Franjinha is currently on location in Montreal, Canada working with actor Paul Walker (Fast and the Furious movie series) as the fight scene coordinator in his upcoming movie Brick Mansions.

Paul has been a Jiu-Jitsu student for four years and will now have the opportunity to display his skills on the big screen as an undercover cop who tries to take down a ruthless crime lord.

With Franjinha’s guidance Paul’s goal is to help display the beautiful martial art of Jiu-Jitsu around the world. Paul says, “ I hope this is just the beginning. I plan to add BJJ in my future movies and help to put the name of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu out there. BJJ has helped me so much lately and I really fell in love with it, mainly through seeing Franjinha’s own passion for it. His passion for Jiu-Jitsu is so contagious that if you learn from him you pretty much fall in love with it.”

Brick Mansions is scheduled for release in 2014.

See Paul Walker training below:

Fabio Clemente helps guide his students at GMA Alliance NYC / Photo by Erin Herle

Fabio Clemente is a leader for many aspects of the sport. He spread the art to places it hadn’t seen, gave opportunities to now top athletes and paved the way for many after him.

GRACIEMAG.com made a visit to his GMA academy on 3rd Ave in New York City this month. As the first Alliance Jiu-Jitsu Academy in New York, this upstairs nest is home of many champions from past and present.

Fabio Clemente is a black belt under Rigan Machado, coming up in the ranks alongside the Machado family. “I was a blue belt at the same time as Jean Jacque Machado,” he says.

After moving to New York and opening his NYC academy, Fabio became part of the Alliance banner. Not long after the move, the promotion to black belt and the changing of teams, Fabio took the responsibility of sponsoring one Alliance member to move from Brazil to the states. This athlete was Marcelo Garcia.

What you might not know about Fabio beyond his accomplishments and Jiu-Jitsu flagship in the states is his love for photography. In fact, he has worked in Paris for Vogue and many other prestigious fashion outlets. He has since put away the lenses once the digital era erupted and having kids, but he still maintains a strong eye.

After some time with Marcelo teaching at the Alliance academy, the split was made and the Marcelo Garcia Academy was born. Thereafter came another champion: Lucas Lepri.

While Lucas trained and taught classes, the academy helped create a competition atmosphere that only furthered the intensity for team Alliance on the competition mats. Lucas has since moved to teaching at the Alliance Headquarters in Atlanta, GA, but the intensity in New York still remains.

Black belt Leo Iturralde from GMA Alliance Ecuador trains with white belt at Alliance NYC / Photo by Erin Herle

Training at the academy finds people of all ages, genders and ranks. Black belts train with white belts, company is kept tight and the inside jokes are plenty. It is a tight knit family who welcomes any who buzz their door. Many students have been given the opportunity to teach at other places around the town and even at the main academy, allowing full-time focus as an easy option. Fabio maintains a strong lead but a soft hand as he treats his students like his own children– both of whom train religiously.

Check out this video below of the technique of the day taught by Fabio Clemente with his student and assistant, David Bass:

Don’t miss the photos as well. To learn more about the second Jiu-Jitsu academy established in New York, visit www.AllianceBJJNYC.com

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Chuck Norris and the Gracie family / Publicity photo

As everyone knows, movie star Chuck Norris is the most dreaded man in the world, the moves he wields capable of knocking out Anderson Silva and tapping out Marcelo Garcia—at the same time.

When interviewed by our colleagues at MMA Nation, the other day, Chuck had the following to say about his first Jiu-Jitsu lessons with the Gracie family.

“When I started in Jiu-Jitsu, I was in Rio de Janeiro on vacation and was going around to all the different martial arts schools and working out. And at every school I went to, the name Gracie Jiu-Jitsu kept popping up. So I said, ‘I’ve got to find out who they are.’

“So I tracked them down in Rio, and I went to their school. And I met Mr Gracie, the father. I met Rickson Gracie, who was the world champion at that time, and Royce Gracie.

“So I asked if I could work out with them. And they said–very cordial–, ‘Of course.’ And I was a black belt in judo, so I thought I had some pretty good grappling skills. Anyway, I got on the ground with Rickson Gracie, and it was like I’d never had a lesson in my life. He played with me. And then I went and worked out with Royce for a while. And then Mr Gracie said, ‘Chuck, let’s you and I grapple.’

“Mr Gracie’s about this big [gesturing that he is short with his hand]. So we started working out, and I mounted him. And he says, ‘Okay, Chuck, punch me.’ And I said, ‘Mr Gracie, I’m not going to punch you.’ And he said, ‘No, no, no. Punch me.’ So I brought my hand back [to punch him], and that’s the last thing I remember.

“The next thing I know, I’m waking up. I’d been choked so hard I could hardly swallow. He said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it so hard.’ Then he says, ‘I want you to stay here. You’ve got great potential. I can make you a great Jiu-Jitsu person.’

“Unfortunately, I was getting ready to do a movie and couldn’t stay there. But I went back to LA and started training with Rorion Gracie, who had a school in Los Angeles. And I started training with the Machado brothers, who are the cousins of the Gracies, and I’ve been with them now for 28 years.”

At 11am on a Saturday morning, 28 April 2012, having stepped into Top Gym Singapore, I found myself facing a predicament. Having incurred a minor slipped disc about 2 months ago, I was put on ice by the doctors until at least the middle of the year. Which in itself is not the worst thing. However, being on the side-lines is the last place I wanted to be at a John Will seminar.

(For those uninformed: John Bernard Will is part of the “dirty dozen”—one of the first non-Brazilians to earn a black belt in BJJ. John received his black belt from Rigan and Jean-Jacques Machado Brothers; and is head of the Will-Machado team.)

