Articles

"Following the Masters Path"- Carlos "Escorrega" Interview

By Dave Carnell

Recently I had the great pleasure of interviewing Carlos Lemos Jnr.This man at the age of eighteen was honoured by Carlos Gracie jnr, by being selected as a potential instructor. He was there fore taken under Carlos Gracie jnr’s personal tutelage and inspired by the Gracie way of life. Carlos Lemos jnr is following his master’s path and carries the Gracie Barra legacy.

He has some fourteen gold medals from a range of top BJJ competitions including two gold medals in the world championships, one from the Pan American championships, one from the European championships and five from the Brazilian national championships. However, his qualities extend further than his apartment wall covered with medals and awards. He is a polyglot, he can speak four different languages and can communicate in another three in order to transmit information to his students in their own language across the world.

Dave-Master Carlos, please tell us about your younger days and how you first started in the martial arts?

Carlos- my first experience of martial arts was at the age of three, my daddy took me to a Taekwondo school. He had a friend who was a really good Taekwondo master from Korea. I trained Taekwondo to the age of ten. When I was ten I moved to Barra. It was an area outside of down town Rio city centre. Back then it was a countryside area with farms and horses running around. There was twelve miles of virgin beach. I used to surf a lot with my friends.

Dave- when did the Gracies move to Barra?

Carlos-Around 1989-90 part of the Gracie family moved to Barra. Carlos Gracie jnr, himself and his brother Crolin Gracie. They lived in different houses but in the same neighbourhood. Around this time I was training in Judo from the age of eleven to the age of fourteen. I started to find myself more interested in ground fighting than stand up fighting. I’ve always had an interest in Asian culture. I think this comes from my family ties. My mother came from a family of twelve brothers and sisters. Almost every one in my mother’s family, her sisters and some of her brothers were engaged or married to Japanese people. In Brazil we have the biggest Japanese colony in the World. I have always had a lot of contact with the Japanese and their culture. I have an uncle who is 69 years old, who is a retired captain from the Brazilian army. He is a black belt in Judo. He learnt Jiujitsu from the Japanese who first came to Brazil. Many people think the Gracies are the only source of Jiujitsu in Brazil. There were many players from Japan who came in with the migration around a hundred years or so ago, but because the Gracies mastered the training methods they prevailed and after a few years many of the other schools died away. It was funny to find out that I had a Japanese uncle nearly seventy years old that does Jiujitsu, not Gracie Jiujitsu but old style Japanese jiujitsu. He’s from the Japanese people who moved to Sao Paulo.

Dave-What can you tell us about the arrival of the Gracie family?

