it pushes the sport forward. If everybody knows how to counter a certain set of sequences, then the person who likes those sequences has to figure out a way to counter the counter.

It also just makes things more interesting. You can see live streaming video, you can look at technique online. When I first met Andrew Smith, he had a library of VHS tapes – I'm not sure he still has or needs them – but there is so much footage online, so many ways you can educate yourself. You also have people thinking about the lifestyle side of things, which is one of the areas I like to contribute to.

Can: The other part of the online question I'd like to ask you relates to your blog, which you started in around 2006. That proved very popular: could you talk about how that came about?

Val Worthington: 2006 was the culmination of a set of decisions I had set in motion probably a year earlier. I was living and training in Chicago, when I came to the realisation – I was around 35 at the time – that I was unhappy in my job and unhappy in my life. The only thing that made me happy, apart from the people I love, was jiu jitsu. I took what for me was the drastic step of quitting my job and selling the condo that I owned to fund a trip around the country training jiu jitsu.

I knew that it would be a singular experience in my life. I didn't know quite how singular, how much it would push me forward as a person and where it would take me. But I knew that I wanted to capture it in some way. The blog that I wrote was for me, initially. It was a way for me to chronicle what I was going through in a way that I could go back and review. My thought at first was that it would be for my family and friends, who were thinking "Ok, so where is she now?"

What ended up happening was that as I got more and more into the journey, more and more people came along with me. When I went for a couple of days without writing, there would be readers who I guess had started to take an interest in what I was doing – even though I didn't really know what I was doing yet [laughs] – and sent me messages asking "Where are you? What are you doing? Update us!"

I feel like I was tapping into some sort of secret desire that a lot of people have to chuck it all and do something completely different. That's how the title of the blog came about. A friend of mine talked about how I was going to be prancing around the country and that I sucked for having the opportunity to do it. So, my blog became known as 'Prancing and Sucking'.

What I found was, again, this sense of not being alone. I'd been terrified to take that step, trying to do something completely different with my life. I thought I was insane, I thought I had been making mistakes all along in my life: how could I get to the point where I really needed to take such a drastic step? But it turned out to be the best thing that's ever happened to me in many ways. One of the most gratifying things about the blog was that I got so much support and so much non-judgement.

The blog posts that I wrote, the most raw, where I really exposed myself about some horrible day I was having or a deep-seated insecurity, I would close my eyes and click send. I would wait for feedback, or no feedback, but the feedback I got was always "Thank you so much for sharing this. I know it was difficult, but it made a difference in my life: I'm glad that I'm not alone." It was the first time that I realised that I had something to say. Even though it was about this niche hobby, the things that I was experiencing, when I wrote about them authentically, they resonated with people who did all different kinds of things.

That was incredibly important to me. As I got more confidence in my writing and in the idea that I had something to share, writing became one of the main ways I would like to be able to give back to the jiu jitsu that has given me so much.

Can: Your blog was one of the pioneering works in this semi-genre of a 'jiu jitsu travelogue', best exemplified more recently by The BJJ Globetrotter. Are you planning to follow that model and turn your experiences into a book?

Val Worthington: I am, I'm working on that right now. It's taken me a while to find a book length voice, if that makes sense. I am working with some people now to help me shape that. I'm in the throes of doing that, trying to hone in on which aspects of my experience are really relevant. I've been trying to take a look at the entirety of my experiences and figure out what pieces hang together, what I should share first and what I should share further down the road.

I've written and discarded probably hundreds of pages [laughs], hoping to retain some better pages. It's in the works right now.

Pictures courtesy of Val Worthington

Interview - BlogChat #2: BJJ Grrl Talks About On/Offline Communities

Here's the second part of my interview with BJJ Grrl. This time, she talks about the amazing community of bloggers in BJJ, which crosses over with the equally amazing community of women in the sport.

Can: Yeah, I am always telling people there is a really awesome community of female bloggers online. You mention the women training page – which is amazing by the way, I love that page.

BJJ Grrl: I should probably revisit it, I would have more to say now.

Can: Yeah, definitely! Again, out of all the bloggers on the internet, you are the one who I think has the closest mindset to my own. The same kind of idea, putting all your experience down.

BJJ Grrl: Some days there are things I don't want to talk about, but maybe it will help somebody. Suck it up and write it down anyway. But yeah, I definitely need to revisit that page, especially the aggression section, because I need to talk about the new thing I'm going through in my head. If I did the technique right and it sucks for you, well, I did the technique right. It's supposed to suck for you. Instead of, "Oh, I don't want to hurt you. Is that uncomfortable? I'm sorry. I'm supposed to be choking you unconscious right now, but if it hurts you I'm not going to do it." I've got to get past that. Still working on it.

Can: Have you thought of building that page up into a more expansive FAQ, like the one I did, or was it that you had a specific set of questions you were interested in answering and you've achieved that?

BJJ Grrl: I kinda just wanted to do it very general questions, the big ones that come up, especially for new women that start training. But yeah, I do need to revisit that one, I'll probably make a list.

Can: A number of bloggers have found they've gone from doing those kind of blogs, the articles you've done, they've proven popular – and I know you've gotten a lot of hits on that page, a ridiculous number of comments – then the blogger has progressed from that to writing articles for websites, magazines etc. Is that something that interests you?

BJJ Grrl: I guess I would kind of like to, but I haven't gone looking for it. I guess for the most part, I still think "Nobody else feels about this the same way I do, no-one else will have this experience," then of course they all say, "I felt exactly the same thing." But I still feel like the oddball out.

Can: Have you had any internet fame, as 'BJJ Grrl'?

