Helio Gracie (1913–2009) gets taken down in a Jiu-Jitsu and self-defense exhibition. Photo: GRACIEMAG archive

1. In all he did, from buying groceries to taking a trip, Helio Gracie prioritized technique and economy of effort. All in order to benefit from maximum efficiency and to avoid hitting walls. Copy the professor and seek to sort your life out.

2. Ever the tough fighter, Gracie born October 1st, 2013, never hit any of his children, nor his nephews or nieces, as mischievous as they might have been. He educated by morals and example – never by spanking.

3. The centennial Jiu-Jitsu teacher tried to always give healthy tips to those around him. Thus he helped build a better environment and rid friends of problems. Seek to give good advice.

4. Despite being a wildly versatile fighter (Helio was even a proficient elbow-striker), he taught that every practitioner must have at least one strong move to fall back on when things go sour. In the grandmaster’s case, it’s the one you see starting at 1:30.

5. Every day upon waking up, Helio attempted to trample his vanity. Even after so many victories, so many front pages, so many illustrious pupils, the professor, who liked wearing the blue belt, would talk about his losses, his time as a weakling, and his more human side. And always with a sense of humor.

6. If Helio Gracie saw a truly challenging opponent, he’d face him head-on. Only thus was his Jiu-Jitsu tested and forced to evolve. Think about this when you’re matched up against that tough teammate.

7. This one can be found in the special article on Helio in GRACIEMAG #199. As he watched the UFC, the professor couldn’t understand it when an athlete would jump on the fence and do a very vocal celebration. “Did he think he was gonna lose?” he’d say. Savor your wins, but keep it cool and curb your enthusiasm. Success, after all, is one long road.

8. Whenever possible, do like Helio and spend some time surrounded by nature. You’ll see how your mind, body and soul will thank you.

9. Attempt to say “yes” or “no” in life, without evasion or fear.

10. Lastly, it’s like Helio said before dying in 2009, or “changing ZIP codes,” as son Rorion puts it: before coaching a student to win tournaments, first teach them to not be caught off guard at school or on the streets. What he means can be seen below.

The seminar on August 9 brought together the Las Vegas Jiu-Jitsu community. Photo: Frank Curreri

Read how the event unfolded through the words of Frank Curreri as he was in attendance of the historic event:

Anyone who owns a red-and-black belt, as Sergio Penha does, cannot help but be from “The Old School.” Part of that code, being a so-called “Man’s Man,” means masking weakness. It means that a guy like Penha, veteran of Grandmaster Osvaldo Alves’ ferocious dog-eat-dog style training sessions, would rather spend an afternoon getting teeth pulled in a dentist’s office, without anesthesia, than be caught crying.

Of course, even the most powerful and emotionally disciplined leader has an achilles heel. Especially when one of his longtime students, a black belt no less, meets a sudden death way before anyone imagined. Such a tragedy recently befell David Vanbuskirk, a police officer who died July 22 rescuing a stranded hiker in the mountains 35 miles from the Las Vegas strip.

Vanbuskirk successfully saved the hiker’s life – as he had saved hundreds of others throughout his career – but lost his own when his harness (connected to a helicopter) somehow came loose. A fun-loving guy who could light up any room with his near-perfect smile, Vanbuskirk was just 36 years old.

Sergio Penha address those present. Photo: Frank Curreri

A magical power of our art is how it transforms strangers into friends, and friends into blood. One day you’re training with a guy, a year later he feels like “family.” It’s a popular refrain and cliché in BJJ circles. Think about it: How many times have you heard a BJJ player say, “My students are like family to me” or“My teammates are like family to me”? 

Now let’s change gears and entertain another mental exercise: How often do you hear someone say “they are like family to me” about the instructors or students at the BJJ academy five miles down the road? The academy that is competing with your academy for the same students, the same dollars, for the same gold medals and bragging rights and prestige at local tournaments?

Maybe never, right?

Which is what made a recent Friday night seminar in Las Vegas so historic. Eighty BJJ players gathered at Xtreme Couture’s gym for a seminar that raised $10,000 for Vanbuskirk’s widow. Considering the price tag for admittance – a mere $50 – the 3-hour experience should go down as one of the greatest BJJ seminar bargains ever. I would have eagerly parted with $50 bucks to attend a seminar run only by Sergio Penha, famed for his epic match with Rickson Gracie and for leaping over brown belt entirely and going straight from purple to black belt. What certified the seminar as awesomely ridiculous is  that it, in addition to Penha, it featured technical instruction from five other top-shelf black belts from across the BJJ-rich Las Vegas Valley.