Carlos- All of a sudden these guys from the Gracie family moved into our neighbourhood and soon became the local heroes amongst the teenagers. For example the likes of three people beating up on one. They started to change things around. If one of their students got in a fight all their friends would come around and say, “ Now you are going to fight one on one”. So now the cowards would think if four of us beat this guy up afterwards his friends are going to come round and I will have to fight him one on one. You see its very easy to be brave when you have four or five against one, but when you face someone on your own its harder because you have to be a man yourself to do something like that. So the violence started to go down in Barra. People started to avoid fights. In many cases the guy coming to fight them was a small skinny guy who has a realistic chance to beat them. They started to say “hey I used to be the tough guy in the neighbourhood, right now I have to fight that skinny guy, what if that skinny guy beats me in front of everyone”. So the violence went down and the closeness amongst the teenagers became stronger. Back then a few of my friends were training under Gordo and Ralf Gracie. There was a Gracie Barra school about ten minutes from my place. There was Renzo, Gordo and Ralph teaching at the same place. So I went to train with these guys and I found much more than just a place to train and have a good workout. I found myself making friends and getting fitter. I was a very skinny guy but I started to see my body change. I started to gain confidence and had people supporting me in everything I did. They got a Gi for me and we would go to tournaments together. I saw lots of things that I had never seen in other sports before. I was competing in surfing back then but I did not make many friends. I didn’t have the same kind of support that I got from Jiujitsu, because there I found people that I could call brothers and feel that sense of family. That’s why I started Jiujitsu. Another reason that I started Jiujitsu was my first girlfriend. She was an Argentinean girl. When we broke up she started to date a Jiujitsu guy. At first I was a Judo player. I didn’t want to do Jiujitsu, but when she left and started dating the Jiujitsu guy, I wanted to do Jiujitsu also and become better than him, which eventually happened. The guy is now a great friend of mine and the girl has returned to Argentina. I haven’t heard from her for at least fifteen years or so but I would love to meet her again, not to date her but to thank her because she gave me the push to do Jiujitsu. Another interesting fact, Marcelo Behring was the best Rickson student. He was one of the greatest fighters who fought for the Gracies in the eighties. He hung out at the same beach as me and was a surfer too. Everyday he saw me he said “Hey man, why don’t you go and train Jiujitsu?” He was a superstar and every time he was on the beach people surrounded him because he had so many priceless stories, travelling and fighting experiences. He was a guy full of life, an amazing person. For some reason I think he saw something in me, and he would say, “Man, I think you could make a good Jiujitsu player.” I was just a small skinny kid, but he insisted and I will never forget that. Unfortunately, Marcelo passed away. He was part of Jiujitsu history and was a legend himself. Because of him I am training too. That’s how I started and the more I trained Jiujitsu the more friends I made. It made my life richer. Before I was a very shy guy and I think my best qualities came out through my training progress. That’s what keeps me going to the gym to train.

Dave – How did you come to train with Carlos Gracie jnr?

Carlos – Before that I trained at fifial of the Gracie Barra.Then Ralph moved to Sao Paulo and then onto the U.S so we moved to train in a condominium. It was a private and made up of many buildings in one place. Inside was a club called Nova Villo, run by Gordo so I went there, as he was one of my masters. I was training Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays with Gordo and then Tuesdays and Thursdays with Renzo Gracie. It was about one and a half to two hours bus ride there and there were only two buses a day. Sometimes we missed the bus and had to sleep in someone’s garden. Later on Gordo moved to Sao Paulo and Renzo moved to the U.S, so I trained with Gordo’s brother and Gordo when he visited. At a certain time in my life, I felt that I not only needed a teacher, but also the guidance of a master. I really felt this when Gordo was around me. But when he left I was a little bit lost and left wondering what to do. I used to go to Carlos Gracie jnrs academy only to see the guys from time to time as we are all a big family. I never had the opportunity to take classes under him. I always found myself in admiration of Carlos and one day he invited me to train at his school, to be part of the team that he was building. I was just an eighteen-year-old kid and still training at Gordos’ school when I realised I wanted the guidance of Carlos Gracie jnr because of his personality, his unique way of doing things and his approach to Jiujitsu. Carlos was a really quiet master .He was different than Gordo, Ralph and Renzo. He didn’t coach you all the time. He wasn’t hands on all the time. He would sit and watch you train sometimes and afterwards give you an impression of what he saw and what he thought about what you did. It was his way to deal with things. He was the kind of man that when you met him you felt inspired; you wanted to do that much more. It was his lifetime experiences that attracted me to him not his fighting experiences, although he has won his share of the tournaments. He got to a certain point in his career, the same point I reached a few years ago. He could see that there were many fighters to carry on the Gracie name, but not so many to carry on the Gracie legacy of teaching. So because of his commitment to his students and to the art of Gracie Jiujitsu he abandoned his fighting career, while some of his brothers and cousins continued to fight. He now has one of the biggest schools in Brazil and is a very successful teacher. He mastered his teaching skills to the point where one word from Carlos would be worth a month of study and training on your own. I started to realise this early on and that’s why I chose him as my master. He is the type of person that only needs to say a few words to inspire you to do your best and go out and win. Carlos was very serious with me when I was a teenager, he would shout at me, “ do this don’t do that”, but at the same time I can’t remember a single time or day when he said “no” to me. He always said yes to me. He was that type of father for us. He was very serious but at the same time gave his love.