BJJ Grrl: Sometimes. I've shown up at women's open mats and people have gone "Gasp! You're BJJ Grrl!" Occasionally somebody from my academy, I'll say something, and they'll be "Oh yeah, I read that on your blog last week." They read it too: crap! It's not anonymous! [Laughs]

I can totally get how people go on the internet and post terrible things, because when they're posting, they're thinking "These aren't real people. They don't know who I am, I'll never meet them." But people are real. I've had people at tournaments come up to me and be like "Oh hey, I commented on your blog!"

Can: Do you see a separation then, between your online and offline life?

BJJ Grrl: I think it's just my brain is kinda weird.

Can: For example, a number of times online friends have become offline friends, like in my case and indeed this trip and this conversation we're having now, with Adrienne sitting right there next to us.



BJJ Grrl: I'm trying to think how I even heard about that first open mat, when I met Chrissy, Adrienne and the others. I don't even know now. I may have read it on a forum, maybe NHB Gear. I think I had done a tournament, with US Grappling, and Chrissy had invited me to the forum. Once I met everybody and kept coming to tournaments, that's how I met most of the women around here.

Although there was a funny incident, a women posted on my blog. It was a comment, asking for advice. So I gave her some advice, then she made another comment about where she trained. It turned out she was thirty minutes from me. I was like, "Come up on Saturday! We'll hang out, do jiu jitsu."

That actually happened twice, from opposite directions. Two different women came in, because they'd found me on the internet, then found out I lived very close to them. "Oh, I'll come train with you."

Antwain: Did they ask you for a lot of pointers?

BJJ Grrl: They were both beginners in jiu jitsu, so asked things like "How do you deal with guys that go way too easy on you and you know they are going too easy? How do you get them to see that you want to train?" Or one of them, I think she didn't know what to do, she was getting beat up all the time, because they were all bigger than her: they were going too hard.

It's weird when people ask me advice, because when I need advice, I'll ask Chrissy mostly, or Addy, or Val. So I ask questions: why are people asking me questions? Ask the people who know these things. [Laughs]

Can: That's a good point: do you guys have any questions?

Adrienne: Actually yeah, I do. How much time a week do you spend? Training is one thing, but then taking your experiences and putting it down in blogs, this and that, I'm just curious to know how much that hobby takes over your other time. To me it seems very consuming.

BJJ Grrl: And it used to be, I used to spend a whole lot more time on it. I would agonise over my post, it had to follow almost a format but not quite. I'd need to talk about this, get the whole class in there, did I miss a technique, did I miss this. Now I do it when I get to work the next morning and I'm drinking my coffee. I'll write it up. That's one of the reasons they are so much shorter now, because I'm writing them at work as I'm drinking my coffee.

But yeah, I was spending a whole lot of time doing it. I would do it immediately after class, so I was staying up until midnight, writing posts. This is kinda silly. So, now I agonise over it far less. Sometimes I look over it after I've posted it and find a glaring typo...meh. Whereas before, I'd re-edit it, I've thought of something else, I should add that.

Adrienne: Like over-analysing it?

BJJ Grrl: Yeah, though it seems to me I haven't been doing it as much now, over-analysing. In fact, last week I trained on Friday, I completely forgot to write anything until Monday. Part of it was that I'd been out of the habit because I'd been injured, so kinda forgot about it.

Adrienne: So have you always blogged? I know you talked about the weightlifting, but is that something which accidentally happened? Or did you set out with "You know what, I want to start blogging," an active decision?

BJJ Grrl: Total accident. Yeah. Just that the online journal for the weightlifting program I was doing led to it. Although I've always written, so it's a natural thing. I also learn really well when I write things down. It helped me, going back after class and writing down everything that I'd done.

Can: Do you ever revisit posts?

BJJ Grrl: I do sometimes. If I feel like I'm having trouble with something that I've had trouble with before, I'll see what happened the last time. [Laughs] Or if I notice a spike in traffic on a certain post, I'll go back and read it. Sometimes it's interesting, I'll think "Oh, that's why somebody might be reading it."

Can: So you're not obsessive about stats, checking page views and the like?

BJJ Grrl: I used to. I really used to, but I made myself stop doing that. It just seemed silly. I'm competing to be best blog? I should be training jiu jitsu, or working or whatever I'm supposed to be doing at the time. That was part of the staying up til midnight thing, obsessing about "well, if I said it this way, would more people come?" At some point I decided, that's just silly. [Laughs]

Interview - BlogChat #1: BJJ Grrl On Her Blog Beginnings

I have 'known' the blogger BJJ Grrl for many years, having first encountered her online back when she was still writing a weightlifting blog. Since then, she has become one of the most important people in the BJJ blogosphere, consistently putting out posts every week. Leslie was a big part of the reason that Virginia was high on my list of places to visit in the US, so I was thrilled to get the chance to finally speak to her during my trip last month. I'll be putting up this interview in two parts, kicking off this week with a chat about how Leslie got started in both blogging and BJJ.

Can: How did you first get into martial arts and jiu jitsu?

BJJ Grrl: I started doing taekwondo in college, because I'd always been interested in doing martial arts. I got injured playing soccer and couldn't play soccer anymore, so a friend of mine offered to beat me up.

Can: [Laughs] Literally like that?

BJJ Grrl: Yeah: "Come to my apartment and I can beat you up, or you can come to taekwondo class with me." She needed a sparring partner her size. So, this was how we were going to get started. Of course eventually she quit, but I kept going. Through the taekwondo, I found jiu jitsu.

One of the guys from the club came back to do a self-defence seminar. After the seminar, he taught a short jiu jitsu seminar – he was a blue belt at the time. I actually really liked it. At the end, he said "Does anybody want to try rolling?" I said "Sure!" and rolled with another guy who was my size. I usually can't tell if somebody is my size, but he was really my size.

