Rickson Gracie and the Importance of Defense
Rickson Gracie remains one of the towering figures within the world of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. “Training with Rickson is like trying to move a house,” according to Dave Camarillo, who is a black belt in judo and jiu-jitsu known for his unique “Guerilla Jiu-Jitsu” style. Others have said that it was his unrelenting pressure or his ability to establish and maintain control.
Another perspective came from Jean Jacques Machado, who has been training with Rickson for decades. Machado, who shared his insights with the Brazilian website Portal do Vale Tudo, says that Rickson’s real gift was his defense. “The best part of his game is his defense,” he explains, as translated from the original Portuguese in the below video by Gustavo Gasperin—a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and MMA instructor who teaches at Dynamix MMA and Uprise MMA in Los Angeles and is also the mind behind the website and YouTube channel MMA Leach.
“His defense allows him to play a super aggressive game.”
As Machado notes, Rickson would go up against 20 or 30 seasoned black belts. He’d ask them, “Where do you want to start?” The black belt would then choose to start in an arm bar position, from the back, or from the mount. Rickson would then allow them to take that position, and then they would begin. Within moments, Rickson would escape and submit them from the position where they started.
“He wasn’t training with one person,” Machado says. “It was 30 people in a row. He would get to the end of the line, and then he would say, ‘Okay, let’s do it again’.”
Defense and Confidence
Beyond making you unbeatable, having an impenetrable defense is important for three additional reasons. First and foremost, it gives you a tremendous amount of confidence. If you know that you can get out of anything, then you’re going to be more aggressive once you go on the attack. You are going to be able to constantly apply pressure, to remain patient, and to try novel techniques and combinations. If anything goes wrong or you overextend yourself and you find yourself back on defense, you know that you’ll be able to survive, escape, and ultimately try another attack.
When you have complete faith in your abilities, you can afford to be fearless.
Defense and Knowledge
Second, knowing that your defense will always be reliable will allow you to remain in what others might consider the danger zone for a lot longer. True, gives you an opportunity to sap your opponent’s endurance as they try to maintain constant pressure or to use explosive energy to put you into submission, but there’s another potential benefit.
As Machado explains, Rickson wasn’t just draining his opponent’s energy. He was also learning his opponent’s game and trying to find weaknesses. Once he transitioned to attacking, he’d then use that knowledge to pick apart his opponent’s defense. “He reads your game through his defense,” Macahdo says. “He finds the holes in your game through his defense.”
If you can remain on defense for long enough, your opponent will eventually overextend themselves or expose a weakness that you can later exploit.
Defense and Psychology
Rickson didn’t just beat these black belts. He humiliated them. Many would claim that his level of mastery made it seem like he was reading minds, since that seemed to be the only way he could always be one or two steps ahead. Once they started to worry about falling behind Rickson or making a wrong move, they would inevitably end up making a mistake. As musicians are fond of saying, “If you’re thinking, you’re stinking.”
There’s another level here. It’s not just that Rickson was that good. There was also the perception that he was that good. Rickson may not have been reading anyone’s mind, but he was most certainly in every one of his opponents’ heads, and that led them to make mental mistakes. The lesson here is that even the impression that you can get out of any attacks that your opponent attempts will give you an advantage.
If you can actually do it, that will make you unstoppable.