It’s Chase from FloGrappling, and I’m back with the second installment of A Gringo In Brazil (read part one here). 

Aftering spending the weekend covering the excellent Abu Dhabi Grand Slam Rio, it was time to dip my feet in the waters of Rio and – more importantly – get on the mats!

Hywel Teague(Senior Editor of FloGrappling) and I had an expansive trip lined up with gym visits spanning from GF Team to De La Riva and beyond, and I had every intention of training every single day, but then I feel victim of the Rio curse… also known as their epic beaches. Also a few national holidays that caused all the gyms to be closed.

The beaches in Rio really are something else. Photo: Chase Smith 

But I digress.

I was still able to train four times during my week-long stay, and one of those sessions including a private lesson and rolling time with the 9x world champion Caio Terra. That was pretty sweet, so let’s start there.

What a private lesson with Caio Terra is like

Caio Terra is a master technician. Incredibly articulate and succinct, Caio insisted that Hywel and I spend our session on a single position or concept in order to cover it adequately.

Hywel recalled a match in 2015 where Caio was able to stave off the significantly heavier (and passing monster) DJ Jackson for an entire round with a seemingly simple position, the knee shield, and suggested we go over that. 

My half-guard is a glaring weakness, so that sounded fantastic. 

My key takeaway: Learning moves, learning concepts  

When it was my turn to learn the position, I struggled. The entry included a semi-belly down shrimp movement in order to get the bottom leg deep enough to close half-guard. That alone felt awkward, but I was also going about the learning process incorrectly. Caio pointed out that I was rushing, and (quickly, incorrectly) trying to do the moves first and then figure out why they were effective.

'Slow it down', he said, ‘No Strength. Feel the position and understand its goal.’

Eventually I was able to apply the correct pressure, but the position never felt as solid as Caio’s (shocking). I did, however, leave with something more than just a move: my entire learning process for jiu-jitsu has been revamped. 

The private concluded with an hour of live rolling. It was a blast sparring with of the best of all-time. He submitted me from nearly every position possible. Check out the video below for a quick summary of how that went.

Experience of training at the De La Riva academy

But it wasn’t only private lesson with world champions for this gringo... I also rolled for a few classes at the world famous De La Riva academy. Professor De la Riva himself was traveling and would only return right at the end of my trip, so it was ‘porrada’ time. Similar to FUBAR, ‘porrada’ means it was rolling from the opening bell to the end of class.

My kind of session.

The black belt leading the class paired up all the students each round: we’d roll hard, crawl off to the side of the mats for a brief pause in the action, and then get straight back to it.

Post-porrada with Hywel. 

The coolest aspect about training in Brazil was the depth of knowledge on the mats at any give times. Multiple third and fourth degree black belts were present every class, rolling with everybody and happy to share their knowledge.

And make no mistake, some of these older fellas could really move.

‘Coronel’, a retired army colonel, had an epic back step pass that he hit on me a few times, and another 50+ year old black belt choked the life out of me more often than I’d care to admit. 

Their games were simple yet effective, and gave me high hopes about what training might look like when as I get older. 

I had an incredible time training jiu-jitsu in Rio de Janeiro and invite any practitioner thinking of making the trip to do so.  Stay tuned for part three of the Gringo In Rio tomorrow where I discuss general takeaways for traveling in Brazil and what it meant to witness De la Riva's historic red & black belt promotion.