We rolled and I was able to sweep him, so I was thinking "I'm able to do this stuff, this is awesome!" Around that same time, I had started lifting: in my parents' basement they had some weights. I began blogging work-outs from that. I was following a program and a lot of people were doing it, so that was my online journal along with all of them.

But I was starting to outgrow the weights, there weren't enough plates for me. I looked around for something else to do and decided I'd probably go do CrossFit. It was coming up to the end of the week: on Monday, I was going to start CrossFit. Saturday was the seminar. I got introduced to jiu jitsu and thought "this is really fun."

Then my Dad came home that night and said he meant a fella named Tim Mannon, who was a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu and they were moving into an academy just down the street. So my Dad said "I know you like martial arts, what do you think about that?" So I replied, "I'm going there instead."

I already had the online journal for lifting, so I started added my jiu jitsu work-outs on there: we were supposed to track everything we did. I began phasing out taekwondo, as it wasn't nearly as much fun. Then as I was doing jiu jitsu more, we actually started lifting. The first gym we were in had some decent weights and a big tyre out back. As we were lifting there, I stopped lifting at home: I'd get home, do one dead-lift, I'm done.

Those things started phasing out, so I was just doing jiu jitsu on my blog, on the weightlifting blog. I realised I should switch it to a jiu jitsu blog.

Can: What was the incentive to do it online, rather than just keeping your journal in a book?

BJJ Grrl: When I started, it was with an online community of people who were lifting, so we were all posting on our threads. I couldn't always log into the site, so I would keep it in a Wordpress site, just for me.

Can: How have you found that has influenced your training, in either positive or negative ways?

BJJ Grrl: I'm not sure if it's either, but I think about what I'm going to write, particularly when I was writing more of the technique down. I would have to think through it, line by line, how am I going to write this, explain this, remember where that goes. How can I remember this by the time I get home so I can write it down.
I think it helped me pay a lot of attention to what I was doing, as I was basically going to have to reteach myself when I got home so I could write it down. But then there were times when I'm rolling with someone and I'm thinking how I'm going to write it down: I'm not paying attention to the fact that he's about to choke me. [Laughs]

Can: This is why I wanted to talk to you, this is like hearing myself. That's exactly the kind of thing that I'm thinking! [Laughs]

BJJ Grrl: Sometimes I'm thinking "Just shut-up in there and roll, we'll dissect it later."

Can: When I'm watching a demonstration, when they're teaching technique, I'm thinking "Ok, their hand is there, so what do I describe that as? Far arm, the opposite arm, right arm?"

BJJ Grrl: Yeah, I think it helps sometimes with technique too, taking notes. The seminar today [with Dave Jacobs, back in April], I'm really thinking of things like 'far side armbar', or 'far side arm', not just watching him do it. You know those people, I see this in class all the time, they will watch it, they go back to do it, and then they're "Wait, which arm do we start with?"

I'll answer, "We start with this one," because I've already written it down in my head. So in that respect I think it really does help. But yeah, the part where you're writing the roll in your head as it happens? Trying to remember the cool things?

Can: I find when I write it down, I want to have something to work on. I'll normally have a specific goal in mind, thinking about how I can progress that and what can I take from the roll. So you're finding it's more just interesting stuff that sticks in your head, it's not particularly "I did this, and it helped me with this technique"?

BJJ Grrl: Yeah, it's usually things that happened, or "I hit this armbar we drilled this morning, isn't that awesome?"

Can: Your blog, and we've talked about this before, does a great job of building a community. It seems a lot of people really felt engaged in your journey through jiu jitsu, which also helped them: you were saying things that they related to. Did that act as a motivator to change the blog or indeed just keep it going?

BJJ Grrl: To keep it going, as sometimes I would say things on that blog and think "I am on the only person in the world who ever has this problem. No one else ever gets in this situation, everyone else is breezing right through it."

But so many people would come back and say "That's exactly what is happening to me too!" So, I'm like "really, I'm not the only one who has that problem? Ok." Especially when it comes back from higher ranks who've been through it sometimes.

When I first put up the training with women page, so many people, like Jen Flannery and a couple of black belts even, Hillary Williams commented on it. There were a whole bunch of women commenting on it, saying "That is exactly what it's like."

"It is? Ok. I was right, it's not just me!" That's why sometimes I will post about how I had an absolutely horrible day, totally could not get this one technique to work. People will post comments, "I have days like that." People who have been training longer still have days like that. We all have days where we think, "Why don't I take up table tennis, this sucks!"

Part Two now up, here

Interview: Carlos Lemos Jr on Teaching in the USA & Gracie Barra

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Last time, Carlos Lemos Jr talked about the old days of Gracie Barra Bristol, back when he founded the club. In the final part of our interview, Lemos gives his perspective on the Gracie Barra ethos, along with sharing his thoughts on teaching in the USA.

slideyfoot.com: Gracie Barra is among the more formal academies in jiu jitsu. What benefits do you think there are to the environment created by things like a standardised uniform, bowing to pictures of Carlos Sr and using titles like 'Master' and 'Professor' etc?

Carlos Lemos: I don't believe you can have progress without order. I don't believe you can have order without respect. I don't believe you can have respect without hierarchy. These principles, they are vital to our team. They make our schools a friendly environment, an enjoyable place to be. The uniform gives you your identity, who you are, the legacy you represent, where you come from. It gives students pride and honour to wear that. Like the samurai in Japan, they would wear their banners and their crests from their families. That is what the Gracie Barra triangle represents on your gi, it is your crest, it is your coat of arms.

The formal bowing, it is like, man, it is the respect we have for the figure of Master Carlos Gracie and Grand Master Carlos, the patriarch of jiu jitsu and the founder of Gracie Barra. I think for the youth nowadays, you see so many kids having problems in school, of discipline, at home, swearing at their parents, not following enough with their homework. When they are exposed to something like Gracie Barra, it is like they join the army at the age of five. It creates then the discipline to master perfection. Perfection has a lot to do with sweat: it is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. I'm quoting Albert Einstein.

