Gracie Fighting Secrets Revealed! Marcio Feitosa Talks About Training, Techniques and Teams
in Brazil
Gracie Fighting Secrets Revealed! Marcio Feitosa Talks About Training, Techniques and Teams
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Marcio Feitosa is the head instructor for Gracie Barra, the Brazilian-jiu-jitsu team headed by Carlos Gracie Jr. that has produced such competitors as Renzo Gracie, the Machado brothers, Nino Schembri and others. Experienced in competition, Feitosa counts among his victories the prestigious Abu Dhabi Combat Club Championship, the World Brazilian Jiu-jitsu Championship and the Pan American Championship. In this exclusive interview, he discusses the state of the grappling art in the land of its birth. —S.K. How did you get started in the martial arts? I started to train with Carlos Gracie Jr. when I was 12. I grew up at the academy. My father left my family, so my brother and I took care of my mother and two sisters. We were living in an expensive apartment in Barra, so my brother and I decided we were going to pay the bills. Carlos knew I had to make money, and he always gave me jobs as a jiu-jitsu teacher. I’ve earned my living from teaching jiu-jitsu since I was 15, teaching every day. I am 28 years old and have had my black belt for nine years. I did not get ready to be a great fighter; I got ready to become a great teacher. I prepared myself as a fighter when I had a bit of extra time. I never had two or three weeks to get ready for a tournament. I was always teaching classes, and at the end I got ready for the tournament.
Does the Gracie Barra school have a characteristic style of jiu-jitsu? I don’t think so because we never train primarily for competition. At the academy, there is no incentive for students to specialize in competition because we think that when you teach this way, you limit a student’s game. For example, some academies spend all their time on guard passing and guard defense because that is where you are most of the time during competition. Or they try to find a certain talent that a kid has so they can improve it, score points and win the tournaments. Our biggest goal was never to win competitions; it is to improve people’s minds and spirits through jiu-jitsu. We try to use jiu-jitsu as a mirror for the student’s life. We try to work the whole picture: the techniques, the way of life. If you limit the techniques because you are preparing only for tournaments, imagine what else you are going to leave out of that student’s training. Today, we do things in a certain way, and I’m not sure if it is the proper way to practice jiu-jitsu. Long ago, jiu-jitsu used to be more individual, but it used to be really expensive. Today, we have much bigger classes with 80 or 90 people, so there is no way you can let the people spar for half an hour at a time. Today, we do interval training, and usually we use 10-minute rounds. We encourage them to let the game flow, to fight from every position and to feel safe whatever position the person is in. In the old days, you didn’t really spar in rounds. The guys used to spar once or twice, but when they sparred, they kept on going until one person tapped or asked for a rest. Carlos Gracie Jr. still trains that way today; he never does interval training. He calls a partner, and they spar for 25 or 30 minutes. If he’s feeling good or if the other guy taps early, then Carlos might train twice.
Does Gracie Barra emphasize vale tudo, or no-holds-barred fighting? No. Carlos never wanted to push people to go out there and fight in no-holds-barred because you can hurt yourself bad. Vale tudo fighting was very important in jiu-jitsu history, but Carlos didn’t want anyone to take vale tudo as a way of life because he didn’t take it for himself. I did one no-rules fight, but Carlos never pushed me to do it. He said, “If you want to go, that’s OK.” He always showed us the techniques for vale tudo but never pushed us to specialize in it. Then vale tudo became a big business, and a lot of our students started to ask for it. They were saying, “I want to make money from this; I want to make it my way of life.” So Carlos said: “OK, you guys are asking for it. I don’t want you to go out there and mess up your face.” He helps with all the jiu-jitsu techniques but doesn’t want to be the figurehead of the team. Now they have a wrestling coach, a muay Thai coach and a manager who takes care of the team. Do you train with and without a gi? We used to train only with a gi; nowadays we do no-gi every Friday. But even on Fridays, at least half of our students show up with a gi. Guys like training with a gi much more than training without it. I also like a gi much better. After a while training without a gi, you don’t have as much to do. It’s not as technical. With a gi, you have to think much more, and it keeps your interest alive. With a gi, you can continue to improve for your whole life, and without a gi, there is not as much technique involved. Do you believe there is an “old jiu-jitsu” and a “new jiu-jitsu”? Not really. There isn’t an old and new jiu-jitsu, but the techniques are always improving. There aren’t rules that limit your moves on the ground; that’s why jiu-jitsu is amazing. People are always developing new techniques. For example, I learn a lot from my students. Even an average guy has at least one area that he is very strong at. If you pay attention to this area, you will learn something from him. This way, the technique keeps on developing. The biggest difference that I see between the old school and the people today isn’t so much about techniques like the half guard and butterfly guard. Today, many of the clubs just focus on competition and making good fighters; they concentrate on a few techniques and conditioning. There are so many other things included in jiu-jitsu that people are forgetting. Before, they used to do it much better. They involved you in a way of life. They used to be good on the ground, but they also knew the complete self-defense program and the takedowns. Today, people are mutilating jiu-jitsu. Some guys have no stand-up fighting. They come out and are almost lying down on the mats in their eagerness to jump to the guard. If they are on top, they are dead. On the ground at a lot of gyms, people only know how to pass the guard and defend the guard. If you let a guy from the old school pin you in the side mount, you’re going to tap for sure. You see, they used to train