The rest of the formidable list of volunteer instructors: six-time world champion Robert Drysdale; world-class black belt Simpson Go; Amilcar “Mica” Cipili, a Royler Gracie affiliate whose teams have fared very well in local tournaments; Neal Melanson, the Jiu-Jitsu coach at Xtreme Couture who is a black belt in Judo and Hayastan under Karo Parisyan (and awarded Randy Couture a black belt in the same art); and Robert Follis, a BJJ black belt and one of the brightest (if unsung and often overlooked) coaching minds in MMA who has worked extensively with Randy Couture, Dan Henderson, Chael Sonnen and Matt Linland, among others.

Even the most seasoned BJJ player could learn a few things in a room packed with that much knowledge and experience, which may explain why at least 17 total BJJ black belts attended the seminar. The tragedy of Officer Vanbuskirk’s death and the watershed event that ensued provided a proper perspective for what it really means to be “family” in BJJ. A reminder that should echo across continents to any BJJ schools and instructors who may have gotten too wrapped up in the “us/them” mentality.

“We’ve come together; we are brothers,” Sergio Penha said while addressing everyone in attendance. “Drysdale, Mica …you know, we fight each other all the time when my students compete against your students. That’s the way it has to be, but we also have to respect each other. I respect Drysdale, Mica, Chad (Lyman) and everyone who shares the love of BJJ. I love this sport.”

Many different rivaling teams came together. Photo: Frank Curreri

“When I started doing this sport we didn’t have many rules,” Penha said. “I came from a time where, if a guy closed his guard, you lifted him and smashed him to the ground … You could go for the neck crank, you could go for the heel hook, you could do whatever you want, but there had to be respect. And that’s the way I respect every single one of you. If you step on the mat and you’re training every single day, I have respect for you because you are showing balls (holds both hands out wide and gestures).”

Randy Couture volunteered to participate in the seminar but was in Bulgaria filming the Expendables 3 movie and could not get the green light for a getaway, according to Chad Lyman, one of three Las Vegas police officers who dreamed up the seminar as a way to honor their fallen peer.

“We’re trying as a Jiu-Jitsu community to remember one of our own who fell serving other people. We came together in unity, doing something that we loved and that (Officer Vanbuskirk) loved,” said Lyman, who following the seminar received his BJJ black belt from Michael Chapman.

Given the amazing success of the August seminar – which was organized, planned and executed in just eight days – Lyman said officers are already discussing the possibility of making this an annual event to honor law enforcement who perish in the line of duty.

Grandmaster Carlson ringside in Japan, in a striking photo by Susumu Nagao. Photo: Archives, GRACIEMAG

Carlson Gracie was born on August 13, 1933, but celebrated his birthdays on the twelth to be safe. In fact, he was not born Carlson, but Eduardo. A few weeks later Grandmaster Carlos Gracie decided that his first child should have a stronger name with the letters C and R – a tradition that started with Carlson and would go on to be a mark of the family. On the day the red-belt who died in 2006 would have turned 80, GRACIEMAG recalls some episodes involving the teacher who changed the face of Jiu-Jitsu, through the text of one of his most loyal black-belts, Vinicius Cruz. Happy reading, and thanks, Carlson.

*****

Think of a unique guy: that was Carlson Gracie.

He did not give a damn about money and made no distinction of people based on status. His sincerity was rough, bordering on rudeness, whether he was with a beggar or the president. That was Carlson.

I had the opportunity to know him as a boy and always had the dream to wear that kids’ gi that read ‘Carlson Gracie Jiu-Jitsu’ on the back. And, when classes at the gym of teacher Manimal began to run too late, I saw the opportunity to make that dream become reality.

I’ll tell you something that those who experienced it will have to agree on: when you went Carlson, you did not go back! Yes, Carlson was addictive.

There’d always be injured fighters, which were not few, that went to the gym just to be on the sofa in the sitting room, to get the chance to listen to Carlson grumble when someone abandoned a kimura to do anything else – he loved the kimura.