I think that is what we're offering today. It is different from many other jiu jitsu schools. We create a friendly, formal environment, where you can bring your family, you can bring your girlfriend, your mother, and you never feel disrespected. For instance, jiu jitsu we believe is for everyone, and there are some cultures that won't feel comfortable bringing their wife, sister or daughter into a jiu jitsu academy where everyone is bare-chested. Taking their shirts off, showing their muscles, their half naked body. Even though in Brazil, we grow up by the beach with people in Speedos, it is our way to respect other cultures, to have our rash guard under our gis.

All of this creates in the school an environment that people feel like staying and hanging around, so they feel like it is a school not only for the fighters, but for the families of the fighters. That's what we want to reach, jiu jitsu for everyone. When my master came up with that slogan, he truly believes the mission of the Gracie family is to help rescue family values with jiu jitsu. That's what we're proposing to do with all of our students.

slideyfoot.com: You currently teach in the USA: what has that experience been like?

Carlos Lemos: The American market is very demanding, in terms of quality. People in America don't mind paying, but they pay for what they get. So if you offer the best, the American market is not afraid to back that up. I think that is the main difference between over there and over here. If you offer the best services, the best customer services, the best instruction, you can be very successful over there.

I've got a great band of students in America, I love my guys. Trust me, Chicago is not the favourite tourist destination for a Brazilian guy who grew up by the beach. Cold, windy, no sea. But over there, I have a great band of brothers, guys who support me with everything I need. Faithful, loyal students. Everything I grew up witnessing back in Gracie Barra headquarters. I love my students, so if I can stay over there, I will.

Sometimes I get a bit nostalgic, and I get homesick for the UK. There is this Irish pub not very far from my house, where they have a very good fish and chips. So I cheat a little bit on my diet, I go there and have my fish and chips. I cry a little bit, because I do miss home: this place is a second home for me. I was very homesick at the beginning, but my good students and friends over there, they compensate for that.

Still, every time I come over here, I land in Heathrow Airport, I feel like, "man, it's weird, but this place feels like home still."

slideyfoot.com: Is there anything else you'd like to say to the readers of this website?

Carlos Lemos: Guys, train jiu jitsu. It is life changing. You will find the best friends of your life, you'll have tons of fun, you'll get healthier, fitter, you'll sharpen your mind, and I think if you train with us in Gracie Barra, you train with the best. There are Gracie Barra schools all over the country. If you don't have a Gracie Barra in your town, research a little bit about your instructor, their background, who they are. Don't train only with champions, because that is not everything in life. Train with a good educator. Train with somebody who is going to teach you a way of life, not only a way of fighting. Become a knight, don't become a brawler. That's my message, try it out and I'm sure you're going to be hooked. It's super fun and I love it.

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Interview: Carlos Lemos Jr on the Original Gracie Barra Bristol

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Last week, Carlos talked about judo and BJJ competition. This week, he shares the history of Gracie Barra Bristol.

slideyfoot.com: Several years ago, you set up the original Gracie Barra Bristol here in the UK. Why did you decide to come to the UK?

Carlos Lemos: When I was just a kid at Gracie Barra and I realised I was serious about jiu jitsu, Master Carlos got a group of kids – I, Roger, Rolles Jr and so on. He said, "I will train you guys to be jiu jitsu ambassadors and to represent us around the world." Today I speak four languages: he was the guy that encouraged me to study languages. He said "each one of you is going to be in a different part of the world one day, spreading the word of jiu jitsu."

With that idea, I came over here to the UK to get an undergraduate degree in business. Eventually I hooked up with some guys in Cheltenham and Bristol, it was an MMA club. I started working with them while I was in college, at the end of 2004. I was in the area until 2006, when I moved to Sutton Coldfield. I stayed for two and a half years.

slideyfoot.com: Were you still training in Bristol while you were in Sutton Coldfield?

Carlos Lemos: Man, that's another story. I used to drive from Sutton Coldfield to Bristol three times a week, because even though I had moved over there and got a place over there - it was much easier for me because I had a part-time job – I didn't want to let the Bristol club down. I kept driving, but at some point, it got too tiring and stressful. I was getting late to classes, and some of my students complained.

I decided it was too much for me. I had passed out driving many times on the way back, so it was really a miracle I didn't crash. I would find myself often hitting the guard rail because I was so tired. I would drive from Sutton Coldfield around 17:30, get here around 19:00 or 19:30, teach class, then I would go back.

Gracie Barra Bristol, 2005

The class was supposed to be a two hour class, or one and a half hours, but with me, the class had time to start but never had time to finish. I love what I do, so would head home around 23:00 or something. It was really tiring, but also joyful and rewarding. I really like this town.

slideyfoot.com: What was the jiu jitsu scene in this country like at that time?

Carlos Lemos: I saw great promise over here, in terms of jiu jitsu, because British people are passionate about fighting. I saw a good perspective, but people still had a shallow view of what the art was: most of the practitioners weren't like they are now. Today, people are very interested in the art and training more with the gi, I see that more and more. Roger, Braulio and Lagarto are really setting the standard on the mat. I think you guys are definitely going to be the leading nation in terms of jiu jitsu in Europe, because of the calibre of instructors, you have the best in the world. I'm very optimistic about the scene over here, and even though I'm based in Chicago, I want to be involved.

Since then, I see that people are getting more technical, definitely. I see new aces flourishing everywhere. By rolling with you guys, I see that the standard in this country is far superior to what it was before. If someone comes over here thinking they will have a walk in the park, they're wrong man, you guys are going to give them a good run for their money.