Dave- how did Carlos Gracie jnr come to pick you?

Carlos- it was a remarkable day in my life. One day he lined up all the kids along the wall. There must have been a hundred of us in the gym. He stopped us all training because he wanted to talk to us all. He gave us one of his priceless speeches that he used to give at the school. It was about fitness, healthy diet, drugs, sex and alcohol. Afterwards he asked each one of us what we wanted to be. He went down the line, some said, “I want to be a police man, I want to be a doctor, I want to be a fighter, I want to be this and that”. Then it was my turn, “Escorrega what do you want to be”. I said “ I want to be Jiujitsu master” Master Carlos just nodded his head When he finished going down the line I think there was four or five who had said they wanted to be Jiujitsu masters. He sent everyone home except those five. He said, “Today you are going to take the first step in becoming a Jiujitsu master.” I will never forget that day it changed my life. That day he showed us that being a Jiujitsu master was as important as being a surgeon, policeman or a lawyer. He told us that to be a martial art instructor is to have a great weight on your shoulders. It’s a big responsibility. He showed us how to be an example to others, to every one who comes into our lives, to help the quality of their life,to help them achieve their goals and to suppress and go beyond their fears. That day I saw Jiujitsu wasn’t only a sport or a way to fight or beat people, it was a way of life. A way to help people.

Dave- how did your family feel about this?

Carlos- my daddy was a middle class guy. A very hard worker. He would work a twelve, thirteen-hour day. I used to see my daddy only at nighttime before I went to bed to say hello, good night. He always worked very hard to pay my college. My daddy didn’t graduate so he wanted to make sure I had the chance to graduate. He wanted me to become a solicitor. Then all of a sudden I turned around and said “ daddy I don’t want to be a solicitor, I want to be a Jiujitsu master”. My daddy didn’t like that. He said I could keep training as long as I keep my grades up, other wise forget about it. My mind was already set; I had got a different view on things. Master Carlos had a vision that one day Jiujitsu would reach the world and I wanted to be part of this. I kept studying to keep my daddy happy but all I wanted to do was train. At the time I had about two years of study left when I started to get enquiries to go and teach seminars in the U.S. and other countrys. There were also more tournaments abroad. So my grades started to go down. It got to a point where I told my daddy I was quitting school. I’m going to get a P.H.D in another study. It’s a highly skilful type of work and there are only a small handful of people working on that. This is a profession like any other profession. My daddy knew I wasn’t joking but he still had serious doubts. Today after all these years I have friends who kept studying and doing Jiujitsu at the same time and they are quitting their jobs as engineers, solicitors and doctors to teach Jiujitsu because they found no happiness in their own jobs. Master Carlos could see all these things back then when no one else could see them. He could see years ahead. Even now he has dreams that for any other person would seem mad but for a handful of students, the masters he has trained it all makes sense because we have seen things happen that he has predicted before. Every time we are together back in Rio, we go hiking in the mountain forest, afterwards we would talk for hours; sometimes there would be other students with us. I’m always asking questions of him because it’s really like drinking from the source when I’m with him. I am very proud to be one of the people he really trusts, like if anything should happen to him there are guys that will carry on. People like Gordo, Marcio Fetosa and lots of other good people to carry on Carlos’s legacy and I know I’m one of them.

Dave- so you started your training to become a Jiujitsu master. Can you tell us about any of your teaching experiences?

