Love, Legacy & Jiu-Jitsu ft. Ryron & Victoria Gracie | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby

0:00Now, you guys are the Gracie family. What's it been like growing up as a Gracie? Like, that's just, it's a shocking thing to be sitting amongst such greatness, but I just want to see what it feels like. Yeah, people often ask if there's a lot of pressure for being a Gracie. Gracie family, thank you so much for joining us today. I got a couple quick questions before we dive into it. This is what I ask every single person who comes on the show. What's your guys' morning routine? What's your morning routine, Victoria? Three egg whites and a piece of toast with a mix of a protein milk with coffee.

0:34and then I go straight to the gym. So I don't do coffee, but I do cold plunge. So I jump in, I don't know, it's probably 43 degrees. And I do that a few times a week for like 90 seconds. And then I go do whatever the kids need, which is usually making them breakfast and kid stuff while she works out. Nice. And then you still train after jiu-jitsu after you work out? No. Depends on the day. I start the day, though, at 6.30 in the morning. It has to start at the gym. So before I even handle the kids or see anybody, I wake up and I'm out of the house before anyone wakes up. And she's a full-time mom as well as doing other jobs, dancing and teaching jiu-jitsu.

1:14Mom is still, she really is a mom. I, on the other hand, do jiu-jitsu every day, morning and night. And I'm very fortunate to have her in my corner to allow me to do that. So, yes, my morning routine does incorporate some jiu-jitsu as well as my afternoon routine and my evening routine. Nice. Now, you guys are the Gracie family. What's it been like growing up as a Gracie? Like, that's just, it's a shocking thing to be sitting amongst such greatness, but I just want to see what it feels like. Yeah, people often ask if there's a lot of pressure for being a Gracie. And I would say that when I was very young, there might have been a little bit of pressure because I grew up amongst giants.

1:55I looked up to my grandfather, my father, my uncles, and everybody. But then I soon realized that the expectations of the elders towards me were not very, they weren't as high as I thought they were. It was pretty simple to please my grandfather, my father, my uncles, practice jiu-jitsu, make healthy choices, be a respectful person. So it was very easy. So pretty soon into my teenage years, the pressures of being in my family pretty much went away. And it's been very, very nice and very comfortable for me. Obviously, I have to work very hard and train jiu-jitsu all the time. But I really feel safe in my family to do jiu-jitsu and exist the way that I choose to exist.

2:43I don't feel this pressure to fight mixed martial arts, to fight in the UFC, to fight MMA, which quite often people in the family might feel like, you know what? we have to go out there and fight to prove the family name. That's not quite the case. I feel like I have to teach jiu-jitsu to people around the world who want to learn to defend themselves, but that's a much lighter pressure than having to step into the cage. And I respect everybody who does fight professionally, but I'm very fortunate to just go out there, not just, because it's not a very simple thing, but to share jiu-jitsu and give people the skills to defend themselves is a blessing that I have that.

3:18But to just give you some insight as someone who married into that and watched and heard the stories of how they grew up, for him, it's very normal. But for us to look at them and be like, you guys were just obsessed. You were obsessed with jujitsu. And it's like you were raised in a beautiful family that had something they were obsessed over, has physical and health benefits, and makes you a lethal weapon. So really, you were raised in the most obsessively amazing family, really. And that's the beauty of it. Like, obsession can be such a good thing for them. Yeah, I love it. It's the best thing ever.

3:50But no doubt there are some challenges for some people in the family. But I handled it all very well. I'm grateful. Now, I was actually going to ask you, what was it like marrying into the Gracie family? Well, that's a complex question because give us the short answer. Well, there is, of course, the the the beauty of like, wow, these guys are disciplined. They have a way of being and a way of eating and a way of thinking. And when you look at that, you have so much reverence for like, this is what you built based on this. Now, the hard part is every person who goes into any relationship comes with their own thoughts and culture and way of being.

4:29And the hardest part has been how do we blend our two worlds to still yield something our value systems share, honor both his legacy, but also my want for maybe, you know, the renegade of like, let's try this new thing or let's be bigger and better or improve the legacy to its maximum potential. And that's one of the values of getting married in any relationship. When someone comes into your life, you have a choice. You can completely close them out or you can be open to learning from them. And I always say that she is an amazing student because she has a natural ability of being a dancer, growing up dancing.