The UFC helped us a lot. Everyone comes to a school thinking "I'm going to learn how to do that guillotine or triangle I saw on the UFC." When they walk into a jiu jitsu school, a true jiu jitsu school, like Gracie Barra, we don't teach people how to fight only. We teach them the Gracie culture, which was inherited from Carlos Gracie Sr to my master, Carlos Jr, to myself and the representatives over here, the black belts and our students. Then they see that the jiu jitsu we teach in Gracie Barra is something much deeper than that. It's a lifestyle, so they really get changed by this sport.

slideyfoot.com: A number of your original GB Bristol students have gone on to open up successful schools of their own, like Gary King in South Africa, Salvo in Bath and Geeza here in Bristol. How does seeing their progression make you feel?

Gracie Barra Bristol, 2011

Carlos Lemos: It's an honour, because many people live shallow lives. They don't live their dream, they don't exercise. They might hear something, they might preach something, but they don't practice that. Seeing these guys make the transition from an orthodox lifestyle, a nine to five job, to a jiu jitsu lifestyle that they're embracing with passion, doing the diet, training every day, and they're also making the sacrifices.

Jiu jitsu can sound very romantic, "wow, my own jiu jitsu school, I'm going to roll every day," but behind the stage you have restrooms that you have to clean, there are mats you have to mop when you're tired. You have the cold nights when your body is sore and your head is pounding, but you still have to come to the mats, clean your school and train with your students.

So, it's hard work, but it's rewarding to see that you can change people's lives through the art of jiu jitsu. To see these guys that were once my students and now they're doing that, I'm really glad for them and I'm very proud of what they're doing.

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Interview: Carlos Lemos Jr on Judo & BJJ Competition

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This interview originally took place back in December 2011, with Carlos 'Escorrega' Lemos Jr, the 2002 black belt Mundials champion. This is edited down from a much longer audio: I'll be putting it up in three parts over the next month or so, interspersed with a review or two. :)

slideyfoot.com: I have read that you trained in judo before beginning jiu jitsu. What impact has that had on your style?

Carlos Lemos: I started with taekwondo, when I was four years old. There are pictures of me, on this video biography they did on YouTube, with old pictures when I was just a cute boy. Something happened along the way, I don't know, something went wrong. [laughs]

Judo I started when I was ten. I think I'm a frustrated judo fighter, because after many years, I got back to judo when I moved to the UK. When I was in Sutton Coldfield, I found a local judo club there, Erdington Judo Club. They're very good, many national players. I got to train with those guys and felt truly blessed.

I really believe that judo and jiu jitsu is the right combination. I will even make a prediction: the next evolution in UFC will be the fighters using more and more judo throws. More and more, you will see people using hip throws and foot sweeps.

Where I live in Chicago, it is one of the three top states in wrestling in America, so all the wrestlers over there are really good. So when I fight, most of my fights I'm going against collegiate wrestlers. I think it is a big mistake for Brazilian jiu jitsu fighters to try and prepare for the cage with a wrestling camp. Wrestling is based on power and explosion: our muscle memory as jiu jitsu fighters is not the same.

Most Brazilian jiu jitsu guys I see in MMA, by the time they take their opponent to the ground, they're exhausted. Or even worse, after two or three sprawls, they can't get the takedown. They go the ground and have nothing left. For a jiu jitsu fighter, the strongest weapon is the ground, so it is necessary to get to the ground fresh. Judo gives you that, because it's about footwork, taking your opponent off-balance, hipwork: it's everything we do on the ground.

So, I've been training a lot of judo to fight wrestlers in MMA.

slideyfoot.com: There has recently been some controversy over the knee reaping rules used by the IBJJF. There have been complaints that they are too vague and that this rule is being abused, with people intentionally pushing their opponent's foot over their hip. Do you have a view on that?

Carlos Lemos: I do, yes. Look, I don't think that is the coolest thing in the world. The way I teach my students is this: our art evolved on the battlefield. Jiu jitsu, back in the day, was a way to fight, a martial art. With the advance of sport jiu jitsu, people have started to play more and more games and rules that would be favoured by the ruling system. So, it works in a sport jiu jitsu match, but I like to teach my guys what they can use in a real fight. Before everything - before being a world champion, an Abu Dhabi champion, a whatever champion - I think you shouldn't forget it is a martial art and you're responsible for a legacy, a legacy of efficiency on what you teach and what you play.

What I teach my students are the basic principles of Gracie Barra jiu jitsu, which will eventually – if you have to get into a fight – you won't feel surprised, whether or not you have a gi. Your jiu jitsu will work regardless. So I think this whole new game, this and that, they're cool and they work for competitions. But I don't like that, I don't like to play that. I've studied it a lot, I've broken it down with my friends, but I'm a guy in love with the past. I am a great admirer of the past.

People nowadays, they love what is new. I love what is old. I've always been like that, since I was a kid. I'm a self-taught historian, I really research history. So I think the good, old, bread and butter jiu jitsu is what works. The IBJJF, they are doing a really good job in regards to fights with time limits. If we talk about the rules, they are far from the ideal rules, because I do believe – and I'm quoting my master – the best rules are no rules. But to do that, the matches, it would be impossible to run a really huge tournament.

It's hard, but I think they are trying to make these rules closer and closer to perfection. However, just extending your question a little bit, what made us so good in jiu jitsu is that we didn't forbid many movements in our art. Historically in jiu jitsu, we would initially have trouble with something, something new that would come, but in a few years people would have deflected that with something simple, a technique that is part of the basic curriculum. Then the art evolves.