Or they’d go there to take a ‘hawk paw’ to the top of the head (Carlson joined fingers and slapped your head with his fingertips) when you dared say someone deserved to move up in belt. Incidentally, if you wanted to see a guy languish in his current belt, all it took was telling Carlson that the guy was tough and deserved to be promoted. You’d earn yourself a hawk paw, you’d get called a belt pimp, and the poor guy, who had no fault in the matter, would get a few more years at that same belt.

More often, however, we’d go just to be ruthlessly teased when he decided to play dictation with the class that was packing the room. He’d pull his notebook from his pocket and you’d get called a dumbass as soon as you spelled something wrong.

And I laughed my ass off.

It seems strange, but anyway … Commoners in the presence of the greatest of all, and he was there as one of us, always. I remember a time when I was in the lounge and he ordered: ‘Vinicinho, grab a paper and a pen.’

I got from uncle Amauryzão, father of Amaury Bitetti, a pen to start the dictation. Then he, with that air of someone who wanted to mess with me, said: ‘Write the name of that little bone at the end of the spine, the coccyx …’

I luckily knew and wrote right; amazed, he cried, with his peculiar sincerity: ‘Eeh! This one didn’t cut class then! ‘

Carlson was so unique that while people dreamed of a new car, or something like that, he spent all his money buying CDs, cassettes or taking his students to the steakhouse. And the gift that gave him the most joy was a simple whirligig. I swear. He was like a child, playing with that thing for hours.

When guys like that go away they always leave their mark. Indelible.

Carlson would create a slang, or bring a word from the cockfighting scene to the Jiu-Jitsu milieu, and voila! In a month the word was already on everyone’s lips. What Brazilian fighter hasn’t heard someone be called a ‘creonte’ or ‘mutuca’? These are words that transcended the boundaries of the gym and are now used by fighters of every martial art in the country. Not to mention his ‘dictionary game’ and the world-renowned ‘powerfulness test.’

It was not just that intrinsic shine he carried in his soul that made him unique. His brilliance as a teacher, and especially as a coach, were unparalleled. Carlson had a keen eye. He was able to unveil a position, one which for us was mind-bending, in two or three simple moves.

I often saw my idols studying positions (yes, I had the privilege of sharing the mat with my idols and become great friends with them), and Carlson would come and say: ‘Do this and that …’ and he’d find a quick and simple defense to a position which until a few moments ago looked indefensible. In competitions, it was almost a ritual to finish our fights and go hug him, whether he was one of the organizers, or in the stands, where he liked to stay on the edge, leaning with his arms hanging. And when Carlson was watching you’d fight harder.

I also saw, many times, on Figueiredo Magalhães street where qualifiers were held for competitions, that two guys would start fighting in the dojo and then go to the bathroom to finish up. No one liked to lose in front of the old master.

I remember it all with a tightness in the chest, and I say without a second thought, it was the best time of my life. I’d get there in the morning and find Carlson Gracie Jr. teaching class. In the afternoon, I’d be sitting on the bench at the 3 p.m. class, just to get scolded by black belt Marcelo Alonso. Sounds crazy, but I liked to take Alonso’s scolding; I did not know him very well yet, and this was his way of knowing that I existed.

Then later in the evening I’d take the class of teacher Saporito, always full of champions (Luiz Sergio Barros, Daniel Christoph, Paulão Filho, Maurício Cobrinha Azul, Pedro Babu, Dudu Barros, Bernardo Zuza, Zé Emilio, Daniel Cardoso and many others). And finally, I’d relish free practice, on the delicious right-side mat, when I’d find Murilo, Amaury, Bebeo, Libório, Parrumpinha, Wallid, Allan Góes, Rogério Miranda, Marcel Ferreira, Eduardo Lerner, Eduardo Lins, Alexandre Macedo, Sergio Abimehry and master Rosado – who appeared from time to time, squashed everyone and left – among many others.

The memory of the old master lives with us in every story, every workout. And to me, every time I go up those stairs on 414 Figueiredo Magalhães St., a movie plays in my head, of him telling me to listen to Edith Piaf, scolding me when he heard of any hijinks, or giving me a ride back to Morada do Sol… It’s all tattooed on me, and motivates me to teach what he taught me one day without even trying: Jiu-Jitsu deserves to be known by everyone, not just those who have money to pay.

I hope to be lying on the mats of life, always, until the divine laws do not allow me anymore, learning, teaching, and especially raising the flag of the biggest myth in the history of contemporary martial arts.