5:05but she's also probably one of my greatest teachers in her very open-mindedness and just challenging of things that I might be so like tunnel vision on it has to be this way she questions them which hopefully her ability to question them comes from her feeling of safety within us so when she questions things I don't I do my best not to take it very personal that she's questioning a family way of life, but instead she's trying to help me grow and we can make slight adjustments for our family of four. Now you say jujitsu is not really fighting. It's more like dancing. Describe that to me. Yeah. So when people say jujitsu is fighting and the analogy you gave is that it's more like dancing, the back and forth.

5:55Yeah. So there's two jiu-jitsu's there's the practice of jiu-jitsu amongst her and I we can grapple together and we can flow back and forth and help each other and give each other indicators and it's it's it's more of a it's a little bit less focused on self-defense it's just us moving together even though those skills will help you in a street fight because you're more comfortable with your body your you know weight distribution your controls and so on and submissions and escapes. But big picture, Jiu-Jitsu is an art of self-defense. That's what it started as. It's for survival. The martial arts are here to help keep us safe.

6:35Now, Jiu-Jitsu being music, I don't think of it being music when I think of it for self-defense. For self-defense, I think of it as self-preservation. Someone approaches you in the street and they're verbally attacking you. How can you use verbal de-escalation? How can you talk to them and get yourself out of the situation? If they attack you, how to defend yourself? You don't have to hurt them. Just keep yourself safe. So it's not music in that sense. But you're right. Amongst friends, there is a cool back and forth that can happen. There's a flow that exists. And quite often, students of ours who are professionals in every realm, they say, man, there's nothing like jujitsu.

7:16The ability to escape my thoughts. and your really present moments because you get into that music, you get into that dance. Dance, the dance. It's the dance. Mark Zuckerberg refers to jiu-jitsu as human chess. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think a lot of people said that before Mark Zuckerberg, but yes, there is the psychological, the intellectual part. The jiu-jitsu is a battle, and I think that it's cool to say it's like chess because chess is so like, I don't know, what is chess? It's very... Forward-thinking, you know. You have to be one step ahead. Strategic, for sure. Very strategic.

7:53Yeah, but it's also, it's a very intellectual, it's a very... It's revered. It's revered. It's a revered game. That if you're good at chess, oh, that must say something about you. And so they want to equate it to a physical game. 100%. Because it is. And people often say, like, you're playing chess, and I'm over here playing checkers. That's an analogy that I've heard blue belts and lower belts say about black belts. Which is kind of cool. The black belt, of course, loves hearing that. But yeah, I think it's fun. I don't think I don't say it too often. But yeah, it's a nice little thing. Now, you guys have said before that the real power of jujitsu is what it teaches about emotion, emotional control.

8:33We actually talked about that outside. When did that actually come up outside of the dojo? Emotional control. Do you have any thoughts on that? I'm going to let you start this one and I might add it at the end. So the thing about emotions, naturally, men grow up suppressing their emotions, right? You cannot be emotional. And I grew up kind of being taught, don't get angry. If somebody, you know, physically, even if somebody kind of pushes you a little bit or verbally attacks you, we don't get angry. We might defend ourselves, but be very aware of, instead of like, wow, you don't have to start swearing back and getting out of control with your emotions.

9:13It's unnecessary. And the reason why getting emotionally, responding emotionally in a fight is dangerous is because you're kind of blinded by your emotions. You want to respond from a place of clarity, not like, how dare you say that? And you attack the person who, you know, is a potential threat. And now you're putting yourself in harm's way because you're blinded by your emotions. So that awareness was always talked about. but there is something to be said also about how your emotions can add fuel to the encounter. Someone can cut me off in traffic and then they pull up next to me and I could be really angry and start saying something and then before you know it, they pull their car off in front of me.

10:03Now I'd get out of my car and now we're yelling back and forth. The whole thing escalates because I got emotional about it. So emotional control in the everyday world, think about how many street fights or assaults could be avoided if the person that was initially offended had a little more emotional control, had a little more confidence. And they just said, you know what, that person's having a hard day and they walked away. Yeah, and how jujitsu helps with that is that we continue to put people in sort of these uncomfortable positions, which brings up a myriad of emotions. And then now you're faced with these emotions on the mat in a safe place with a training partner you sort of trust.