This is the same thing as when jiu jitsu fighters started to fight wrestlers, we were having such a hard time, it seemed like the wrestlers were taking over. Nowadays, we see it is not like that anymore, we have levelled that. When you see jiu jitsu fighters against wrestlers, they are giving them a hard time. That's because we never say "ok, no-one can go for a double leg right now in jiu jitsu". That is what killed the art of judo. In the past, judo was very close to the jiu jitsu we initially learned from the Japanese. We came from the same lineage of Jigoro Kano. However, the Gracies said no rules: let's make our rules what works. What works, we keep, what doesn't, we remove.

Judo is different. "Ah, right now everyone is going for a double-leg. Ok, the double-leg is abolished from judo." That's what killed their art. It is still a great sport, I practice judo and I love judo, but I think what defines our art was we always allow these things - even if they're not the prettiest or look the best – to be played in our sport, so we can evolve and become better.

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Interview: Mauricio Gomes On Belt Tests & Wrapping Up

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In the previous instalment of this four part interview, Mauricio spoke about his history teaching BJJ. In the final part this week, he shares his views on the growing trend of belt tests in BJJ, along with a couple of closing statements.

slideyfoot.com: There are several schools in the US which use a formal belt test to grade their students, do this technique, do that technique and so on. For example, Alliance, Pedro Sauer and ATT. What do you think of that practice?

Mauricio Gomes: I don't really know what that is, so I can't really comment directly on that, as I don't really know what they do. We still use the old style, if you want to put it that way, if testing is a new style: I don't really know, that's why I don't want to compare. The only thing I can say is how we do it. The student gets their stripes, then when they get their fourth stripe, they're considered for their next belt. But, first there will always be respect for the rules of the international confederation. I believe that no matter what happens, in any situation, you need rules. Those rules are given by a board of people who are there for that. In a country, it is the congress that gives the laws, in our case, it's the confederation.

I see people nowadays using the same belt as me, and they got their black belt ten years after me. It's very hard to swallow that. I think they probably had their reasons, I'm not going to go into that, because it doesn't really concern me, but I would be extremely ashamed knowing that I'm not there yet but have the belt. It's like, if a guy is a blue belt, you give him a brown, but skipped purple belt and it doesn't matter, you're a brown belt now. There has to be that process, going through your four stripes, then there is like a minimum of two years to get from one belt to the other. There are some situations you've got to respect. That's what the rules are there for.

slideyfoot.com: Talking about this, one of the arguments I hear from the people who like the belt testing idea is "well, otherwise the instructor can't know if the student understands all the techniques, maybe they're just strong, maybe they're just really good with their triangle."

Mauricio Gomes: No, that's not possible, no. A good instructor, that is training their students, with them every day throughout the year, believe me, they know who is capable of doing what and who is ready for this or that. Believe me, they know. I know, so they must know too, right? If not, what are we doing here? Having a coffee while everybody is training? You are there to do your job. Your job is to look after your students, teach them the best you can and help them through. That's what we're there for.

Otherwise, it would just be open the door, put a mat down, then "let's rumble," then "ok, time to go." You wouldn't need an instructor. What do we get paid for, for nothing? I believe that the instructor knows what they're doing, has to know what they're doing. They will know who is ready for this or that. They have to know.

slideyfoot.com: Do you happen to remember who the first female black belt was? I've asked various people this question, as have others. So far the top three contenders seem to be Karla Gracie (Carlinhos' sister, mentioned in a 1997 Black Belt Magazine), Patrícia Lage (who competed as a black belt at the 1998 Brasileiros, though she herself has said there were others before her) and Kim Gracie (Rickson's ex-wife, who may possibly have been a black belt in 1997).

Mauricio Gomes: Honestly, I'm not going to lie to you, I don't know. I think a lot of girls were training, but it's probably the same situation with something like "who did the first flight?" The Wright brothers, or that French guy who was living in Brazil, Santos-Dumont. There probably were a lot of things going on, so who is going to know the first black belt woman in history? I don't think you'll ever find that answer. It would probably be things happening more or less at the same time. Alexandre Paiva's wife is one, I remember her getting her black.

I'm quite certain that these girls, Kim and Karla, I don't think they trained at all, or if they did train, not enough to get a black belt. This is me guessing, and I know them both. Maybe they did, I don't know.

slideyfoot.com: The main source that the Karla story comes from, and perhaps it wasn't well researched, is that Black Belt Magazine article. It was going through all the Gracie family members, then it said Karla was "the only female family member to reach black belt." Maybe they got the name wrong, or it was a political thing to put that in?

Mauricio Gomes: I think in the Gracie family, the first woman to get a black belt was Kyra. No doubt about that, no other Gracie woman got her black belt. No way, I would have remembered that, because Karla would be my ex-wife's sister. So I would have known, or somebody would have told me, "oh, Karla got her black belt," or I would hear "oh, Karla has been training a lot."

slideyfoot.com: You are well-known for your knee on belly. Is that something you've always been really good at and worked on?

Mauricio Gomes: I worked on it a lot, yeah, over the years. You know how fighters are, over the years. If a judo player trains for many years, they will have one or two really, really great takedowns that if they catch wind of it in any position, they'll take their opponent down. In jiu jitsu, it is probably the same thing. My knee on belly is something that I'm so comfortable with, I've been doing it for so long, it's something I now do well.

slideyfoot.com: Did you start doing that at blue belt, white belt, or did it come in later?

Mauricio Gomes: Blue belt. It is one of those things, you like what you do. Blue and purple belt is the time you start experimenting with a lot of things. "I like this, I don't really like that much." I probably got along well with the knee on stomach.

slideyfoot.com: Is there anything else you'd like to say to the readers of this website?

Mauricio Gomes: Keep on training! [laughs]

[Pic included by kind permission of Zafar Hashmi]

Thanks again to Mauricio for agreeing to speak to me, and thanks also to Geeza for bringing him down to GB Bristol. For more Mauricio, check out Issue #7 of Jiu Jitsu Style, available now. More recently, you can check out this 2013 interview with Mauricio on the Open Mat Radio podcast.

