Before then, the emphasis of grappling was to dominate top positions. Helio then used this submission and others by doing them from bottom positions. In short, Helio Gracie managed to adapt Maeda’s Judo moves and apply them from the ground.įor instance, the armbar (juji gatame) has been used in Judo since its creation. As many people will know, BJJ directly descended from Judo.

Like Kimura, Maeda was a fearsome grappler that hailed from Japan but eventually got naturalized as a Brazilian. He did this in Brazil and was taught by Mitsuyo Maeda. During his life, Carlos Gracie fathered 21 kids – of which 13 have gone on to become BJJ black belts. You may think that a total of 9 kids is quite a high number, however this is nothing compared to his brother Carlos. You may have noticed that the likes of Rickson and Royce have since gone on to make their own BJJ history. Rickson, Rorion and Relson were all born from the same mother, whereas Royler, Rolker, Royce and Robin were from a different mother. Furthermore, all of his kids names began with the letter R, which seems to be a trend in the Gracie family. As you may have figured, the Gracie family were and still are quite an unusual bunch. Helio Gracie had a total of 7 sons during his life, as well as two daughters. As you can imagine, when he died the Gracie family was devastated by his loss due to his continuous contributions to BJJ over his lifetime. This may have been down to his active lifestyle, or the fact he was a vegetarian. Staggeringly, he was 95 years old when he died and was still training BJJ just weeks before his death. Helio Gracie passed away on January 29th, 2009 in Brazil.

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