10:38And then you can feel it coming up and you sort of taper it down sooner. And so you kind of learn how to micro control those emotions on the mat so that as you exist off the mat, you go and then you settle it yourself. It's the practicing of emotional regulation in real time. And simultaneously, you're learning techniques that make you feel more confident, more prepared, more empowered. so you don't need to verbally assert yourself to make up for your lack of confidence that you have physical. Because people who are very confident, who know how to fight, they don't start arguing and yelling back and forth.

11:15The most confident person in the room is often the most quiet person in the room. So when it comes to the martial arts, it does so much in just calming people down. If you're an anxious person, if you're a nervous person, Even if you're a very negative person, jiu-jitsu brings out the positivity. Now, one thing anyone's able to immediately assess is your guys' relationship. It's a fantastic relationship. You guys get along very well, madly in love. Would you attribute a lot of the success in your marriage to the lessons you've learned from jiu-jitsu? Would you? I would say that thanks to jiu-jitsu, I'm really durable.

11:57Because marriage is not easy. It's a very difficult thing. As much as it's difficult, it's also very rewarding. So I think my, I have a certain resilience that allows me to have very difficult times in the marriage, but then see the bigger picture and stick through it and be patient and be understanding and be forgiving. So I'm used to saying that we're an amazing, loving couple, but that doesn't mean that we're not also human. And there could be arguments, but I don't yell in my arguments. I don't get angry and emotional, but I can be frustrated and be bothered by things, and so can she. And we can argue.

12:38But then the bigger picture creeps back in, which is, hey, I want to make this happen. I love this person. She has my best interests at heart, and I have hers at heart. But sometimes it doesn't feel that way. So the understanding and the grace and the patience, those are things that I feel like for me are very helpful. Well, and you're a hugely participatory person in the relationship. I think often when we get into relationships, we go, oh, I need them to be this person and do these things instead of being of service. So if you're perpetually going, I'm going to continue to serve this relationship, you'll continue to win from it.

13:15And it's hard because not every every moment do we have like the full capacity to give. and I think there's a lot of also constructs in the world where it's like men should be this and women should be this and that's how it should be instead of coming together and hey how do you want to play this game we've we're here on this earth one time we're humans we could like you said play the chess however we want do you want to play the rook today cool that didn't work pull the rook back let's do you know the other one and because we're on the same team for everything we're going to play every game together it's just figuring out how we want to play it with deep respect for each other and how each other's feeling at any given time and going, actually, you're going to handle this kid, the kid fight today.

13:51Like I'm going to, I'm going to trust you with that. I feel like there's a confidence that the martial arts gives you. At least I believe the greatest thing jujitsu has given me is like a deep confidence that I know everything is going to be okay. No matter what, like I really feel that way because if it's going to be okay, if somebody on top of me, punching me, it's going to be okay. I'm going to get out. I'm going to be safe. Then everything else is going to be okay. I might lose my home one day. I might not have a car. I might lose a leg. I might get injured. It's going to still work out in the end.

14:28So I think jujitsu helped really ingrain that in me that we're going to find an answer. We're going to find a way out of this and we're going to be okay. And I've never once we've been married for, I don't know how many years 12, 10, 14, 15, you know better. A long time. Good amount of years and even being married that long, no matter what the chaos, I never felt anything but it's going to be okay. Would you say that that's the greatest lesson that jiu-jitsu taught you? For me, I would say it's the most valuable skill, most valuable thing that I've learned and taken from jiu-jitsu, yes. Now, Now, one thing you guys also have mentioned several times is your children.

15:10Now, you know, I mentioned to you guys my kids train jujitsu. They're three and four. And I asked you guys, when do you guys start? You said babies. We start our kids as babies. Well, it's the concept that everything in jujitsu is movement. It's technique. It's leverage. It's understanding, you know, how to form positions. And when babies are babies and you're changing diapers, that's a thing. they can upa and upa it's to bridge your hips up while your feet and your back are still remaining on the floor and we would say upa and they would lift their hips and we would slide the diaper under and she's saying we would say that because my dad did that to me when i was a baby and kind of upa i think comes from like a horse like bucking so like as a little baby as she just said i'm laying down and my dad would say upa when i'm one years old i would raise my hips and change the diaper yeah so it's it's an amazing um example of how soon you could start using jujitsu language and verbiage around kids.

