Helio Gracie Dies Age 95

Helio Gracie Dies Age 95 From Natural Causes


Grand Master and father of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Helio Gracie and his older brother Carlos played a major role in developing what we know in 2009 as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Helio Gracie developed his own form of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu because he only weighed around 150 Lbs and was weak in comparison to big strong guys. Helio's creation of his own Jiu-Jitsu was so effective that everyone wanted to learn it. Helio Gracie used leverage and position in such a way that he, and anyone that learnt from him was able to overcome the size and strength advantages of their opponents.

Helio Gracie is a true legend. His development of Jiu-Jitsu, contribution to Martial Arts and Superb example as a person will never be forgotten. This is the man that made Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu known to the world and made it was it is today. Thankyou Helio Gracie.



In one of his final magazine interviews the Grand Master expresses his concern for the future of Jiu-Jitsu:
“The Jiu-Jitsu that I created was designed to give the weak ones a chance to face the heavy and strong. It was so successful that they decided to create a sportive version of it. I would like to make it clear that of course I am in favor of the sportive practice and technical refinement of all athletes, whatever their specialty may be, as well as good nutrition, sexual control, avoidance of addictions and unhealthy habits. The problem lies in the creation of a sport-oriented Jiu-Jitsu, based on rules and time limits, which benefits the heavier, stronger, and more athletic individuals. The primary objective of Jiu-Jitsu is to empower the weak who, for not having the physical attributes, are often intimidated. My Jiu-Jitsu is an art of self-defense in which rules and time limits are unacceptable. These are the reasons for which I can’t support events that reflect an anti Jiu-Jitsu.”

-Grand Master Helio Gracie (October 1, 1913 – January 29, 2009)

If you would like to send a message on how Helio was a positive influence on your life or your Jiu-Jitsu - send to heliogracie@gracieacademy.com

Share Your Story With Can You Fight

Share Your Story With Can You Fight

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Can Boxing Help With Self Defense?

Can Boxing Help With Self Defense?

The quick answer is yes, boxing can help with self defense. Boxing is not just good for physical training, but also good for your mental state, confidence comes with boxing and the better you get, the more confident you will become. Using it in a real life fighting situation will be easier the more experienced you become.

But never forget this, using any fighting art, boxing or even martial arts in a real fight situation depends on your mental state almost 100%. It depends how "in control" you can stay when the situation is totally real. If you can't stay in control and use what you have learnt, you will just result to swinging punches with no skill what so ever. You have to stay calm and in control. If you get caught in the heat of the moment it can be a bad thing.

The key is to make the art you train in become instinct, in this case the art is boxing. If you can do this then the boxing moves will become your instinct, basically you will do it without even thinking. That's when you know you have become good, when you just react on instinct, not by having to think about what your doing or going to do.

Obviously with a huge amount of fights, there over within a few punches, which doesn't take that much thinking about. So boxing can really help with this type of fight. Boxing will train you to punch properly, turning your body into punches and putting body weight behind them, also making your punches nice and straight, keeping your chin down, not advertising your punches etc.

So yes, boxing is a good thing to learn and can definately help you out in a real life self defense situation.

Martial Arts and Boxing For Real Life Situations

Martial Arts and Boxing For Real Life Situations, Can it help you?

What can really help you when your in real need to defend yourself? This is a very heated and debatable question in many social circles, particularly in Martial Arts and Boxing circles. Everyone thinks the thing they practice is the best and they will argue about it all night.

But we don't want arguing or debates, we just want to know what is most effective in a real life situation.

Could anyone answer this question and make you fully beleive it? As we know, all fight situations are different so maybe one martial art would be better for a certain type of fight situation and perhaps Boxing skills would be better for another.

In my own experience i would say, If you have good boxing skills and are a student of Brazilian Jui-Jitsu you have the best general chance of being able to handle most fight situations.

These two fighting arts give you a good mix of stand up fighting and ground fighting, so no matter how the fight goes, you are skilled in both areas. Most fights will either be a trading of punches or a wrestling, close contact fight, so it makes sense to practice both of these as much as possible.