Attempting to make the best of a potentially frustrating situation, I turned to the lesson of one of my favourite teachers, the German philosopher Werner Hamacher. He contends that there is a difference between listening and hearing. Not just that the former is active whilst the latter is potentially passive. But more importantly, in order to listen, one has to cease hearing: for one can hear many things at the same time, but to listen—in the precise sense of attending to, responding with—one has to select one, whilst ignoring all other sounds, voices, things.

Which is precisely what John Will recommends in any situation. Whilst reinforcing the importance of details, he encourages every one to focus on “tiny increments” rather than attempting to take on “entire problems.” For instance, if one is caught in side control, “it makes little sense to think of getting out in one move”; instead one should ask oneself “how [one] can improve [one’s] situation by 5%.” In fact, the entire notion of “moves” is problematic: for that doesn’t take into account the fact that the other person is moving, constantly shifting, reacting to you as you are to her.

And this is why Will says: “I don’t believe in having end goals.” Even though one needs to have a general idea of where one is headed, focussing on the end only serves to blinker one to the situation, blind one to the other person. Instead of attending to, reacting with, listening, one is merely hearing. In Will’s words: “one is being a crocodile—in denial of the reality, the situation, one is facing.”

Will’s reminder to stay in the moment, to listen, is a call for one to open oneself to the possibilities of the other. And: to open oneself to the possibilities of the unknown, the yet to come, about to come. In foregrounding the fact that listening entails choosing, one also unveils the aspect of exclusion in choice: in attending to one, one always already has to leave out other(s). However, this does not mean that the ones that are left aside are gone: one can always be affected by something that is beyond one’s cognitive sphere—just because you do not see a bus does not mean that it cannot hit you. So, even as listening involves ceasing hearing, one who truly listens always also keeps in mind that listening brings with it the unheard, the unhearable. One should never forget that the submission that catches you is the one you did not see—or hear—coming. This perhaps opens another dossier in Rickson Gracie’s now famous phrase “invisible jujitsu”: the invisibility is not just in one’s own movements, but also in the very relationality between oneself and the other. What remains invisible—silent—is other’s movement in relation to oneself.

Thus, listening is attending to relationality itself.

Which means that there cannot be an object in listening, let alone an object to listening. Which also means that one can never know if one has listened, or if one is even listening. It is nothing more, and nothing less, than an approach.

And it is the notion of approaches that brings us all the way back to the beginning, to the title itself. To the teaching of Aristotle: in particular his lesson on how to climb a mountain. If one were to do it haphazardly, one would be stumbling around in circles, and will quite possibly go nowhere. It is only with skill, with method—meta hodos (across a path)—that one has the possibility of ever reaching the top. This in no way means that one single method would allow one to climb all mountains: each path calls for a different response, calls for one to pay attention to the singularity of the trail. Which means that even as experience with other mountains will help, one must always listen—attend to the unhearable(s)—of this particular mountain. Every guard you pass gives you a better idea of passing guards: but one has to attend to the specific relationality that this guard is presenting to one.

So, even as we remember to drill—for learning is mimetic, and thus requires repetition—we should also keep in mind that as we pay attention to the details of every technique, we need to keep ourselves attuned to the relationality between ourselves and the other person.

And perhaps it is in this very manner that the gap between theory and practice can be approached. By keeping in mind the singularity of both situations, every situation—so, it is not that in theory this should happen but in reality there are many variations, but more radically that theory itself is multiple; each time one attempts to address a situation through theory, one is always already facing the uncertainties of reality. Thus, each attempt to theorise, to think of, is always already a practice in responding to potential unknowns, the unhearables—a practice in listening.

Since all listening occurs in a particular situation, the very place—space—one is in is crucial. Thus, we might momentarily turn out attention to the notion of seminars—and attend to the echoes of seminaries, disseminations, inseminations, and seeds (semen). For, in attending a seminar, one temporarily displaces oneself—goes away to a space specifically to learn from someone—and where the person conducting teaches, professes—bearing in mind that in jujitsu our teachers are called professors—their particular approach to the art. More importantly, the profession occurs in a distinct period, a definite time frame (a few hours, a day, even a week; but with a defined end point). Thus, rather than guide the students like (s)he would in an academy, the professor has to plant a few seeds of thought; how they develop, germinate, spread, is beyond her or his control. Moreover, those who attend the seminar can also never be sure how these seeds, thoughts, will grow, or if they even will. Hence, even as we go to seminars to learn, what, how, or even if, we learn always already remains hidden from us—until learning happens, we potentially remain deaf to its call. To compound matters, we usually realise that we have learnt retrospectively. Thus, even when the lesson is unveiled to us, the point at, and in which, we have learnt remains veiled from us. In this manner, the scene of the seminar itself is nothing more than the setting for possibility—there can be no knowable object to it, until perhaps it happens.

But, we must not forget that for possibility to be (even if it is a possibility to not-be) there has to be a space; one which cannot be defined, set, known, in advance. And what else is this space but the fringe—the demarcation that both separates and always already joins.

Perhaps then, it is only by being on the side—the fringe—of the seminar, that I had the opportunity to tune in—listen—not just to the possibilities that John Will was offering, but to the very space of possibility that is the seminar.

* Jeremy Fernando is the Jean Baudrillard Fellow at The European Graduate School. Even though he has a black belt in Judo, he spends an inordinate amount of time facing the ceiling. Whilst on his back, he has refined tapping out to an art form; complete with rhythm and all.