16:07But the reason why our kids start so young and why any kids that start very young have an advantage and why it's so cool is because anything you want to learn in life, if you start when you're seven years old or four years old, you have an advantage over the rest of the world. And if you start with play, children are significantly more likely to learn, enjoy, and become adaptable with play. If you're forcing them or if it becomes competitive or, like, again, this is what we do, it's the control dynamic, then they're a little more resistant to it. They don't understand why you're changing your behavior.

16:45But the Gracie family just plays jujitsu all day in every form. Our father did this, and now we have what we call our Gracie Bully Proof Program, which are these games that we teach parents to play with their children. And the idea that kid doesn't even realize they're learning Jiu Jitsu. Yeah. So what she's saying is when you play, you'll play forever. The kid wants to play sometimes more than the parent wants to play. And that's part of the trick. We teach parents that, listen, don't even make it a thing. How do you teach that? Like how do you teach just play? Well, you disguise a Jiu Jitsu technique in a game.

17:24So the kid thinks that they're playing a game called Crocodile Control where they have to hold down a crocodile for 10 seconds. But in reality, we're teaching our four-year-old how to hold another kid down underneath them, how to have positional control and have, you know, I guess good weight distribution. And that's a fighting skill. Like if you lay down and I lay on top of you, I can hold you down for four days. You'll never get out. Now, to give that to your child, they get into school and, you know, a fight in the schoolyard, they fall on top of somebody, they can hold that kid down. If they don't know how to hold someone down and now you're 13, 16, 19, you resort to striking.

18:06Now you got 19 year olds beating each other up because they're afraid that if they don't win the fight quickly, they're going to get beat up. But I, on the other hand, I know I can just hold the person down for a minute, two minutes, three minutes, and they're going to get tired. And then I'm going to stand up and say, hey, we're done here and walk away. That was the whole fight, simply holding someone down. So why not give kids that tool when they're three, four years old. So when they're nine and you see the kid fighting on the grass in the schoolyard somewhere, you know, a little bullying situation, you don't, you're not in shock as a parent.

18:35Parents are like, oh my gosh, my kid's being bullied. What do I do? No, it's okay. Your kid's been playing, been play fighting forever with the parents, with the siblings, with whoever. Not to mention there's a huge benefit to like getting out their proprioceptive needs right before bedtime. Like, all right, mount on my back. Try to get off. You're wiggling, You're bonding with them. They feel safe. Their body moves. They get charged and then they relax. She just said bonding, which is one of the things that so many parents, they come forward and they say, wow, I never imagined how special the jujitsu would be because the physical contact that exists.

19:09My nine-year-old son and I were grappling all the time. He's hugging me, even though they're play fighting. I love it. That's why I love it. Huge. The bonding of jujitsu is priceless. There you go. And the normalization of physical, like for COVID, everyone's like six feet, six feet, six feet. We're humans. We need like eight hugs a day, they say on average, right? Like we're physical beings with everybody. And we want to make sure we're like kids. You can touch other kids and it not be like weird, but also like hug. And if you don't feel great hugging, great. Mount him. Roll over. And okay, I did it because we're fighting.

19:42We're fighting. It's not weird. It's not weird. Contact is not weird. And it's only a matter of time before your kids, your kids are doing jujitsu. But every single kid at some point, whether they're 3, 5, 12, 19, 27, something will happen where someone someday crosses a line. Someone someday grabs a wrist, pushes them, knocks them down, says something. And whether or not they have the skills is the parent's responsibility. I had a friend that said, hey, bring your kid to jujitsu. He's like, yeah, I tried for the last year. He didn't come. I said, it has nothing to do with your son. It has to do with you.

20:19You're the parent. We do jujitsu once a week. This is a life skill. The last thing you want to do is turn 27 years old, 35 years old, and not have any skills to keep yourself safe because who knows what the world is going to throw your way. Well, and that's what's crazy. The majority of parents come to us one, two, three months before their child is going off to college. And they're like, hey, my little child, Jennifer, she's going to college and I want to protect her. I want her to know how to defend herself. And you're calling us three months before her college, like, what are we doing? She's needed years of first boundary setting and then understanding how to use her body as a defense mechanism, how to like really assess a room, understand the human.

