Claudio Calasans Jr. has reached the highest levels of achievement in Jiu-Jitsu thanks to a lot of hard work to take advantage of his natural born talent.
The 2015 middleweight world champion and ADCC open class champion has a lot to teach to those starting out their Jiu-Jitsu life.
We have highlighted 10 tips he was kind enough to share with us.
1. In Jiu-Jitsu, you won’t be surprised by your opponent if you train more than them.
2. The more hours at the gym, the greater your chances of surprising your rival. Go train!
3. Go to Jiu-Jitsu championships to learn new moves. Whenever I watched competitions, I’d always go back home wanting to repeat some position and test it in my game.
4. Whenever you learn a new position at the gym, persist until you get it right in the rolls. Only against a colleague will you be sure of whether it fits your fighting style.
5. Training is risking. If you go to the gym and just do the very same positions both on top and on the bottom, you are reducing the speed of your evolution.
6. When the position doesn’t work very well, don’t simply discard it. Reflect on it, study, analyze, and unravel the position. See if you are able to adapt it before deciding that no, actually it doesn’t fit in your game.
7. Be complete. Standing, on top, on the bottom. But fight with a plan, drawn in accordance with the strong qualities of your opponent.
8. You don’t compete against other fighters, but against yourself.
9. At every training session, every competition, try to test your limits – physical, technical, mental. At each limit crossed, use that as an incentive to train more and more, and develop your Jiu-Jitsu constantly.
10. Every sport grows at a pace directly proportional to the emergence of good role models, good athletes, and good people. Be a martial artist useful for the rest of society. By becoming a good example, you help the sport grow.
