#446： How Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Will Make You a Better Man
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Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, Brett McKay sits down with Hinner Gracie, the Head Instructor at The Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy and Co-creator of Gracie University, an online jiu-jitsu program, to discuss the origins of Brazilian jiu jitsu and why it's such a powerful martial art.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. In the 1980s,
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when people signed up for martial art, they probably joined a karate or a taekwondo school. Today,
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they're probably signing up for a role on the mat in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu class. And the Gracie family
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has played a central role in this martial arts precipitous rise. My guest today is a member
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of the Gracie family, the head instructor of the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy and the co-creator of
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Gracie University, an online jiu-jitsu program. His name is Hinner Gracie, and you may have seen the
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videos we've made with him on our YouTube channel a couple of years ago if you haven't got to check
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him out. Today, Hinner walks through the origins of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, beginning with his
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grandfather, Helio, and how a martial art born in Japan ended up being reshaped in Brazil. He then
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shares how his father helped develop the UFC as a way to promote the efficacy of Brazilian
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jiu-jitsu, but why there's a big difference between sport, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and self-defense
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Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and why Brazilian jiu-jitsu is such an effective real-world martial art. We end
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by talking about the mindset shift that occurs when you learn how to defend yourself and how the
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confidence you gain from learning jiu-jitsu carries over to other aspects of life. After the
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show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash Gracie.
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So a few years ago, we collaborated on some videos on YouTube about Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
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We had Jordan Crowder go out there and film you and talk about Brazilian jiu-jitsu and some basic
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moves, but I'd love to get you on the podcast to talk about this as well. I mean, let's first talk
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about your role at Gracie jiu-jitsu. Your last name is Gracie, so you're obviously part of the family,
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but what do you do there with the business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu with the Gracie family?
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Yeah. So to take, I'm going to assume some of our viewers or some of the listeners, I should say,
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don't know much about the Gracie family and maybe haven't even seen the awesome videos that you
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guys produced, kind of taking it back to the history. But my family is kind of credited with
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the development and creation of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. My grandfather being kind of the
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pioneer there, him and his brother learned Japanese jiu-jitsu and then over several years made
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modifications that really increased the effectiveness. And that's the birth of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
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So it's kind of like an evolution of the predecessor, Japanese jiu-jitsu.
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And to test the effectiveness, they started fighting everyone they could possibly get their
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hands on in Brazil. So there were these challenge matches that happened in the early 1900s, starting
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around 1920, 1925. And they were defeating these giants, much larger, stronger opponents, because
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you know, my grandfather particularly was a much weaker, smaller guy, 145 pounds, 150 pounds.
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And by defeating these giants, he really proved the effectiveness of jiu-jitsu and, you know,
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started creating quite a following for himself in Brazil and became somewhat of a national kind
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of sports icon there at the time. So that happened. And, you know, through all these challenge
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matches really built a reputation for jiu-jitsu and for the Gracie family there. Other members of
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the family were practicing as well under their, under his guidance. And then my father was born into it
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1952. And then he was the one who learned in Brazil and then eventually brought the art
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to America, 1978. He landed here in Hermosa Beach, California, and began teaching classes
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out of his garage. Fast forward 11 years of classes in the garage and several challenge
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matches, I should say, I should say during that period, a lot of challenge matches with
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like karate masters, taekwondo, kung fu, because everyone here in the States was kind of in the
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Bruce Lee mode. And, you know, so he would fight these guys in the garage, like time after
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time, people would come in and they would get choked out in like 30 seconds, one minute,
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two minutes. And they were completely, you know, kind of dumbfounded by the simple effectiveness
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of jiu-jitsu that we practiced. And then after so many years of those garage teachings and challenge
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matches, he opened the first Gracie official, Gracie school here called the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy
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then here in Torrance, California. And that's kind of where the real kind of established school
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began in America, the first official school. And then four years later, he created the UFC
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in 1993, which has a big, basically a big platform to demonstrate the effectiveness of
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jiu-jitsu in real fights amongst professionals on television. The thought being that, you know,
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we had done these challenge matches for 80 years at the time, you know, in the garage and
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in the dojos and whatnot. And to do it on TV would really expose a lot of people to, you
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know, the shortcomings of other martial arts, right? So a martial art where it teaches punches
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and kicking might look nice, but when it comes down to actual effectiveness, the second
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they get taken to the ground, they're like fish out of water. The fight is over. So whoever
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was more comfortable on the ground proved to be the most efficient fighting system. And
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that's where jiu-jitsu became, you know, Gracie jiu-jitsu by our family in particular became
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known worldwide. That was 1993. Soon after we got special forces, army rangers learning
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jiu-jitsu and then it hasn't stopped since. Like it's the fastest growing martial art because
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it works. And today my brother and I are the co-head instructors of our current, we've moved
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two times since 1989, since our first school, we've expanded over the last, you know, several
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years or 20 plus years. So we've moved two locations. We just expanded to a 30,000 square
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foot super jiu-jitsu center here in Southern California, still in Torrance. And my father's
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retired. My brother and I run the business of teaching jiu-jitsu to the world. And the organization
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is now called Gracie University. And it's both has a brick and mortar presence here in Torrance.
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And we oversee 150 schools around the world and growing every year in terms of licensing,
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licensed certified training centers that teach our curriculum of jiu-jitsu. And we have an online
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university with, you know, almost 200,000 members learning jiu-jitsu through the internet,
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streaming video curriculum at home. And that's been a huge, huge part of our business to be able to
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teach any people anywhere in the world. Okay. There's a lot of impact there. This is cool.
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So let's start off. I mean, for those who aren't familiar with jiu-jitsu, what separates it from
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other martial arts, say like karate or taekwondo? Right. So I think that was something that we
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really, I mean, I'm just going to keep referencing to it because maybe you don't know this, but the
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videos that you guys produced on jiu-jitsu with Jordan's help and for Art of Manliness were probably
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two of the most insightful introductory to jiu-jitsu. Well, we did multiple videos, but a couple of those
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there have a couple million views, I think serve as like the most effective introduction to the
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principles and the techniques of jiu-jitsu. Like I've never done an intro like that with the mindset
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of keeping it short, but really just demonstrating techniques that literally and entirely demonstrate
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why jiu-jitsu is more reliable than other martial arts. And that's not from a, you know, cocky or
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boastful perspective. It's coming from a purely technical leverage-based, a distance management
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perspective. It's just a better odds to engage in a fight when you know jiu-jitsu than when you
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engage in a fight and are relying on karate, taekwondo, kung fu, boxing, kickboxing, any art
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that relies on knocking someone out relies really heavily on a perfectly positioned and perfectly
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thrown punch or kick, meaning the distance has to be perfect, right? So I have to stand in front of
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you one arm length away. I have to take my hand. I have to crack you in the jaw, has to
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hit very nicely and sometimes it hits and it doesn't work. Other times it hits and it drops
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the person, but more often than not, it doesn't knock them out on the first shot. And we stand
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in front of each other and we trade blows until someone gets knocked out. Someone gets the better
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hand. When you have a martial art like karate or taekwondo, where both practitioners agree that
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they're supposed to stand in front of each other and kick and punch until someone gets the better
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half of the, of the, of the equation and is effective in knocking the other person out or
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winning the match. That's an agreement. They have an agreement that they're not going to grab onto
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each other as boxers, right? The first thing you do when you start getting punched overwhelmingly,
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what does a boxer do? He clinches the person who's hitting him. He grabs him, right? If you think
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back to any, any fight we're talking, even Mayweather and, uh, and Conor McGregor, when they had that,
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you know, that, that circus of a boxy match, which everyone watched, what do they do? As soon as
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Mayweather starts getting racked up a little bit in the first couple of rounds, he would grab on
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and clinch Conor and hold them. And what jujitsu does is it goes right to that point in the fight.