Many of the Martial Arts, such as Kung Fu, Aikido, Karate and so on, although good Martial Arts, don't have any answer for ground fighting, so if the fight goes to the ground all the skills are gone. The same can be said for Kickboxing and Thai Boxing, there both good Martial Arts but they don't have any ground skills at all. Wrestling is a good thing to practice that is very helpful in a real fight situation, giving you an edge if a fight goes to the ground.

The best thing you can do is make sure you do some form of stand up fighting, and also some kind of ground game like Brazilian Jui-Jitsu or Wrestling. This way you are prepared for most fight situations. Obviously if your involved in a gang fight or you are fighting more then one person at a time, you should not want to take a fight to the ground.

Knowing you can fight

 Knowing You Can Fight

For me, i always feel better when i know i can defend myself if needed. It makes me feel calmer. Knowing that i can fight makes me not need to fight.

Throughout my life i have had times where i am actively training daily. It's rare i will go a week without doing some sort of training. I am a modest guy, but friends are always telling people about me, which is a nice feeling but can make me feel embarrassed at the same time. But if im honest I have always been very strong and could always out-last anyone i trained with. The more people i train with, the more i think that how strong or able you are depends a lot on your genetic makeup (genes). Sure, you can be weak and train to be stronger, but you will never really get much more stronger, no matter how much you train. You then need to work on your mental state.

I don't want to leave out how important being in the right mindset is, specially for fighting and defending yourself. Let's say that on one side you have 1 guy, not a street kid-never in trouble and has a nice family etc etc.

On the other side you have a guy that's in trouble all the time. Knows the street mentality. A guy that will ask you what your looking at if you stare at him for longer then 3 seconds (very childish)

Who do you think will win in a fight? I would bet you money that on average, the street kid would win without a fight even taking place. Intimidation would be all that is needed.

This is just an example of different mindsets but it makes you think. In order to be able to fight, you need to have some sort of fighting mentality. This is where training really can help you.

I would bet you money that if the nice guy in the example knew jui-jitsu, he would be 10 times less easily intimidated by tought talk and would have the confidence to stand up to the bully.

Training does give you the edge. It builds within you an inner confidence which makes you able to either rise above a situation (and not feel a fool) Or deal with a situation that would of been too much for you in the past.

Anyway what im saying is get your ass down to the gym or dojo. You can feel much higher from martial arts and boxing then you can from any drugs. And trust me i know. I have been on both sides. Luckily for me, the drugs and bad habits are all in the past. I live a clean life free from drugs and continue to study martial arts to this day.

I Don't Want To Fight - Do You Have A Choice?

I Don't Want To Fight

Many, if not all of us would rather not fight. The thought alone of trading blows with another person scares a lot of people. But what happens if you need to fight. What do you do if you have to fight? To defend yourself or a loved one? Would you fight. Or would you flight.

Personally i feel that EVERYONE should have some fighting skills, even people that have never had a fight in their lives, because at some point it catches up with you and at some stage YOU will have to fight. And when that day comes, if you don't perform like you thought you would then your going to question yourself. And think, if only i knew how to fight. Many of these type of people are the ones that join a Martial Arts school or Boxing Gym for a few months, until the shame of what happened to them wears away..Then they stop going. And they forget how much they needed the knowledge and clearness of mind to react accordingly in a fight situation- until the next time something happens and their not prepared to deal with it. Then the same questions go over in their mind. Then they want to learn how to fight again, until it wears off again.

With the world getting worse, if you ever needed to know how to defend yourself, IT's NOW.

So many unprovoked attacks, gangs , skitszos running around. I know what your thinking, these days loads of people carry weapons, knifes, guns! etc. But i tell you this, if you are in good shape and do something like boxing, brazilian jiu jitsu, judo, wrestling or any other fighting art, you are much much more able to deal with a weapon attack then if you do no training at all..Doing a fighting art puts your mental state much higher then someone that doesnt. You think more quickly and clearly. Your reaction time is much quicker, way more confident. You can see if trouble is going to start much quicker and try to avoid it before it happens. To be continued.