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Interview: Mauricio Gomes on Teaching in the UK & Japan

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In the previous instalment of this four part interview, Mauricio spoke about his son, Roger Gracie. This week, he reflects on his time as a teacher, especially in the UK.

slideyfoot.com: You were a pioneer of BJJ in the UK. Did you ever meet Chen Morales, who was here a little earlier?

Mauricio Gomes: Chen Morales used to teach in London, I met Chen. I brought Renzo over for a seminar, and Chen attended the seminar, that's where I met him. He used to teach at the Budokwai, the club that later on was given to us, we're still there. I'd heard of him, and then his students used to go to Birmingham once a week on Saturdays, to train with the guys there. I think I did one lesson in his academy, he invited me. I think he moved to Spain after that.

slideyfoot.com: So you didn't have a chance to check out the other schools in the UK at that time?

Mauricio Gomes: No, I started my school, and I used to work so much, all day. You put all those classes on, you have to be there. Even if only one or two students show up, it doesn't matter, you know? That's what I tell these boys now. The classes are full, there are always a lot of people. I had a zillion times where I had one person show up, or sometimes two. You've still got to do your job, right? [laughs]

slideyfoot.com: I guess because you taught in various other places around the world, like Japan, you already knew what it was going to be like, so you had the motivation to get past those small numbers. Or was it just that you knew jiu jitsu was good, so classes would eventually start expanding?

Mauricio Gomes: You always have the motivation, as when you start something, you want to see it through. When I started that school in Japan, in about two months, I had 290 students, something like that. But Tokyo is an easy city to have a lot of students: one block around you, there's a zillion people living there! [laughs] It's a very populated city.

I think once you're confident in the work that you present, you don't worry so much. People have to understand that a jiu jitsu school is like any other business. It's like having a shop. You open up your door in the morning, stay there all day, close the door at night, go home to bed. The only difference is that we fight all day. [laughs]

slideyfoot.com: As you've been teaching for many years now, do you approach it differently, to try and maintain your interest level, or has it become your job? Is there still that passion?

Mauricio Gomes: I still have the same passion. I teach today as if I was teaching for the first time. I care a lot about the quality, trying to do the best I can. Also, we are so few, that came from Rolls, I to this day still try to give exactly the same I was given. I think I've succeeded in that. I can go to bed and sleep calmly at night, thinking to myself "ok, I've tried my best to pass on the information as I received it."

slideyfoot.com: Do you have any other favourite memories from the early days of BJJ in the UK?

Mauricio Gomes: I've got a lot of good memories in the UK, in my school, students that are doing well, sometimes when you have a visitor from another place and your student takes care of it, that kind of thing. It is very rewarding. The compensation of a teacher comes in seeing their students. It is like when you are trying to grow something. You plant it, and if you plant it well, it will grow nice and strong. That's what jiu jitsu does. You plant a little seed, then you see that flourish.

slideyfoot.com: Speaking of growing, there are quite a few home grown black belts in the UK now, thanks to pioneers like you: do you think the UK has reached maturity in BJJ, or does it still have a long way to go?

Mauricio Gomes: There is still a long way to go. The maturity will come. It is very big, it has grown a lot, but I think the maturity of all of this will come when you have loads of kids and adolescents participating, competing and all that, like they have in the other martial arts. That's your future. It is when you get a six, seven, eight year old and see them all the way through to black belt, that's maturity.

For now, you see that the ages are getting lower. There are a lot of young people now, and that age needs to get lower and lower. It's a long process, but I think it is already starting. It will mature pretty soon.

[Pics included by kind permission of Amari Stark]

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Interview: Mauricio Gomes on Roger Gracie

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In the first instalment of this four part interview, Mauricio spoke about the development of competition in BJJ. In this week's discussion, he talks about his son, Roger Gracie.

slideyfoot.com: It's interesting you mention sponsorship there, because in Roger's case, he always wears a plain gi, you don't see lots of sponsors all over him.

Mauricio Gomes: He never really had a sponsor, except Keiko Sports, who have been helping him since he was about sixteen years old. They sponsored him for quite a while, blue belt, purple belt, all the way to black. Even now, I think at Roger's last two competitions, he made a deal with Keiko on the day to use the gi. I don't know what kind of terms, because I don't get involved in the financial side of things.

Roger still has his gym, so he still has to look after his gym, teach, see what's going on, is it good, is it bad, is anything missing. On top of all that, he has to train three or four times a day for months and then go to the competition. A lot of other guys that are competing at that level, they don't have gyms. They are part of some gym, but they usually don't have their own gym, running it, not all of them. Marcelo Garcia has his, but most of them, they come from a group. That group is their training camp.

But it's a lot of money, and these competitions don't give you anything back. It's a medal, a handshake and an "attaboy!" [laughs] But you have to see it that way, because it's an amateur sport. Amateur sports maybe give a prize, but other than that, you would have to go to the professional level, which would be MMA or something like that.

slideyfoot.com: I'm sure you've been asked this many times before, but do you think there is anything unique about your son Roger that enables him to be so successful, or was it just down to hard work?

Mauricio Gomes: I'm a bit biased of course, for me he is a very special boy. Not only because he is my son, but it is about what he has achieved and the humility he always has. I see sometimes a very clear example. You see at this competition we're at now [the GB Submission Only], you see people fighting, one has to win, the other has to lose, everything is normal. Now, how do you win and how do you lose? That's the main quality that the fighter will have to show sometime in their life.