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Instead of saying, we're going to trade punches until I start losing. And then I'm going to grab you.
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It just says, yo, you're not going to punch me when you think you're going to punch me. I'm just
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going to grab you. I'm not going to agree to stand there in front of you. And then once we grab a hold
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of our subject in that situation, we find a way to grab, grab and drag that person into a ground
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fight. And the reason is standing up to people. If you're six inches taller than me standing up,
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that makes a big difference. But once we're on the ground, we're all the same height. Not only that,
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once we go to the ground, I have four appendages. If I know jujitsu, I have four
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appendages, four limbs that I can use to my advantage to essentially trap you, grab you,
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control you, submit you, defend punches. And the person who does not know jujitsu,
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when they fall to the ground, they only have two limbs. They only have two hands to operate with.
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Whereas a jujitsu master or practitioner has four. So you literally take the equation. Let's assume
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that two people who don't know how to fight really when they're standing up, it's two against two,
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right? So two limbs against two limbs. The second we hit the ground, if neither one of them knows
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how to fight, which you see on YouTube all the time, crazy brawls, right? It's still two limbs
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against two limbs. But the second you see someone with, you know, I'm talking months, not even years,
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I'm talking six months, eight months of jujitsu training, like very limited, that learns about
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30 to 40 techniques, the bare minimum of jujitsu knowledge gets into a fight. When it goes to the
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ground, you see an application of their lower body and their legs to entangle the opponent
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that you'll never see between two untrained people. So you can show me any number of street
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fights. And just by watching them, I can tell you if at all, and if so, how much experience the jujitsu
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person has based purely on their ability to utilize their legs to, to essentially control and then
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eventually defeat their opponent on a ground fight. So it's literally a cheating equation
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because we have four limbs and they have two. Okay. And how, so it's not, it's more about
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grappling submission holds. So it's, that's how it's unlike karate or taekwondo. What about judo?
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How is it different from judo? Good question. So judo and our jujitsu have the same origin of the
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Japanese jujitsu, right? So they both come from the same place. And, you know, in the, in the,
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in the, you know, early 1900s or even pre 1900s, judo was developed as the kind of sportive branch
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of Japanese jujitsu. It was developed much more as a recreational, you know, mind, body, spirit,
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and you learn these techniques and it became much more of an, of an art of practice compared to what
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the original Japanese jujitsu was, which is much more focused on survival, life or death, fight for
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your life. So what happened was Jigoro Kano, kind of the judo grandmaster and, and kind of
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you know, top figure Jigoro Kano said, okay, let's create a form of judo that can be practiced
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by kids in schools throughout the country has a much more of a curriculum driven. And it became
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much more of a sport where they became much more of a confined set of rules, where if you're standing
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and you throw each other and the person's back hits the ground, the fight's over. So even in a sport of
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judo match, once you get a one good throw, the fight is over. And so that's judo, but it has the
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origin of Japanese jujitsu, which there are submissions, there are grappling techniques. It just became
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kind of a branch off of the original Japanese jujitsu that really limited its street fight
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applicability because it was practiced almost entirely for its sportive practice. Now, not to
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say that judo techniques would not have an application in a real fight. Some of those techniques could be
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devastating, right? But the core purpose for its practice was not to prepare its students for a fight,
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but rather to create a recreational sport that included these, these, these grappling and submission and
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throwing techniques that made it for an effective sport and something that kids can do from, from the
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ground up. So it became much more sportive based. The Brazilian jujitsu is much more closely related
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to the original form of Japanese jujitsu, which had no confines of sport consideration. All we said was,
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yo, if we get in a fight, we're going to have to survive against someone much bigger than us. We got to do
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whatever it takes. So jujitsu as practiced by my family in the early 1900s and evolved since has much
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more, has been much more focused on actual street fight against a larger opponent, no rules, punches
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included, which judo does not include. We include striking techniques, not only as can be used by us
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against our opponent in particular situations where we're not at risk of getting struck back,
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but it also factors in heavily the defense against someone who's trying to knock you out.
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And that simply isn't something covered in judo or even talked about because it's not a priority for
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them. So they have similar origins, but today the practice and the rule set really determines
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everything. And Gracie or Brazilian jujitsu has a much more direct street fight application because
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in the gym, we're not practicing to a set rule set that would limit its applicability in a real fight.
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Gotcha. So that's a good point to bring up. Brazilian jujitsu, you know, people are often
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familiar with it because they see it in mixed martial arts fights, but this is not, was originally not
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designed to be a sport self, a sport martial art. It was originally designed for self-defense.
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100% for self-defense. And today what you have happening is like happened very similarly, history
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repeats itself the same way Japanese jujitsu existed in a raw form way back then. And then judo, you know,
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essentially came about as the sport of branch of Japanese jujitsu. If you think back to every martial
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art, Brett, it's the same thing. Taekwondo wasn't created. And I don't know much about the history
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about Taekwondo, but it wasn't created way back when it was because of, of the aspiration to have
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a sport where we can kick each other and earn points through throwing kicks. That wasn't why it
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started. It started for survival and effectiveness on the battlefield. Let's just say, right. Where
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they're surviving and, you know, in, in times of civil war, way back when, and people having to
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defend themselves and protect their families in life or death, it started for a survival. Every martial
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art has a survival fight for your life origin. And then what happens is as sport, as practice of
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that art becomes common throughout a country or region or the world, what happens is they have
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to agree upon a rule set that we're going to follow so that we can practice this. And then
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eventually what happens is the practice for the agreed upon rule set essentially overtakes the
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practice for its original purpose. And then the sport like Taekwondo, that was once a fighting
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system for survival now is almost exclusively referred to as an Olympic sport where you kick
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each other, score points. If your foot touches my body. And then if you win a gold medal, this is
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awesome. But no one says, Oh yeah, if you want to learn how to fight for real, learn Taekwondo.
