To help him further improve, Lucas Leite received a copy of GRACIEMAG as a prize upon winning the WPJJC tryouts in NY. Photo: personal archive.

The black belt Lucas Leite snapped up one of the free travel packages up for grabs for the the April World Professional Jiu-Jitsu Championship (WPJJC) in Abu Dhabi, overcoming five opponents last Sunday at the event tryouts in New York. Following the achievement, he had a word with GRACIEMAG.com.

“My performance came down to the training I did with my partners Pancho, Lapela, João Assis, Bochecha, Sharpei, Yuri and all my students. Not a lot of people know it, but we have same hard core training going at CheckMat here in California,” he said.

Every good competitor knows how each match, besides the adrenaline, brings worthwhile lessons. The current world middleweight runner-up and No-Gi world champion derived his own. “You know, all the belt is for is to tie your gi up, because the browns are just as tough as the black belts.”

BACK-TAKE JIU-JITSU ROUND ROBIN

The bearer of a frenetic game, Lucas is big on launching assaults from his opponents’ backs, and he didn’t hid his hand when GRACIEMAG.com asked him to teach readers how to get good at this aspect of the grappling game.

“To get good at attacking from the back you should do lots of round-robin back-training sessions. It’s like specific training; you start body clinching your opponent on all fours, and you only switch positions once you’ve gotten your hooks in.”

The black belt also pointed out something else that made a major difference in his career. “The watershed for me was when I swapped the São Paulo nightlife for professional training. People think it’s easy to say no to parties and night clubs, especially when you’re 21 years old, but therein lies the secret. If you want to stand out you have to forsake a lot of things. But that’s one’s personal choice,” he reflected.

Now learn from Lucas Leite in practice, in one of his matches from the New York tryouts for the April WPJJC event in Abu Dhabi.