We often hear jiu-jitsu practitioners state that gi training won’t help you in a street fight, whereas others like Rener and Ryron Gracie will contend that the uniform prepares us for the streets better than we might think. Realistically, people don’t wear a gi outside of an academy and unless you’re John Danaher, we don’t witness people wearing rashguards in broad daylight either. How do we handle an attacker in the street if they’re wearing common clothing such as a hoodie, a tank-top, a button-up shirt, or even a blazer? The methods used to overcome a perpetrator not wearing traditional jiu-jitsu garb has certain quirks and details that differ from standard techniques taught in both gi and no-gi classes at any and every school.
The Gracie brothers will host the first ever Gracie Street Choke Mastery seminar at Gracie University in Torrance on Sunday, November 24th. This event will be a highlight of the first Gracie Family Fundraiser with proceeds directly benefitting the Living Through Giving Foundation and their #HashtagLunchbag program.
According to their mission statement, the Living Through Giving Foundation and their #HashtagLunchbag program are a humanity service movement dedicated to empowering and inspiring humanity to reap the benefits of giving through the use of social media. They create and use bagged lunches, complete with love messages, as a vessel to spread love and share experiences to inspire others.
While the Gracie brothers have released material in the past regarding how to incapacitate someone wearing street clothes, they’ve never held an actual seminar where they delve deeply into the topic. The seminar, which will be the first of its kind, is part of the first ever Gracie Family Fun Day at the Gracie University which is set to have food trucks, four bouncy castles, face painting, and other surprises. The parking lot of Gracie University is set to be transformed into a complete family experience open to students from all academies and everyone in the community.
Attendees of the seminar are instructed to wear gi pants and a rashguard in addition to wearing a t-shirt over their rashguard, while also bringing a hoodie to enable a different look at common streetwear and how to utilize its features from a self-defense standpoint.
Admission to the seminar is $75 and includes access to the family fun day, while admission to the family festivities alone are $25. The seminar will be held from 9 AM to 12 PM on November 24th, with the Family Fun day starting at 11 AM and running until 3 PM. All proceeds go directly to the Living Through Giving Foundation in an effort to aid the homeless. With the rising homeless crisis affecting Southern California, herein lies a tangible way where jiu-jitsu enthusiasts can support a great cause in addition to learning meaningful and unique self-defense concepts that could very well aid them in the future regardless of the attire.
