Lucas Lepri’s way of training and fighting is aimed at details. Always seeking to contain his opponent’s hips, Lepri tries not to land in a foe’s strong positions. With focus on not making mistakes, he always vies to shut down the other fighter’s game. In the following interview, Lepri reveals how he works on the details of his game, explains how not to make mistakes and talks about his early inspiration.
On details:
My BJJ is all about detail, and it’s a detail that makes all the difference in a game, along with the pressure I use. I believe I make very few mistakes, and I tend to focus on the small details that no one sees. Not that nobody sees them, but I believe few can see them. I believe this is the key aspect of my game. I believe the details perceived by few people make me not err. Sometimes no one sees the details of shutting down a position.
On shutting down opponents’ games:
I don’t let my opponents get to the positions they really want to get to. If they get there, it gets hard escaping. So, whenever I see they want something — the berimbolo, grabbing the belt, or what have you, — I immediately kill it to avoid getting to a bad situation I can’t solve.
On his inspiration early on:
When I was a blue-belt, there was a guy I used to look up to a lot. Besides Fernando Tererê, it was Margarida. Margarida was a guy who inspired me on takedowns, guard-passing, submissions. He would fight to finish; didn’t care about points. He would use the baseball choke, which I use too — it was from him that came the inspiration for passing with the knee crossed as well. Fernando Margarida was a guy who inspired me greatly; back then he was the man.
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