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That's not really where the association is anymore because so much of its practice is geared entirely
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towards effectiveness in a realm where we both agree to stand in front of each other and adhere to a
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distance and a rule set that we didn't create, but we simply have been practicing for, for the last 15
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years. So let's fight based on those circumstances. And what's happening is even in jujitsu today,
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that deviation is happening where there's enough people that have started jujitsu and are practicing
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so they can go win a gold medal in a, in a point-based jujitsu tournament, forget even MMA,
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but I'm talking purely jujitsu where today there exists essentially two families in the jujitsu tree,
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which is sport Brazilian jujitsu, where if you were to show up at a school on the first day that you show
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up to class, they're going to say, okay, Brett, welcome to BJJ. Today we're going to learn a sweep
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that gets you two points. We're going to learn a submission that would win you the fight. And
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we're going to learn how to pass the guard, which might get you three points. So people are literally
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learning from their first day, the jujitsu that will be useful in a sport of engagement,
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but may have very limited applicability in a real fight. Because like these other martial arts I
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reference, once you start focusing on that as your victory, you really start to disregard all of the
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elements that made Brazilian jujitsu famous to begin with, which is those real fight survival
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elements. So it's actually a very contentious point in jujitsu and one that, you know, my brother and
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I are kind of at the helm in terms of making, you know, a claim or at least the public aware that
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not all jujitsu is created equally. And that in many cases, a student wants to learn how to defend
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themselves, shows up at a BJJ school and what's being taught there has no resemblance to anything that
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you would ever see in a real fight. And it's confusing to them because their initial desire
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to learn jujitsu came from seeing it being used effectively in real fights. If it was UFC one,
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where Hoist fought those giants, where there was no rules, no time limits, no weight classes,
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the original UFCs were the, some of the best demonstration of jujitsu in its kind of raw and
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most effective form. So today there is that divide in jujitsu and, and we, you know, remain a hundred
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percent committed as a organization, Gracie university to teaching it in its, in its self-defense form.
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And, and, and, and people are becoming more and more aware of the separation.
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So you, you teach for self-defense, but I imagine even that self-defense type of jujitsu
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Yeah, absolutely. And that's where it all began, right? And so everything that, you know, you learn,
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not everything I should say, because there's some techniques, for example, how to defend against
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someone punching you in the face. It's the simplest way to explain this, right? If you and me were to
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start a fight and we were to stand up and you would disagree with me, or you did something
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disrespectful and we had to fight, the fight doesn't start with us shaking hands and grabbing
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onto each other's jackets, which is how a jujitsu match begins. The fight would start with both of
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us upright and you would swing for my face. And then once we're on the ground, you would be trying
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to eye gouge and punch me in the face. And I would have to be able to manage the distance in order to
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prevent those attacks from being effective against me. So things like that, those simplest concepts
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don't directly apply, but there are other techniques of, you know, leverage and submissions that,
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yeah, if I get you in a chokehold in a sportive match, or I get you in a chokehold in a street
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fight, you're going to sleep no matter what, both of those cases you're going out. But a lot of times
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what I see, like I had a student come visit us from Australia last week and he had been training
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for a good three years. So he wasn't like novice, novice. He was just not an advanced practitioner,
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but definitely had experience, came and trained with us. And on Wednesdays we put on gloves. So we spar
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in jujitsu, we grapple, but we're wearing gloves, like MMA gloves. So we can be reaching for each
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other's faces and we could be not even knocking each other out. Nothing crazy. Like I'm talking
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like 10, 20% touching someone to show them where they need to block punches from during
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the jujitsu grapple. And this guy from Australia who I was grappling with had never done this
00:20:26.000
before in his life, which means the school that he trained at in Australia. And I asked
00:20:30.320
him this, I says, Hey, have you ever sparred jujitsu with someone reaching for your face?
00:20:36.640
Like even going through the motion of going for a punch, just so you can see and manage
00:20:42.300
that from a different distance. And he says, Henner, we've never done this once.
00:20:47.300
And he says, doing it with you right now, I felt like I forgot all of my jujitsu
00:20:52.360
because I was so flustered by the prospect of getting punched in the nose.
00:20:57.440
So everything I've ever learned was gone because the threat in front of me was so
00:21:02.440
real and was so unmanageable based on my skillset that I was overwhelmed.
00:21:07.880
So he kind of explained this to me and I go, wow, this is crazy. So there's jujitsu
00:21:11.400
out there today where you can train for three years, five years, 10 years. And no one ever
00:21:15.100
tells you like, Hey, if you're laying down and someone's on top of you in the guard
00:21:17.980
and they try to punch you, here's how you manage the distance and control their strike
00:21:22.060
so that their strike won't be effective against you. And it's actually very easy to learn.
00:21:25.780
We teach it to beginners in six months. So it's not hard to learn this, but if you don't
00:21:30.240
focus on it because you have other priorities in your training, it's very easy for this train
00:21:34.200
to go off the rails. And suddenly you have lots of experience, but no effectiveness in
00:21:39.760
Gotcha. So that's another difference between sport jujitsu and self-defense is that I guess
00:21:47.400
Not even one in, not even like a simulation. And when we train with gloves here, it's very
00:21:52.140
light because we have a thousand students or more, you know, 1200 students here at this
00:21:56.700
school. And most of them are not professional fighters. They're just want to go to
00:22:00.140
work tomorrow morning. So we have developed the best beginner programs. And even in the
00:22:04.160
advanced programs, when we're training with some strike, you know, positioning and strike
00:22:07.600
and going through the motions, no one's getting black eyes or bloody noses. We did it. We
00:22:10.920
did it. What's today? Thursday. We did it last night already, you know, so just recently.
00:22:14.420
So it was very calm, light touch. Everything's just super safe, but nonetheless, you're being
00:22:20.080
reminded that, yo, in a real fight, this hand that I'm touching you with very softly, it's
00:22:23.860
going to come at you full speed and you better be ready from this angle to manage that.
00:22:27.580
But if that angle of threat has never been contemplated or even practiced, whenever it
00:22:33.240
does happen, you're like, wait a minute, that's not supposed to be a threat. I'm only used
00:22:36.500
to, you know, these jujitsu sport moves. I'm not used to the threats that could arrive at
00:22:41.560
my face at any time. So absolutely. It's a difference. And it's a, it's a serious problem
00:22:46.180
because the Gracie family is responsible for making jujitsu famous to the world and the creation
00:22:51.660
of the UFC and much of that by my uncle's ancestors, my dad, and demonstrating the effectiveness.
00:22:56.720
And most people who start learning jujitsu, who say, I want to go learn jujitsu. I see
00:23:02.380
it in the UFC. I hear it's effective martial arts, self-defense. I want to go learn it.
00:23:06.140
90% of people who walk into a school, what are they looking for? They're looking to be
00:23:10.200
able to defend themselves against someone who wants to take something from them, take their
00:23:16.020
dignity, take their property, take their kid. If someone wants to threaten you, you should
00:23:21.200
be able to defend yourself and not get hurt. And even if they're bigger than you are, you
00:23:26.960
should be able to do that because someone will try to take something from you, even if
00:23:31.000
it's your dignity, right? And disrespecting you in a situation. And you have to be able
00:23:35.080
to stand up for yourself. And your ability to stand up for yourself is rooted at the core
00:23:39.600
in your certainty that if that person were to violently attack you, you would be safe.
00:23:45.760
You would not be injured by them. I have that certainty with every interaction that I have on
00:23:51.080
the daily basis. I never am fearful for what someone can do to me physically, right? So because
00:23:56.520
of that, I can engage with people in a confident, calm demeanor that usually, and almost entirely
00:24:02.340
prevents them from ever attacking me. So I learned how to fight. So I never have to. The problem is
00:24:08.700
when people sign up for a BJJ school and they don't know what they're going to get and they show up
00:24:12.980
and what they get there is an entirely sportive practice of the art that several years go by
00:24:18.300
before they realize, wow, I never really got here. What I originally signed up for, which was that
00:24:23.860
self-protection certainty and that safety guarantee. I don't feel like I have that because if someone
00:24:29.900
throws a punch, like this kid from Australia who came over, someone throws a punch, my jujitsu
00:24:34.460
goes out the window. So how certain I am that I'm safe during an engagement or an altercation
00:24:38.960
with someone over a parking spot. He can't be certain. And that's our biggest concern with
00:24:44.060
current, present jujitsu state today is that there is that divide, but there isn't clarity to the
00:24:49.800
public on every level that what they're getting in many cases is not going to give them the
00:24:54.880
certainty that jujitsu can give them and that they originally came looking for.
