Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

During the 1980s, Hélio Gracie’s sons took the family art to California,
and during the 1990s the victories of Rorion and Royce Gracie in pay-perview
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) events made Gracie Jiu-jitsu
famous. In 1994, the U.S. Army also introduced Gracie Jiu-jitsu into its
Ranger training programs at Fort Benning, though here the idea was more
to teach self-confidence than to improve individual lethality in combat.
Punches, kicks, and fighting from the standing position were added to
the Brazilian jiu-jitsu curriculum during the 1990s. The reason was to keep
its practitioners competitive during UFC matches. Nevertheless, the Gracies
continued to emphasize maneuvering for opportunities in which to apply
joint locks and chokes. The reason, they insisted, was that most oneon-one
fights end up as grappling contests on the ground, and one might
as well get there as quickly as possible.
Toward this end, particular attention is paid to the ground positions
labeled the “mount” and the “guard.” In the mounted position, the combatant
straddles an opponent lying on his back, essentially sitting on the
opponent’s abdomen. The goal is to set up a choke or a joint lock or to deliver
strikes. A variation is the “side mount,” in which the practitioner is
on top of an opponent, chest to chest at a 90-degree angle. Meanwhile, the
“guard” refers to the opposite position, in which the opponent is attempting
to get on top of the practitioner. The standard Brazilian jiu-jitsu guard
places the opponent between one’s legs, which encircle the attacker just
above the hips. If the encircling legs’ ankles are crossed, then it is a “closed
guard”; if the legs are not crossed, then it is an “open guard.” An alternative
is the “half-guard,” in which the defender uses the legs to trap one of
the legs of the opponent attempting to mount.
Although Rorion Gracie maintains that one can learn the techniques
of Brazilian jiu-jitsu after just forty lessons, learning to apply these techniques
against uncooperative opponents in combative contexts requires
years of practice. So, toward showing relative standing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu
utilizes a ranking system similar to that of Kôdôkan Jûdô. Rank is designated
by a colored belt wrapped and tied at the waist of the uniform (which
is also similar to the loose cotton trousers and jacket of jûdô). Belt ranks
for children run from white (for beginners) to yellow, orange, green,
brown, and black and for adults, white, blue, purple, brown, and black. As
in the dan system of contemporary Japanese martial arts, the black belt
progresses through various grades of ascending numbers (i.e., first degree,
second degree, etc.).
During the 1990s, various organizations arose both in Brazil and
abroad espousing variations of the core teachings of Maeda as modified by
Carlos and Hélio Gracie. Thus Gracie Jiu-jitsu has become a trademark
used by various members of the Gracie family of Brazil whose schools are
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