I see people sometimes, they won the fight, fair and square, no doubting about that. Then the other one, perhaps they're hurt for some reason, a popped knee, or something like that. The first guy, they won, so obviously they're happy. I've seen in some situations the guy screaming his head off in the middle of the mat, while his opponent is lying on the floor, all wrecked, but the winner doesn't have the decency to help out the other guy. "What happened, are you ok, what can I do," something like that. No, he goes around screaming this and that, jumping up and down. I find that is a huge lack of respect to your fellow competitor.

Obviously, some people don't care about that, I see that as a negative point. Maybe it is just me, maybe I'm an old timer, but I find it weird.

slideyfoot.com: Roger is of course well know for being humble, he wouldn't do that.

Mauricio Gomes: Exactly. The fight he had with Demente at the last Mundial, Demente's arm was about to break. Roger let the arm go to try something else, you know? That's a good demonstration of fair play in a fight. You're fighting, it's all fine, anything goes, you can do this, you can do that. It's all damaging, really bad. But how do you apply that, how do you deal with that? How do you win, how do you learn to lose? A fighter is composed of many things. It's not just an ability to fight and how much gas there is in the tank, no. There are also the qualities that will make that fighter always grow. Otherwise my friend, we're just here eating grass.

slideyfoot.com: Since RGA 2 opened in Kilburn back in 2009, there are quite a few RGA affiliates now, even internationally with Helio's school in Angola among others. Do you see the Roger Gracie Academy as a separate team, or still an off-shoot of Gracie Barra?

Mauricio Gomes: I think that Roger, when he competes, to this day, he never used his academy name. So as far as I'm concerned, he is still Gracie Barra. If he is Gracie Barra, competes for Gracie Barra, training at Gracie Barra his entire life, I would say it's still the same thing. I don't see a difference, not yet, anyway.

[Pics included by kind permission of Zafar Hashmi]

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Interview: Mauricio Gomes on the Development of Competition

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Back in December, Rolls Gracie black belt Mauricio Motta Gomes was down at Gracie Barra Bristol to teach a master class, just before the submission only competition. I was able to grab a few minutes to speak with him: I'll be splitting the results into four parts over the next month or so, discussing his son Roger Gracie, teaching around the world and belt tests, among other topics. First up, Mauricio shares some of his thoughts on competition.

slideyfoot.com: If you had to pick one thing that marked Rolls Gracie as special, what would it be?

Mauricio Gomes: He was quick in his submissions. He was the type of the guy that would teach us a position, it was new for us. To show how that thing was effective, he would tell us "ok, now I am going to show how good this is, and I'm going to roll with all of you, and I'm going to get you all in the same thing." So, we knew what he was going to do, but we couldn't avoid it. He would still get us all.

Plus, he would always try to add in whatever another martial art could bring. Always. It was an amazing time, believe me. That was the end of my adolescent years, and I made the most of it! [laughs]

slideyfoot.com: Do you think that BJJ has changed for the better since Rolls' time, or is there anything that perhaps has been lost and you'd like to bring back?

Mauricio Gomes: I think what has been lost in jiu jitsu over the years...I think that much is different, we used to train a lot for competitions in a different way. I don't know, sometimes I look back and I try to compare our competitions to the competitions of today. What I see is that there are a lot of people training situations where they can hold on for dear life, or holding a fight up to a situation where you'll try to score a point, a half point, this or that, just before the finish of the fight, to become the winner.

I think that everybody should train to finish the fight. That should be the main goal of everybody. I would never encourage my students to just hold on to something, four minutes, five minutes, six minutes, whatever. "Then you can do this, and obtain the victory." That's a mistake. I don't know what happened, I don't know if jiu jitsu grew too much and there are too many competitors. Now you've got advantages and a lot of people started to stall, or don't want to finish the fight. They want to stay there forever. Obviously they put in time limits, advantages, they got this, they got that.

At the end of the day, I think that the focus should always be to finish the fight, how to get there as quick as possible. No stalling, no this, no that. Unfortunately, the competitors of today got to a point where the higher level fighters, there is no difference between them and an Olympic athlete. They train like they're going to the Olympics. They're really up for it. If you're going for these competitions and not prepared physically, you will lose. Even if you know a lot, today, that's not enough. It's the knowledge, but it's also your body and mind, are you physically fit.

You go to a competition these days, and you have like eight or nine fights, if you're looking at your weight and the absolute – I'm talking about black belts, right? It is usually like that, eight or nine fights over the weekend. You've got to be fit. They are ten minute fights, so if you don't finish your opponent right away, that goes on for ten minutes, then another ten, then another ten. So if you're not really fit, then over those two days you'll gas out.

slideyfoot.com: Was that less the case back when you were competing?

Mauricio Gomes: Yeah. We trained a lot, absolutely, trained like warriors, and we did a lot of physical conditioning. Running, walking on the soft sand on the beach, swimming. But nowadays it is just another level, it isn't like it was. It's the evolution, you know? That's normal, nothing stays the way it used to be. In this case, it changed for the best. The competitions are very competitive, the fighters are athletes, proper athletes. If you want to be a very good competitor, you have to have a good sponsorship. You require money.

You know how long a fighter prepares themselves for one competition? Obviously they never start from scratch, they maintain a certain level. Two to three months, at least, before a competition they start increasing their sparring, their fitness level and all that, to go all the way up to the level they want to be at to go for that competition. They have to sacrifice a lot in order to do that. They can't have a proper job, because they're training all day, so they need money to survive all this.

It's money for food, to pay for other people to train you. In the old days, you just think you do a run in the morning, something else in the afternoon, but today, the levels are completely different. You have a guy that is actually your instructor, for conditioning, for fitness, for the muscular part, a nutritionist, you know? All of this comes together to make you the proper athlete, fit and ready for the event. In the end, to reach this level requires a lot.

Next week, the discussion moves on to Mauricio's thoughts on his son Roger Gracie's success in competition.

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