00:24:59.840
I want to, you made an interesting point there that I want to flesh out some more. This idea that by
00:25:04.400
learning to do violence, which, you know, which is what you're doing when you practice
00:25:09.500
self-defense jujitsu, like you become like kinder, which is counterintuitive when people think you
00:25:15.960
think, well, if you learn how to be really violent, you're going to be an a-hole and jerk and looking
00:25:19.700
for fights. But in your experience, and I've noticed this as well, whenever I deal with,
00:25:23.000
you know, people who practice who are like advanced level jujitsu guys, or even like, you know,
00:25:28.680
special operators, right in the military, like they're usually the kindest, nicest guys,
00:25:33.820
but I know that they could kill me if they wanted to.
00:25:37.160
Yeah. So listen, here's, I think the people who are most likely to get into a fight in society
00:25:46.280
are the people who are least prepared to get into a fight. And the people who are most prepared to get
00:25:55.320
into a fight for their life are the people who are least likely to get into a fight. And I think
00:26:04.620
is that I feel like by training the way I have my whole life, every single day,
00:26:14.200
by being put through the grinder, by having highs and lows, by learning, discovering,
00:26:19.220
by losing to my older brother for so many years, getting tapped out by him and him being, you know,
00:26:23.740
better than me and having so many amazing students and training partners. I know exactly where I stand
00:26:30.000
on the totem pole of self-defense jujitsu effectiveness. I have no doubts about it.
00:26:36.480
I know where I stand. I know what I'm capable of and I know what I'm not capable of. So I don't need
00:26:41.500
to get into a fight to prove myself to anyone or even to myself. Whereas I think a lot of people out
00:26:47.400
there, especially when you put a little bit of alcohol on them and you have a little ego and you
00:26:51.200
have some friends watching, a lot of people who think they're tougher than they are feel the really
00:26:56.300
strong desire to prove to the surrounding audience and to themselves that they are as tough as they
00:27:02.380
think they are. Now, ironically, they usually aren't. Usually, they're probably 10 or 20%
00:27:10.480
as capable people. That's a general thing. People tend to overestimate their fighting capability.
00:27:16.640
That's one thing I know for sure is that by and large, especially men, tend to overestimate
00:27:22.660
their ability to prevail in a physical fight for their life. They think they know and are capable
00:27:27.640
of more than they are. They're not. If you don't know how to fight, you have no idea how to fight.
00:27:32.840
And so I think that the likelihood of fighting being higher for untrained people is really rooted
00:27:37.760
in that. They need that certainty. They need to prove to themselves. Whereas our students are coming
00:27:41.780
to class every day and they're proving it to themselves on the mat. They know exactly what they
00:27:45.600
know. They learn quickly what they don't know. And then they start to build on that and they don't
00:27:49.480
have any questions about it. The other aspect of it is I think that the more you become familiar
00:27:54.920
with the possibilities in a real fight or an altercation, the more you accept the dangerous
00:28:01.920
circumstances of a real fight. You know what I'm saying? You realize that even with all the training
00:28:07.920
that I have, I don't want to get into a street fight ever, ever, because it's too unpredictable.
00:28:15.220
Even though I'm confident that if I had to fight for my life, I'm going to win, right? I know that,
00:28:20.660
you know, I mean, the variables that people often don't think about, right? I might win the fight,
00:28:25.600
but because I was, you know, I was, took him to the ground and I hit my elbow on the mat. Now my
00:28:30.500
elbows cut open. So even though I submitted him with a gentle arm bar or choke hold, I'm going to
00:28:34.680
the hospital to get stitches, right? And that's something I have to deal with. If I win the fight,
00:28:40.300
right? I might win the fight, but in the course of the fight, he hits his head on the ground. And now
00:28:44.260
either he's injured permanently or he was bleeding now and bleeding on me. And I don't know what he
00:28:49.020
has diseases. Who knows? I don't want to deal with that. In the context of the fight, there's a,
00:28:53.740
we live in a very litigious society. So I might win the fight and get sued, right? So self-defense
00:29:00.220
doesn't just mean protecting yourself from getting punched by the other guy. Self-defense means avoiding
00:29:06.000
the fight at all costs because of the possible variables that could come into the fight that you
00:29:11.640
could have never predicted could be the ones ultimately to defeat you, right? When you,
00:29:17.840
when you don't normally think about that, you think of losing to the opponent. No, you lose to the
00:29:21.020
circumstance. You lose to the environment. You lose to the stand, the, the, the, the, the bystander who
00:29:25.460
kicks you in the head because it's his friend that you're fighting and you didn't see them.
00:29:28.640
So there's so many variables that learning jujitsu and building confidence to be able to interact
00:29:35.000
with someone confidently. The best part about that is that my likelihood of engaging in an actual fight,
00:29:41.640
drops so low because I respect the engagement so much, right? I respect the possibility of
00:29:48.540
unpredictability in a fight so much. I don't want to get into a fight ever with anyone. And by and
00:29:55.200
large, my ability to interact with someone in a threatening situation, in a calm, confident,
00:30:00.280
you know, objective demeanor and manner, that is largely why I never have to fight anyone.
00:30:05.660
So if I didn't have the jujitsu that I have, Brett, if I didn't have the confidence that I have,
00:30:09.840
what would happen is in a, in a moment of tense disagreement or, or, you know, high combative
00:30:17.020
energy between me and another subject in that moment of intensity conversation or a buildup
00:30:22.320
before the fight, people who don't know how to defend themselves tend to overreact in those
00:30:26.880
situations because they're so scared of the interaction and of the possibility of a fight
00:30:31.800
that they overcompensate. The problem is that overcompensation is a sign of weakness and it's very
00:30:37.000
obvious to the opponent and they realize that you're just pumping, you're just faking it here
00:30:42.880
and that you're weak. And as a result, you're a, you're a better target for them. So isn't it
00:30:47.260
interesting how it kind of all cycles back, right? And, and for me, I just want to make sure that
00:30:52.440
whoever I'm dealing with knows that I'm a hundred percent prepared. I don't want to fight you,
00:30:56.700
but if we have to get down, let's do it. Say go.
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00:33:26.060
Yeah. Yeah. So it's by becoming more dangerous, you actually become less dangerous.
