Gracie Jiu-Jitsu
The family branch of Brazilian jiu-jitsu carried by the Gracie family. It stresses self-defence and surviving from a losing position, not just sport grappling.
Quick Facts
BrazilCharacter & Origin
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
Catalogs & Databases for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu
About Gracie Jiu-Jitsu
Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is the family branch of Brazilian jiu-jitsu associated with the Gracie family. Its documented beginning lies around 1917 in Belém, where Carlos Gracie trained under the Japanese fighter Mitsuyo Maeda and his assistant Jacyntho Ferro; the instruction was brief and the family then moved away. Carlos passed the technique on to his brothers, and the younger Hélio adapted it for someone without a physical advantage — hence the emphasis on leverage, timing and working from underneath. The founding year of the first academy is disputed, and this page therefore leaves it blank. The family version, and the one usually cited, speaks of Rio in 1925; research based on contemporary press places the family's return to Rio later and links the first documented school to Donato Pires dos Reis, opened in September 1930, where Carlos and Hélio taught. The five-year gap is an open question in the literature, and it is more honest to say so than to present one of the figures as certain. The brand was built on the practice of open challenges: the Gracies systematically challenged fighters of other styles and published the outcomes, testing the method and advertising it at the same time. What distinguishes today's Gracie Jiu-Jitsu from sport BJJ is that alongside the competitive game it keeps a self-defence syllabus — defences against strikes, against weapons and against multiple attackers — and treats competition rules as only part of the whole.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.