Carlos- when I was only a blue belt Carlos made me an assistant instructor, but he tested me several times. He gave me jobs to be done. Things like clean the academy tonight, every one had left, I was the only one there. He would say things like you must be at the academy at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. Things just like that to see if I really wanted it. I was an assistant for several years. I assisted Marcio Feitosa and almost everyone who was teaching at Gracie Barra. I was there all the time helping out with every thing. Master Carlos started to show me his methods of teaching and show me his teaching programme. He showed me how to approach a student, things you have to say to a student like academy etiquette, posture, how you must wear your gi, how you must tie your belt and how you must behave inside and out side the gym. He taught me many things about becoming a good teacher and how to be a good example to someone. So from my blue belt to my brown belt I was only helping people. Eventually I went to America to teach some seminars of my own. It was a time when there were only a few blue and purple belts in the U.S. and because of my success in the tournaments I started to have enquiries to teach. So Carlos told me to go and show what I had learnt. When I got my brown belt Master Carlos gave me my first major responsibility. He gave me the eight o’clock in the morning class. We called that the judges class because it was full of judges, solicitors, prosecutors and policemen. These guys had to train early in the morning so they could go to work after. Carlos gave me this class as a responsibility. These people were highly intellectual, they knew how to construct questions. Back then I was living about thirty or forty minutes away from the school. So I was waking up really early in the morning to prepare for class. This was my first real teaching responsibility. When I got my black belt he said I could have my first main class. A few months later I went to America where I spent a year teaching army and law enforcement groups. When I came back Master Carlos gave me my own class in the evenings. So my training to be a teacher took about six years.

Dave- what did you learn from being a teacher?

Carlos- I found out it was harder to be a good teacher than just a good fighter. To be a good fighter was just a matter of how much are you prepared to train? To be a good teacher requires full time dedication. You need to thing about the skills and technique as well as the way you behave, your way to approach people. So it takes full time commitment. To be a good fighter you just train hard and you’re going to get there. If you train with a good teacher with some skill eventually you become a good fighter. To become a good teacher is a life long challenge. In 2003 Carlos selected me to be one of his international ambassadors. So I started to travel abroad to spread jiujitsu around the World. He found I could teach a class like him and that I was a good communicator. I speak five languages and I learnt them because I wanted to speak to these people in their own language all because of jiujitsu. He also chose me because I was a small guy, I was proof that jiujitsu worked against people who were big and strong. I’m only five-foot eight and around ten stone, if I could do these techniques against bigger people then they would start to believe in jiujitsu. So because of a combination of these things Carlos sent me abroad to plant the seeds. Right now some of the seeds are trees and producing their own fruit.

Dave- so how did you come to arrive in the UK?

Carlos- I think destiny plays an important part in our life. Sometimes when I meditate I feel God is behind everything. Sometimes I think it’s even deeper than that, like every thing in our lives has already been written, like a drama on TV w here you can choose the end by voting on your text. You have optional ways to go but the history is already written. I thing God is behind all things. It’s quite funny in a way as it wasn’t me who was coming to teach in the U.K, it was another blackbelt friend of mine called Filipe Jerry. Braulio used to teach the guys from Trojans gym but the guys needed someone on a more permanent basis. They were getting James Thompson ready to fight in Pride. Braulio told them he had a friend who wanted to come over. Back then I was travelling all over the World. I was going to Asia, Scandinavia, Europe and the Unites States. I ended up with a chance meeting with Filipe Jerry in France. I think I was on the way to Sweden and he was on the way to the UK. My flight went through England, so he said come with me, we can work something out with Braulio’s friends, they want to train under Gracie Barra, so we went there together. I didn’t have much choice because I was flying through the UK. We went to Cheltenham to meet the guys from Trojans gym. Charlie Joseph from Trojans expressed his wish for us to teach his Vale Tudo guys the ground game at his Cheltenham school and for us to teach Gracie Jiujitsu at two other locations, one in Bristol and the other in Oxford. Jerry cold not start straight away, he had work to finish in the U.S. and I had to leave for Sweden. While in Sweden I spoke with Master Carlos to explain Charles’ proposals. He said O.K. He explained to me the conditions on which to proceed. I ended up being back in the Uk before Jerry. Jerry for other reasons never came back. I think it was a problem with no academy to teach in Oxford. Months later he came back to teach in Rodgers school in London. I started to teach in Cheltenham.