00:33:29.980
To yourself. Yeah. And to other people. You're absolutely right. Like I know of a guy who's
00:33:34.160
an uncle of mine, who's not a Gracie uncle on the other side of the family, right? Who was at a sporting
00:33:40.880
game and an incident happened where some guy was very sitting in front of him and was very
00:33:46.980
loud language, very inappropriate language and was just talking and cussing and cheering. One of those
00:33:52.360
fans who just out of control. Right. And then this man in the situation, he, he was, he was, he's married
00:33:59.660
to a relative of mine, but he's not a jujitsu master and has no training. Right. So he didn't really kind
00:34:04.580
of adopt that lifestyle. So he's married to a Gracie, but he's not a Gracie. And he, in response
00:34:11.480
to this inappropriate behavior of to the man in front of him, he got up and he just went freaking
00:34:17.400
ape wild in terms of yelling and just way beyond the reasonable threshold of interaction. And what
00:34:25.260
became clear. And fortunately my family member who was with him calmed him down and like kind of brought
00:34:30.240
him back to, and just kind of intervene and stopped anything from boiling over, but he went freaking
00:34:34.540
nuts. And later the family member confided to me and said, yeah, Henry, he was scared and he was,
00:34:40.360
he doesn't know how to fight. So he just went so wild with his words that he felt that that would
00:34:45.840
prevent the fight from ever happening, you know? And I can see how someone can think that right by
00:34:51.700
overreacting and being acting crazy. But the, the subject on the other side of that, if that was,
00:34:56.700
if it was uninterrupted, they would have fought and the subject on the other side would have been
00:35:00.080
offended by his overaggression and would have seen that his overaggression was a, was a front.
00:35:05.060
And you can tell, right? It's very simple because everyone knows what you said, which is
00:35:09.020
the most deadly Navy SEALs and Delta force operators never overreact to anything. And the most deadly MMA
00:35:14.900
fighters never overreact to anything. And the most deadly jujitsu black belts never overreact to
00:35:20.040
anything because they're not scared. So people who overreact are scared. And this is not private
00:35:24.860
confidential information. The public knows this. So when you flip out the guy at the
00:35:30.060
at the baseball game, he's going to know this guy's freaking hollow, he's faking it. And he's
00:35:34.880
hollow. There's nothing inside. He's putting on a front versus another situation where I had,
00:35:40.440
where I was with my, my now wife, then girlfriend Eve at house of blues Anaheim, watching our good
00:35:45.780
friends, Ozo Motley perform. And there was a guy who was next to us in the crowd, great dancing music,
00:35:52.000
very fun, Latin alternative band. And, and this guy's dancing, but it wasn't even like a punk rock
00:35:58.120
engagement. But this guy's in his own mind, his own mosh pit dancing loosely, arms swinging, just
00:36:04.300
bouncing around in the crowd where everyone else was kind of keeping to themselves. And I happened to
00:36:08.500
be next to him. So where, when he was dancing around crazy, he would occasionally bump into
00:36:13.960
myself. And obviously I put myself towards his side so that Eve was on my left and he was on my
00:36:18.340
right. So he wouldn't be touching her, but he would just shoulder bump, shoulder bump, bouncing,
00:36:21.820
shoulder bump, shoulder bump. And it just got to the point, bro, where it was affecting my
00:36:25.880
enjoyment of the night. So I, I, I suspect I could have just moved out of the way, right. And walk
00:36:31.740
somewhere else. But I knew that what he was doing was unpleasant, not just for me, but for everyone
00:36:37.100
around him. Cause he was just not following the vibe of the room. So instead what I did was I took
00:36:44.160
my right hand and I grabbed him behind his neck with my right hand. Just like, like, you know,
00:36:49.720
like sometimes you put your hand around your friend and you like put your hand over his shoulder,
00:36:52.860
like a bro, like a little half bro hug over the shoulder. But instead of over the shoulder,
00:36:57.320
I actually grabbed with my thumb and my four fingers. Like I grabbed the back of his neck with
00:37:02.120
a little bit of pressure and I stopped him right where he was standing. And I stood behind him at
00:37:06.660
a kind of a 45 degree angle so that he wouldn't have a punching angle on me. And literally imagine
00:37:10.960
someone standing behind you and to your left with their hand on your neck. And I whispered to him,
00:37:14.960
I said, Hey, my friend, I can see you having a really good time, but you're bumping into us.
00:37:19.900
So do me a favor, calm it down just a little bit and we should be good to go.
00:37:25.460
Just right to his ear. No one else even heard. And it was very objective. It was very clear and
00:37:30.180
it was not raising my voice. And with the clarity of the message, he looked, he peeked over his left
00:37:36.240
shoulder and looked at me and I was a little bit taller than him, but he looked at me and
00:37:40.640
he just kind of moved to the right. And that was the end of the mosh pit. It was done.
00:37:45.680
You see? So I don't know what would happen if someone else, you know,
00:37:50.820
overreacted in that situation. Would the guy have fought or not? I don't even know. But what I do know
00:37:55.300
is that guy felt, that guy felt based on my C clamp on his neck and the calmness of my voice
00:38:03.100
that I was ready to engage if I had to. And my willingness to engage and my calmness
00:38:11.300
meant that I didn't have to. But before I grabbed his neck, do you think I contemplated the possibility
00:38:19.800
of having to fight this guy? Yes. I contemplated it. And I said, okay, I don't think it's going to
00:38:26.060
happen, but if it does, Hey, it's, I can handle it. So because I have the ability and the willingness,
00:38:33.260
not the eagerness to engage, that's a big difference, but the preparedness to engage safely,
00:38:39.280
I didn't have to. Now I wouldn't recommend the same strategy for everyone, obviously. But what
00:38:44.600
I will say is that a calm, clear demeanor, right? Calm, assertive, confident demeanor goes a long
00:38:53.920
way. But the problem is a lot of the listeners are listening right now saying, wow, that sounds
00:38:58.300
great. And I'd love to, to be able to have that. You can't have that without the internal technique.
00:39:04.260
That's the challenge. It's like teaching a kid bully proof. We have an amazing kids program
00:39:08.320
called bully proof. And it's the best kids program to teach kids how to defend against
00:39:14.020
bullies in a school, you know, schoolyard scenario. And what we tell the parents and the kids is say,
00:39:19.600
guys, kids target kids who don't know how to stand up for themselves or who won't stand up for
00:39:24.580
themselves. You have to set boundaries and you have to stand up for yourself or you're going to get
00:39:30.340
bullied for the rest of your life. It's that simple. Here's the challenge. Setting the boundary
00:39:35.440
relies on you knowing that if you were to be attacked by the bully, you're not going to get
00:39:40.520
hurt. And that's why we learned jujitsu to avoid injury in the case of an attack and to control the
00:39:46.960
bully without violence, nonviolent control tactics for the bully or for the defendants against the
00:39:52.480
bully. So once you learn the jujitsu, then you can speak to the bully in a way where they won't
00:39:57.160
bully you anymore. But the jujitsu comes first, even though the fight may never happen.
00:40:01.040
And that breakthrough, you know, has prevented so many fights for adults, kids, women, everyone.
00:40:09.000
Yeah. So this is another thing. I'm curious if you've seen in your experience teaching
00:40:14.860
BJJ to people that confidence that comes that they know how to defend themselves in a situation,
00:40:21.960
if that carries over to other aspects of their life, do you see people becoming more assertive
00:40:27.960
in their work and, you know, more, you know, take more of a leadership role in their families?
00:40:31.000
That's how people, every single person, every single person who does jujitsu,
00:40:35.920
they start for self-defense. They stay for life. And the best example is one of our recent blue belts,
00:40:44.220
Vince Vaughn, the actor, who is one of our most dedicated students, started, his daughter started,
00:40:48.920
he started his daughter in the bully proof program, right? He lives here in the South Bay. We have,
00:40:55.100
we have thousands of people who are doing bully proof at home with their parents for our listeners.