20:58Now he's overpowered me. How do I get out of this? And three months is a really short time to just equip her. We can do it. We've done it. We do it. It takes a nightmare for parents to wake up. Too often the parent comes forward after either they're going to college, so they start thinking about the nightmare. Worst case scenarios, yep. Or maybe the kids 10, 12 years old, they're getting bullied at school. No, I'm thinking about my daughters now. That's something like it's more important. Don't wait. Don't wait. And again, if we resort to the, you learn better and play. Kids, girls who are younger play easier.

21:32As we grow up, we go, I don't want to play. I want to, I want to go to Sephora. I want to be cute. I want to be beautiful. There's a huge shift in the social world of all sort of digital like media of girls changing their interests. So capture them while they're still willing to play. And if you can play with them, now you've got dad and mom rolling with you, bonding with you in ways that like really cement what they're capable of, their personal confidence and what they can do in the future. And at the same time, don't make it something so serious where you have to do jujitsu. If you don't go, you're in trouble.

22:02It has to like be a family thing. And okay, we do it today. We missed for two weeks. No problem. But it's just always in the back of your mind as a parent. And that's because you might do it once a week, or that's because you had the discipline to watch videos and play with them on your carpet at your house once a week, whatever it is. Now, I want to, real quick, before we adjourn, I want to talk about the Gracie University. It's the biggest jujitsu academy ever. Who was the visionary behind it? How did you guys roll that out? And, like, what's the plan for it? So the Gracie, my grandfather and his brother, Carlos Gracie, and Elio Gracie, their brothers, they had other brothers as well, they basically shocked the world and they shocked brazil exploded in brazil my father came to america 1979 1978 his name is hardy on hardy on gracie and he created the ufc in 1993 my uncle hoist fought in the ufc and there were other uncles and cousins of theirs at the same generation Haryon was the founder?

23:08Haryon was one of the co-creators of the UFC. So him, his brother, his cousins, people of that generation, they were in other states as well. They were in New York, Hawaii. They're all around America and in Brazil, and they're fighting in different events. The UFC is obviously the biggest name, biggest promotion. The UFC happened. My father and his brothers had the Gracie Academy in Torrance, California. There were multiple Gracie Academies. My brother, Henner, and I started Gracie University, which it's in the same community as where the Gracie Academy was. The Gracie Academy of Torrance of Los Angeles is no longer.

23:51But in a way, it is because we were also kid instructors growing up in the Gracie Academy. But we changed to Gracie University because we have an online platform, gracieuniversity.com, where people can learn. It's a linear program. You can men, women, and children, and we have courses for everybody, law enforcement training. And now we're doing a lot of first responders, and we have Gracie Medical Defense for doctors, nurses, everybody you can imagine, firefighters. Everyone's learning jujitsu. Whoever you are, whatever demographic you are, we have a program and we have techniques that we suggest for you and your profession and your life.

24:28So Gracie University Online birthed the idea of having Gracie University brick and mortar headquarters mat space. And that's in Torrance, California. It's an amazing facility. We have 1 ,900 to 2 ,000 students right now from three-year-old kids to 75-year-old adults. It's amazing. And the best thing about Gracie University is, like I said, it doesn't matter who you are, you can grow with jiu-jitsu. Where quite often jiu-jitsu schools might be more focused on the younger, more athletic, stronger, faster people, which those people can train at our school or any school in the world. And there is a beauty in the very sportive, competitive jiu-jitsu.

25:17But Gracie University understands what Carlos Gracie, Elu Gracie, what so many of the Gracies before have always wanted, which is to empower the world. And I think today, more than ever, other schools around the world are also understanding how a small percentage want to be competitive and want to fight and win medals. The majority want to have community. They want to exercise. Build confidence. Yes. They want to use their body. If you don't use your body, you lose it. They want to learn skills that they can keep themselves safe and their families safe. They also want to learn how to approach situations and problems with the jiu-jitsu mindset.

25:57Because when you start training jiu-jitsu, you start looking at everything differently. You're more calculated. You're more strategic. You're more patient in your response. Back to the whole thing about marriage, right? How you just exist in a calmer space. You have this calm confidence. So I think everybody who does jiu-jitsu would say, would agree with me, that it has changed how they just sit within themselves. Incredible. A couple last questions. You guys are teaching grit. You learn grit from the Gracies. How are you instilling that same mindset, that Gracie mindset, into your children now?