Dave- so what’s it like for you in the UK?

Carlos- I found the UK to be an amazing place full of potential, a great place to spread Jiujitsu. In the UK they are very familiar with striking arts. Boxing is a tradition here but not many know how to grapple, but for some reason the British like to grapple as well. There are several English guys living in Brazil now. People like Ben Poppleton, he lived in Brazil for a few years. There are so many English guys going over to Brazil, some end up living there, not only because of the weather and the beautiful girls but because they enjoy the training. In the UK there is not many places to learn jiujitsu but people are looking to try that. There are not many black belts to give instruction. From Gracie Barra Brazil there are people like Rodger, Braulio, Largato and myself. I have set my base up in Bristol and I’m going to help spread Gracie Barra all over the UK. I would like to eventually form a good team of black belts in different parts of the country. Right now I don’t teach at Trojans gym any more, only at Gracie Barra Bristol. My students learn the Gracie way the way I did, so they drink water from the source

Dave- can you tell us a little bit more about your personal philosophy and what you hope to achieve with your students?

Carlos- like I said before it’s easy to make good fighters. Jiujitsu is very simple, you can become a very good fighter but the greatest challenge is to produce good students, you don’t need to be the greatest fighter. You can be a good fighter and have bad morals, no personality, no lineage, and no heritage, have bad actions; this is not a good student. You may have good skills but being a good student means much more than that. The path of the martial artist is the path of perfection. As you learn a martial art you must become a better person along the path. You ask why is that? To reach perfection in your art you have got to attain perfection in yourself. Imperfection is like the lowest level of life, and if you want to upgrade your life’s level then you must become a better person. So my goal is to help people reach this higher level of perception through the vehicle of martial arts. I truly believe that martial arts and life is the same thing and that they interact day by day. So I don’t see someone becoming a great fighter unless they become a great person. That’s the way I learnt it and that’s the way I teach my students. I want all of my students to become great guys. My philosophy is that Jiujitsu made me a better person; it helped me to see what is good and what is right. I don’t take Jiujitsu as a religion. I believe in one God but I take Jiujitsu as a philosophy to reach God easier. Why? Today my morals and my values that I learned through my training with my master helped me to be more in touch with my spiritual side. To be the best is something very subjective, to be the best in what, to beat every one, be a great champion or help people to be their own champions and achieve their own goals in life. So that’s what I look for in my students and that’s what I want them to understand. When you walk into my academy you will find a group of friendly people ready to help you in any situation. Today people are looking for more than a way of fighting, they are looking for a philosophy, a way to better themselves. You ask how does this work? Its simple. Your perception of the art should be to be sensitive. People have the idea of a Vale Tudo fighter being a tough guy but being a tough guy doesn’t mean to be a brute. There is a Japanese saying that goes something like “ the smooth can beat the hard”. The more I teach Jiujitsu the more I learn that the smoother I get the better I get, smooth in a way as not to be soft but smooth in a way to be more sensitive. It’s much easier to understand something when you’re relaxed and more sensitive as your perception goes higher. This is basically what I want to pass on to my students. You learn from the training, tapping people out and being tapped out yourself that there is always going to be someone better than you. You learn to be humble; it’s a human quality that must be preserved because tomorrow there will always be someone better than you. For every action there will be a reaction back. These things I learnt from master Carlos Gracie jnr himself.

Dave- any final words you would like to say?

Carlos- yes I would like to thank all my students and friends who have helped me in the U.K. I came back to this country because I had a dream, a vision to help these people become Gracie Barra black belts. They have supported me a lot and my commitment to them is to give them all my best and return the love they have given me.