00:40:59.020
You can do it at your house. We have it on DVD. We have it on, on, on streaming video through
00:41:03.600
gracieuniversity.com. There are parents who are actually learning bully proof at home with their
00:41:08.720
kids on the living room floor. And then periodically they send in a video every eight to 12 months of
00:41:14.880
their child's performance and knowledge of the techniques. And the kid can actually earn belt
00:41:17.920
promotions from a distance, or they can come to one of our schools and test in person. But there are
00:41:22.900
families who are doing this at home. Vince lives right here, 10 minutes away from our school.
00:41:27.760
So he brings his daughter to bully proof class after seeing some of our bully proof videos on
00:41:32.460
the internet. He loved the concept. He had tried another jujitsu school before coming here. And it
00:41:39.960
was very sportive jujitsu. And he says, and he's pretty public about this. He was like, yeah, the things
00:41:45.400
they were learning, I could not see the applicability to a bullying encounter that my child,
00:41:50.900
my, his, my daughter would encounter. It didn't even make sense to me what they were doing. And I'm
00:41:54.220
an adult. So then he saw more of our videos and that's when he came to our school and every single
00:41:59.700
class, every single move we do is directly extrapolated from a realistic contemplated bullying
00:42:06.040
situation. We're talking role-playing. We're talking pure pressure. We're talking, a kid comes up to
00:42:10.920
another kid and says, Hey, if you don't throw this rock at that window, you're not my friend anymore.
00:42:15.660
How, when does a child learn to set boundaries with their own friends about inappropriate behavior,
00:42:23.980
drugs and alcohol, things like that? When do, who teaches them that? Nobody. The school will tell
00:42:28.520
them don't do drugs. The parents will tell them, you know, stand up for yourself. But that's a very,
00:42:34.220
you know, that's a very vague piece of advice. What we do is we actually role-play every single one
00:42:39.780
of those scenarios in the classes that we do. And then if things go south and they have to defend
00:42:44.820
themselves because the bully attacks them, we teach them how to defend them with that as well,
00:42:48.300
non-violently. So Vince's daughter's in class having a blast, loving the classes. He's watching
00:42:54.640
her for several months, not doing classes. And, you know, of course everyone's like, all right,
00:42:59.260
well, Vince doesn't want to do jujitsu. And then one day I told the receptionist here, I said, Hey,
00:43:03.220
next time Vince comes in, tell him, ask him if he wants to try a jujitsu class for himself.
00:43:08.340
And, you know, very glad to hear he was super stoked about the idea. He was like, yeah,
00:43:14.300
I'd love to. So I pulled him in for a private class. First class is free for everybody. So I
00:43:18.460
say, come on in Vince. And I do a class and this guy freaking loves it. One class. He's like,
00:43:26.320
Henner, schedule is very busy, but how often can I get in here? How often can you teach me? And I'm
00:43:30.680
like, hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm busy too, man. So I want to find some guys. So we found a panel
00:43:34.440
of instructors. He's doing private training classes at least three days a week. Now he's
00:43:38.520
doing private personal training in jujitsu on top of everything else he does, producing and acting.
00:43:43.760
And he is the most outspoken about Henner. The jujitsu techniques, self-defense, great. But he's
00:43:49.760
like six, five, six, four, 220 pounds. He's a big guy. And he says, Henner, the jujitsu self-defense,
00:43:56.380
I love it for my daughter. Amazing. And for me, at least I know I can defend myself now against,
00:44:00.460
you know, crazy fans or people who say stupid things to celebrities, which a lot of people do.
00:44:05.140
At least I know I can defend myself without hurting another person. Meaning if someone were to,
00:44:10.100
you know, come up and threaten me or attack me or throw some bottle at me, I don't know,
00:44:13.160
I can neutralize them and not have to punch them in the face. So from a liability perspective,
00:44:17.500
as a celebrity, this is the best thing I've ever done. So he loves it, right? In that sense. But he
00:44:23.500
said, I'll tell you what, the bigger benefit is how it's changing my interaction with my family,
00:44:27.840
my wife, in terms of how it's changing my interaction professionally. I'm calmer.
00:44:33.140
I'm more, I'm more technical in my approach to life overall. And, you know, and I think
00:44:38.840
by and large, that's the number one benefit of jujitsu that people realize essentially after
00:44:44.760
they've done it for a little while is that it has nothing to do with fighting. We're learning
00:44:48.780
how to solve problems in the most technical leverage-based way every single day. If you were
00:44:55.200
to come to my class today, Brett, I would say, okay, guys, welcome to class. Here's a headlock.
00:44:59.200
How would you get out of this headlock? And then you would say, I don't know. And you would try a
00:45:04.840
little bit, fail, fail, fail. And then I'd say, watch this. And I'd show you the solution and you
00:45:09.160
would be mind blown by the simple effectiveness of the solution. And when you see that solution on
00:45:14.160
day one, and then day two, different hold, different escape. Day three, different threat,
00:45:18.780
different escape. Day four, punching situation, neutralize the punches the easiest way possible.
00:45:23.280
Every single day, you're being presented with seemingly impossible threat scenarios. And then
00:45:30.320
you're being given the key, the secret to being able to escape that threat in a very easy manner.
00:45:36.320
Think about what that does to your confidence when you encounter a challenge or a difficulty
00:45:40.680
that is not related to jujitsu. Think about that, how that affects your ability to interact
00:45:45.920
with that threat scenario or life problem in a way where you know now that impossibilities are just
00:45:54.320
techniques waiting to be discovered. And that's the greatest benefit of practicing jujitsu beyond
00:46:01.020
It's money. That's my Vince Vaughn swingers reference there. Money, baby.
00:46:07.980
So, okay, let's walk that through. So say someone is listening to this and like, I want to do
00:46:11.960
Brazilian jujitsu and they find there's a Gracie place just right down the street from my place.
00:46:18.280
It's just opened up here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They show up, like, what is a typical class look
00:46:24.100
like? What are they, what's the, what are they going to expect? Is it, they're just going to be
00:46:26.680
working on a move? Is there warmups? And what is that like?
00:46:29.020
Great question. Yeah. So let me walk you through that. So here's the thing. I have to start by saying
00:46:32.920
that not all Gracie schools are created equally, right? So a lot of people have the perception that
00:46:37.520
there's one Gracie organization and that's it. No, we have ours, Gracie University.
00:46:41.960
Gracie university.com. And we have about 150 certified locations where that we've personally,
00:46:47.940
my brother and I being at the helm here have personally certified those instructors to teach
00:46:52.400
the curriculum. 100% the same as if you were learning with me here in Torrance, California.
