Gracie Barra San Diego

The school will be closed Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Classes will resume to its normal schedule on Monday.

See you guys on the Mats.

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GB Future Champions did an outstanding  job

To see the high skill level, hard work and discipline presented by our kids made everyone at GB very proud.
They really gave it their all and we thoroughly enjoyed so much the evening.

Congratulations for the GB Professors, Instructors, Assistant Instructors and Volunteers for the outstanding job they are doing with the GB Kids Programs throughout California. The kids showcased beautiful take downs, guard passes, sweeps, chokes, armbars and so on … there could not have been a better representation of good Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for the expectators.

Big thanks to all the Professors, Instructors and students who helped us seting up the event, without your help we could not do it. We would like to specially thank Professor Mike Buckels from Gracie Barra Costa Mesa for the awesome job he did leading the organization.

Everybody walked out with big smiles on their faces, and most wanting to come back and see it again . A final note to the kids: Well Done, keep training hard and Thank You!

Here are some cool pics for you guys to enjoy:

Professors lined up to award the medals.(foto by Professor Magidi)

Focus and determination before stepping on the mats. Thats how we do it!(foto by pesh)

Professor Marco Joca referring and doing his part on “Keeping the legacy alive”. Professor started to study under Master Carlos Gracie Jr at the young age of 9 years old.(foto by pesh)

Professor Marcio Feitosa referring. Professor started to study under Master Carlos at the age of 12 years old. For sure at the moment of this pictures lots of memories were going through his mind.(foto by Professor Magidi)

So much talent displayed all day long. Kids you are amazing!(foto by Professor Magidi)

Master Carlos Gracie Jr. was there the whole evening awarding the kids with medals. We don’t know anybody who loves Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu more than this Man.(foto by pesh)

Master Carlos Gracie Jr awarding the kids. He must be very proud of the nice things Gracie Barra is doing for the comunity.(Foto by pesh)

There are many pictures posted on Professor Magidi’s website. If you would like to see it: CLICK HERE!

Gracie Barra Encinitas Keeping the legacy alive!

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Gracie Barra Encinitas would like to invite everybody to the 1st Gracie Barra Tournament for kids.

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Our dear students, Greg Contardo and Steve Gable had an excellent performance last saturday in Las Vegas. Steve was making his second MMA fight and now he is 2 -0. He fought Vitor Pimenta (Bjj Black Belt), a really tough opponent from BTT  and Greg did his MMA debut achieving his first  win, in great way. Great job guys!!!!
Below are the links to their fights on youtube:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JUl2vxsuPfc  (Steve Gable)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfXhXSpluOw ( Greg Contardo 2nd round)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRy2KBxPuZk&feature=related (Greg Contardo 1st round)

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The involvement of great leaders and important people with the gentle art is not a recent phenomenon. Following up with our last post about the Quote of this Week “Men in the Arena”, find below a very interesting statement from President Roosevelt and his relationship with the Jiu-Jitsu Japanese masters who lended in Brazil a few years later to make the link that allowed the birth of BJJ.

“… Yesterday afternoon we had Professor Yamashita [Yamashita was Roosevelt’s Jiu-jitsu instructor before Meada and Tomita had arrived there in the U.S.] up here to wrestle with Grant. It was very interesting, but of course jiu jitsu and our wrestling are so far apart that it is difficult to make any comparison between them. Wrestling is simply a sport with rules almost as conventional as those of tennis, while jiu jitsu is really meant for practice in killing or disabling our adversary.

In consequence, Grant did not know what to do except to put Yamashita on his back, and Yamashita was perfectly content to be on his back. Inside of a minute Yamashita had choked Grant, and inside of two minutes more he got an elbow hold on him that would have enabled him to break his arm; so that there is no question but that he could have put Grant out. So far this made it evident that the jiu jitsu man could handle the ordinary wrestler. But Grant, in the actual wrestling and throwing was about as good as the Japanese, and he was so much stronger that he evidently hurt and wore out the Japanese.

With a little practice in the art I am sure that one of our big wrestlers or boxers, simply because of his greatly superior strength, would be able to kill any of those Japanese, who though very good men for their inches and pounds are altogether too small to hold their own against big, powerful, quick men who are as well trained [of course we have to disagree with President Roosevelt here].”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
(Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children. 1919. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, 1919 NEW YORK: BARTLEBY.COM, 1999)

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“Man in the Arena” from Theodore Roosevelt. This is one of the most beautiful speeches ever done but the US President and inspires us to keep trying and to see the joy in fighting and thriving despite the result achieved. That is pure Jiu-Jitsu! By the way, most of us don’t know but Roosevelt himself was a martial artist and studied Jiu-Jitsu under Yamashita in the beginning of the 20th Century.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

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Check out Profs. Nelson, Rafael and our dear student Sean Conley in the last issue of Grappling Magazine.

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On June 3, at 8:00 pm, we will celebrate Master Carlos Gracie Jr.’s commendation of his red and black belt. 

We will be honoring Master Carlos Gracie Jr.’s prestigious promotion due to his lifelong devotion to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

The Gracie Barra Family is invited to celebrate this special moment.

Gracie Barra Encinitas will have its normal schedule on Tuesday night, with the beginner class from 07:00 to 08:00 pm. 

Please join us at the Irvine location to share in this special moment with the founder of the Gracie Barra.

See you there!

Gracie Barra

“Organized like a team, fighting like a family.”

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Since great champions must keep on moving, UFC welterweight title holder Georges Saint-Pierre arrived in Brazil yesterday to refine his game. The Canadian will be making his first title defense, since recovering it from the hands of Matt Serra, against John Fitch, in August.
To continue to put on a show in the octagon, St Pierre’s Jiu-Jitsu instructor in Canada, Bruno Molenga (Gracie Barra) sent his student to Barra da Tijuca on an exchange in the Gracie Barra home base. The champion will stay in Brazil until the 10th of June and until then will practice MMA and do his physical conditioning with the fighter Gustavo Ximu, and complete his Jiu-Jitsu routine at night.GRACIEMAG.com contacted Ximu, who today took the champion to practice boxing at the Nobre Arte boxing academy and got ready to have a first roll with Saint-Pierre at GB.

“He came to work on his Jiu-Jitsu. He arrived yesterday and I took him to Nobre Arte today. The guy is really humble and good people, besides being a really good fighter. We had only one technical training session led by Claudio Coelho and he liked it a lot. The guys there at the academy couldn’t even believe their eyes, as everyone there is a fan. I was also under the impression he was bigger. Not that he’s small, but he weighs 84kg and on tv he looks bigger. I’m going to take him to practice boxing, wrestling and do physical conditioning with me to keep him active, but the main thing is Jiu-Jitsu,” said Ximu.

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Some of Gracie Barra Encinitas students were promoted yesterday night. Keep the great work guys!!

Here are some pictures:

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