longer, so they spent much more time in the mount, the side mount and on someone’s back. So today, if you don’t have as much time to spend sparring, you should at least do specific training and [practice] the mount, side-mount and back positions. Does training with a gi help your ability when you compete without a gi? I’ve never seen a person who has only trained no-gi but feels comfortable on the bottom, in the open guard, in the closed guard, on top and so on. When someone has trained his whole life without a gi, his game is different. A gi gives you a different mobility and teaches you to work at different angles that are impossible to learn just doing no-gi. Of course, this doesn’t mean that people who have only trained no-gi won’t be very tough in competition. But to be really good and a complete fighter is different. Do you think sambo, freestyle wrestling and other grappling arts have influenced jiu-jitsu during the past 10 years? Of course, there was an influence. I saw it when the first foreigners came to Brazil. Our single-leg and double-leg takedowns used to be completely different from today because it was enough to take the other person down. So once another person showed up with a different balance and a stronger sprawl, we stopped and studied the moves and angles. That’s just one example of an influence from another style. I remember when the first guys showed up going for kneebars and this sort of stuff—I think it came from sambo. We stopped and studied the new moves. If the guys made someone tap with this, it meant the move worked. The Gracies were always very intelligent. They never limited jiu-jitsu. They never said, “We don’t practice techniques from another system,” unless those techniques didn’t work or were dangerous for training partners. They always absorbed things that worked well. Are leg locks cheap techniques? It’s true that foot locks don’t let the game flow as nice as it can flow, but they are moves just like any other moves. The only thing we tell our students not to use is anything that rotates the knee to the inside. It’s not that we don’t like that move; it’s because it can damage your partner. With the rotation, when you feel the pain, your knee is already injured, so that is why we stopped teaching this move. We also don’t teach the cervical (spine lock) because you can hurt someone really bad with it. It’s true that some people don’t like leg locks, but they work. You’ve got to use them, so you learn to defend against them. You tend to see more leg locks in no-gi grappling. Yes. It is harder to get an arm because it’s so slippery—and other things, too. When you train foot locks with a gi, you must be more technical because the other guy will grab your collar and be able to defend much better. If he does this, you can get tired trying to pull his foot all the time. Without a gi, it’s harder for the person to defend. Your foot is slippery, but once the guy catches it, it is harder to defend since you don’t have a gi to hold. Also, without a gi, you have fewer submissions. You don’t have the collar to use all the time, so you have fewer arm locks and chokes. So you use more foot locks, kneebars and leg locks.
What advice would you give to a person who had only two months to prepare for a big competition? I cannot give you a program that I would give to everyone. It depends on his game. A teacher has to have the eye to understand what is going on with his student’s mind, and that is what makes it hard to be a teacher. If you figure out why a student isn’t doing well in competition, you can change that. Sometimes just through conversation you can make someone a champion. One guy might need a strong conditioning program because technically inferior fighters are beating him. Another guy might already be very strong but not very technical—say he isn’t very good on his feet—then you want to have him do a lot of stand-up training so at least he feels a little bit safer and more confident there. You might have a good training routine worked out, but listen to your body. If you didn’t sleep well this week, you can’t do as much as you did last week. The first part of training is sleeping. If you don’t sleep, you can’t do anything unless you are using chemicals and steroids. Steroids will let you train hard without enough sleep, but in 10 or 20 years’ time, your body will complain. What are your plans for the future? I’ve been a fighter and I’ve been a teacher, and I have been involved in jiu-jitsu for a very long time. Carlos has told me: “You’ve got to do something better than me. You came after me, and I tried to tell you everything. Now take these things and do something.” Our plan is for me to go somewhere other than Rio and open a gym. I have many ideas I think would work so well for a jiu-jitsu academy. Right now, we teach in a really traditional dojo. There are black belts who have had their belt longer than I have been alive: 28 years. So sometimes it is hard to make even the smallest change in our dojo. You have to have meetings with all these people, talk to the senior students and make them understand that times are changing. Nowadays you need to train no-gi once in a while, have a different warm-up and so on. There are a lot of good ideas I cannot practice at the dojo I teach at. Where are you going to do this? We don’t have any plans yet. When we go ahead with this, we have to make sure all the instructors share the same mentality. It is easy to train someone to teach the techniques, but there are certain things I learned from Carlos and from other great guys who have been doing jiu-jitsu for a long time but are teaching out of the country now. So I got to make sure I spread the mentality—for instance, almost none of the guys who came after me uses any kind of drugs. There are a lot of schools where the teacher hangs out with the students, drinking and maybe even smoking drugs. We don’t do these things. When the boys see me, sometimes they are even too embarrassed to drink alcohol. I drink sometimes—on the weekend I have fun with my girlfriend—but I don’t drink with my students, especially with the teenagers. I am trying to be for them as Carlos was for me. About the interviewer: Stephan Kesting is a Burnaby, Canada-based free-lance writer and competitive grappler. For more information, visit www.grapplearts.com. (This article was originally published in the July 2005 issue of Black Belt.) 
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