00:46:58.680
And we've been able to maintain a quality standard at these schools that no other organization has
00:47:03.220
been able to largely because of our use of the internet and technology. We have eyes on the ground
00:47:08.840
everywhere and we can see the quality on a regular basis. And, and we have a truly remarkable kind
00:47:13.580
of quality assurance system in place other, but in the Gracie family, there are over 50 members of
00:47:18.560
the family who do jujitsu professionally. And each one of those might have five schools. One guy might
00:47:23.720
have 20 schools. One guy might have 50 schools. So they're all different. You see? So even in the
00:47:28.300
Gracie family, it's like, we're all growing the same fruits, so to speak with different variations and
00:47:33.720
sport emphasis. But so it's like all these different trees in the same orchard, right? We're all pushing
00:47:38.860
jujitsu, but each one has their own tree and each tree has its own branches. So on our branch tree,
00:47:44.940
we have 150 branches all over the world that, uh, that I said, follow these exacting curriculums that
00:47:50.380
we, now most other organizations, whether they're Gracie or not, the different schools in an organization
00:47:55.840
have no, how do I say curriculum structuring the teachings at the school, meaning you might go to
00:48:02.280
school one and it's different than school two and two is different than three and four. And each of
00:48:06.740
these individually owned martial arts schools are teaching something completely different than the
00:48:11.280
next in these different organizations. And that was something that we, we figured out very early
00:48:15.460
on how to maintain that quality. And that's a reason for our growth and why we're, you know,
00:48:19.720
the leaders in the industry is because of that quality control. So if you go to a school or you drive
00:48:24.040
by and you see Gracie's X, Y, Z, don't just think that a, there's a Gracie there and B, even if they're
00:48:29.920
associated with the Gracie family member, that the teachings in that school are in any way
00:48:36.060
resemblant of what the master Gracie, you know, tree trunk would be teaching you if he were there
00:48:42.540
in person, I should say. Now, some schools do it. Some organizations do it better than others.
00:48:46.780
And by the way, this is in the Gracie family and outside the Gracie family, just jujitsu.
00:48:51.060
There's a lot of different affiliations that are called, and each one has their own way of trying
00:48:55.180
to maintain some kind of order, but it actually is a madhouse. Oh, by and large, it's crazy. So
00:49:00.200
what I say to people is this, never just trust the name. Never just trust the name on the storefront
00:49:05.300
at a martial arts school. Go to the school and don't discredit them because of a name and don't
00:49:10.760
credit them because of the name. Even if it says Gracie, go to the school, look at the school and
00:49:15.560
make sure it's the right fit for you by watching several classes, by looking around, seeing if the
00:49:19.860
vibe is right. So by and large, let the experience outweigh any name on any storefront. Now that said,
00:49:26.080
of our schools that we've personally certified, same thing, right? You know, the fact that I've
00:49:31.140
stamped it and I can tell you that exactly what they're teaching in their class today in Tulsa,
00:49:35.000
Oklahoma, right? If I just were to look at it and do some research, I can tell you exactly what's
00:49:38.880
being taught at our school in Tulsa. Still, you have to go there and make sure the vibe is right for
00:49:43.060
you. But here's how it works. You would typically call in or schedule an introductory class,
00:49:46.500
in which case you'll go to a class. It'll be a beginner class, right?
00:49:49.540
So our beginner program is called Gracie Combatives. And that's a 36 technique program
00:49:55.500
just for beginners, zero to 12 months experience. And Gracie Combatives is a distillation of over
00:50:03.020
600 techniques down to the core 36 that we have been teaching the U.S. Army for about the last 25
00:50:08.980
years. So basically the mindset of that program is you might not be able to commit 10 years to
00:50:14.480
jujitsu. But if you can commit, you know, six months, eight months, 12 months, every single
00:50:19.880
technique that you learned during that 12 month period is going to be something that you absolutely
00:50:25.620
can't live without. Like literally these are the nuts and bolts of jujitsu. And oftentimes schools
00:50:31.320
don't have a beginner program at all. So you might show up to a BJJ school and they say, okay, come on
00:50:36.180
into class. And you're in a class with brown and black belts and you're a white belt. And obviously in that
00:50:41.080
case, they're going to be teaching, tailoring it to the more advanced students. So you just become a
00:50:45.140
grappling dummy. And that's why so many people have tried jujitsu and had negative experiences
00:50:49.440
is because schools don't do a good job of creating entry-level beginner programs that have no intensity,
00:50:57.680
no sparring, no fighting. They're literally just learning the pieces of the puzzle. They're learning
00:51:02.980
the alphabet in those beginner 36 techniques, 23 classes. Once you go through that program, right?
00:51:09.280
And here's the cool part. It's a 23 lesson, 36 techniques, 23 one hour lessons. It's a cyclic
00:51:14.620
program. So if today's class number 12, tomorrow is 13 and then 14, and it goes through the entire
00:51:19.560
month like that. And the best part is this program that we created and that all of our schools teach,
00:51:24.180
I can only speak on behalf of ours, that program, you can start at any time in the cycle and you can
00:51:29.760
complete the 23 lessons in any order. So this is where the kind of the real genius of the curriculum
00:51:36.100
is, is that a beginner can show up literally on class number 12, have zero experience ever doing
00:51:41.700
jujitsu, do that class and not feel overwhelmed or confused or like they're missing pieces of the
00:51:47.580
puzzle because we teach every single lesson in the Gracie Combatives program as if every student is
00:51:52.640
there for their first time. So that you can imagine for a beginner is very important because otherwise
00:51:57.680
you're always feeling like you're missing pieces of the puzzle. And why don't I know the moves that
00:52:01.560
they're referencing? And what are they talking about? And the language being used is so confusing
00:52:04.780
that never happens in our program. You come in and you're taking care of every single class.
00:52:09.600
And then what you do is you keep swimming in this pond, this Gracie Combatives pond for,
00:52:14.820
like I said, eight to 12 months. Once you graduate, you take a test on all those 36 techniques,
00:52:19.980
demonstrating high proficiency, fluidity, muscle memory. And once you have those core concepts
00:52:25.380
understood, then you go into another program. And it's like, you know, now you're in the ocean of
00:52:30.420
jujitsu, right? But you don't go into the ocean until you can swim in a pond or a pool.
00:52:34.880
And that's the analogy. And that's the situation we've built and why our schools are,
00:52:39.180
you know, growing at a rate that few others are is because we capture and keep the beginners
00:52:44.660
so safely and so effectively kind of engaged in jujitsu in a way that they can actually learn
00:52:51.360
and be proficient from day one. It's like going, you know, to surfing school. And literally the first
00:52:57.240
day you go to surf, you're standing up and you're riding waves. And every day after that, you're riding
00:53:01.320
waves, you're riding waves, you're riding waves. We've figured that out for jujitsu. Whereas most
00:53:05.680
other schools, you show up to surf camp and they say, here's a board, there's the waves, go out
00:53:09.740
there, figure it out. And you're struggling for the first six months. You'll eventually learn how
00:53:13.800
to surf, but it sucks for the first six months to a year. And then finally you poke your head up and
00:53:18.960
you go, okay, I know how to surf. But the question is how many people even last six months swimming in
00:53:24.000
the ocean with the board and crashing waves? Most people quit. 90% of people quit before they ever
00:53:31.920
Is Brazilian jujitsu something you need to be in decent shape for? Or is it just a young man's game?
00:53:36.520
No, not. Well, here's the thing. It's the same as the surfing analogy. If the surf instructor sucks
00:53:43.540
and the ocean is crazy, yes, you're going to show up on day one and you're going to say, man,
00:53:48.180
my cardio is not good enough to get up on this board because I'm suffering, getting slammed by
00:53:52.120
these waves so much. So in the survival of the fittest framework that a lot of schools promote
00:53:57.720
and have, a lot of schools are like this. It's sad to see that they even survive as businesses,
00:54:01.460
but in that survival of the fittest environment, you absolutely have to be a great athlete.
00:54:05.200
You have to be incredibly dedicated and you have to make up your mind that there's nothing that
00:54:08.460
will make you quit because everything will try to make you quit. In our schools, our thought is the
00:54:13.040
opposite. Our thought is no, jujitsu was developed by the grandmaster, my grandfather, specifically for
00:54:19.260
the unathletic, smaller, weaker men and women of society. So if we don't create a beginner entry-level
00:54:26.140
program that caters to that audience, we're literally wasting our existence away. What the heck are we
00:54:33.660
doing here if everyone doesn't feel welcome in the programs that we create and have for beginners?
00:54:40.140
So it's a completely school-by-school approach, but in our case, in order to be a certified Gracie
00:54:46.180
Jiu-Jitsu Training Center and appear on our website, gracieuniversity.com, you absolutely have to A,
00:54:52.560
get certified to teach the program and B, uphold the program. And if we hear it for one second that a
00:54:57.700
school is deviating or not teaching the program in the safe, structured format that it should be taught
00:55:03.360
in, which has happened on rare occasions, then we call them up. And if it's not fixed immediately,
00:55:07.360
we pull the plug and they're no longer a certified training center. So that level of consistency and
00:55:12.480
quality control doesn't really exist in Jiu-Jitsu. And it's something that it's been essentially my
00:55:18.100
biggest contribution to Jiu-Jitsu has been the structuring of it for the easy onboarding of
00:55:23.620
beginners who want to learn the art. Well, this is fantastic. So people can go to
00:55:27.340
gracieuniversity.com to find all this stuff. And yes, gracieuniversity.com is where you go A,
00:55:33.480
to find a school near you. If you have a CTC within 10, 15 miles, absolutely you should go in.
00:55:39.460
And if you tell them Henner sent you, that you heard Henner on the Art of Manliness podcast,
00:55:44.400
then you will get 10 days free. They'll sign you up for a 10-day free trial, nothing, no pay,
00:55:49.720
just go in there and just train for 10 days, all you can eat. And you're going to love it. After 10
00:55:54.300
days, you're going to say, wow, why have I waited so long to do this? What was I thinking? And then
00:55:58.760
you have options to sign up after the fact. If you don't have a CTC, go to Gracie University,
00:56:03.060
create a free student profile, and you'll have access to the first, you know, three lessons,
00:56:08.220
four lessons in Gracie Combatives. And then some lessons in our Gracie Bullyproof program,
00:56:12.360
which is also available online. You'll have free access to Women Empowered, our women's program to
00:56:16.940
defend against sexual assault, which my wife Eve is the head instructor of. So we have programs for
00:56:21.900
every demographic. GST, Gracie Survival Tactics, is for law enforcement. So all of these have free
00:56:27.340
samples online. And then you can learn more about them, buy them online, or go to a school where
00:56:31.300
they teach the program. So that's definitely where you want to go for everything jujitsu
00:56:35.980
is gracieuniversity.com. So just to make things clear, you guys have a whole online program where you can
00:56:41.900
train at home, get feedback on your progress, and meet up with other training partners in your area.
00:56:46.940
So if you don't live by a training center, you're not out of luck.
00:56:50.160
Now, in addition to jujitsu, you've got another side business going on, right?
00:56:54.280
The other business that I just started right now, which is just kind of wildfire going crazy in
00:56:58.320
every direction and very exciting, is this quick flip apparel, right? So I'm at the park with my
00:57:02.800
son one day, and I'm not an apparel guy. I'm at the park with my son. I'm frustrated because it's
00:57:07.720
getting hot and I'm wearing a hoodie. It was actually one of my jujitsu hoodies. And I take off my hoodie
00:57:12.060
and I throw it over my shoulder because I don't want to tie it on my waist. I throw it over my
00:57:15.760
shoulder. And then I'm walking after my son and I go to pick him up. He's only two. And I go to scoop
00:57:20.400
him up to go home. And the hoodie slides off my shoulder and it lands on the grass. And the grass
00:57:25.860
was still wet from the night before because it was a little bit, it had rained the night before.
00:57:30.080
So the hoodie hits the wet grass and I'm like, I'm frustrated. You know, that little moment of
00:57:33.820
frustration you have at points in your life when things don't go exactly as planned. So I pick up the
00:57:37.500
hoodie with that, I start sweating a little bit because I'm so frustrated, pick up the hoodie. And I think
00:57:41.540
this is ridiculous. There has to be a better way to carry a sweatshirt or hoodie that you're not
00:57:48.180
wearing. Tying it around your waist is not only fashionably unacceptable, but tying it around your
00:57:54.920
waist. If you sit down on a bench, your hoodie is going to get wet. If you're riding a bike,
00:57:58.960
your hoodie can get stuck in the wheel of the bicycle. It stretches out the sleeves. And if you
00:58:04.520
don't want to do that, you're limited. You put it over your shoulder. It's not secure. It's not on.
00:58:07.840
If you tie it around your neck, you can get choked and it looks like you, you know, belong to a
00:58:11.580
European yacht club. So there's many options, but none of them are really that efficient. So I went
00:58:16.660
home frustrated by this problem. And what did I do? Gracie jujitsu on the hoodie. I get home and I'm
00:58:24.360
like, this is ridiculous. We got to figure this out. So with shoestrings, paper clips, duct tape,
00:58:29.680
and scissors, within 30 minutes, I create a functioning prototype of a hoodie that converts into a
00:58:37.000
functional backpack in my house, just like that. Fast forward six months, 15 iterations later of
00:58:44.400
the, of the prototype, modify, modified, modified, a lot of R and D brought in professionals to help me
00:58:49.580
construct the garment. We're going to production. We launched quick flip apparel and this, this hoodie
00:58:55.220
is called the hero hoodie. And now we're freaking selling tons of them. And this is a new business
00:59:00.860
that came out of nowhere. And I'm patenting three patents on the technology to convert a hoodie into a
00:59:05.900
backpack. And we're going through that process right now. And it's the only hoodie that converts
00:59:10.940
into a fully functional backpack. And it's actually the most comfortable and best fitting hoodie you'll
00:59:15.520
ever own. So now I'm in the hoodie business and people love it. There you go. Well, Henner,
00:59:20.680
this has been a great conversation. Thanks for coming on, man. Awesome, man. Congratulations on all
00:59:24.640
the great work and thank you for the support and all those listeners out there. It's just a matter of
00:59:29.480
time before you try your first jujitsu lesson. And when you do it, you're going to regret not doing it
00:59:33.580
when I first told you to do it. Thanks, man. Thanks, brother. My guest, it was Henner Gracie.
00:59:37.680
He is the head instructor of the Gracie Jiu Jitsu Academy and the co-creator of Gracie University.
00:59:41.320
You can find out more information about that at gracieuniversity.com. Also check out our show
00:59:45.720
notes at aom.is slash Gracie where you can find links to notes. We can delve deeper into this topic.
00:59:51.360
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
01:00:08.000
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy
01:00:11.520
the show, I'd appreciate it if you give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if
01:00:15.280
you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who
01:00:19.260
you would think get something out of it. As always, thank you for your continued support.
01:00:22.600
And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.