Articles
Inside Kung-Fu, August 2010
- Inside Kung-Fu August 2010
The Gracie Legacy: Cowardice and Courage
When I was a child, my father brought my brothers and I to a military base where he was scheduled to give a hand-to-hand combat seminar to the Marines.
An officer showing us around and asked if we’d like to ride some horses. My brothers quickly said yes, while I hesitated. The officer chuckled, “What’s the matter, are you afraid?” My father immediately spoke up, “No, he’s not afraid, he just doesn’t want to go, thank you.”
As soon as the officer left, my father squatted down and spoke to me eye-to-eye, “That guy is kind of stupid, isn’t he? He has no idea that you’re a great rider, it’s just that you don’t know the horse.”
Earlier that year, I had been on a runaway horse and seeing this, my father yelled for me to jump. When I did, I broke my arm.
At the hospital, I wouldn’t let the doctors touch me until my father promised to let me ride horses again, which he did. So, while I wasn’t afraid of horses, the experience left me wiser and a little more cautious.
When I taught at the Gracie Academy in Brazil, a father brought in his 16-year-old son and wanted to sign him up for classes. Fernando shook hands with me and the first thing he said was, “I’m a coward,” which surprised me. But I told him, “You’re not a coward. A coward would never admit that he’s a coward. He wants to hide his weaknesses. And only a person with a lot of courage would say that.”
And the kid was immediately thrown off because he thought maybe it makes sense. The father was happy about how I handled that and signed the boy up for three classes a week.
As the boy started getting better, I would have him spar with my younger brothers. One day I’d have my 10-year-old brother spar with him, and he’d say, “But he’s only a little kid!” And I’d say, “Yes, but he knows what he’s doing.” And I’d tell my brother, “Win one time and lose one time.”
Then I’d bring in my 11-year old brother and also tell him, “Win one time, lose one time.” I’d get the kid used to the idea of winning and losing and not underestimating the little ones. And then I brought in my 12-year-old brother and then the 17year old. And little by little the kid was getting better. He brought his father in to watch his classes, because he wanted to show him that he was doing something positive about being a coward. In the meantime, I found out that the reason the kid called himself a coward was because he avoided confrontations with everybody.
When he was bullied at school, he would literally back down and let guys get away with anything. I discovered that a couple of years prior he had his arms held back by two kids while a third beat him.
So in two years he went to four different schools. He became a magnet for bullies. The kid didn’t want to go to bed at night because when he’d close his eyes, he’d think about the people bugging him and that was so annoying he’d watch TV until 2 or 3 in the morning. It was stressful for him to watch his 16-year-old son go through something like that.
Before the academy, he had gone to two different psychiatrists to deal with the issue. The second psychiatrist recommended that the father take him to the Gracie Academy. So, he shows up to the academy, and now I’m building him up. But instead of building him up with talks and lectures, I’m teaching him if a guy throws a punch, you block it. If a guy throws a kick, you do this. You get in a headlock, you do this. I’m showing him the practical realistic approach to deal with the problem.
Little by little the kid was building more confidence. Then one day my father comes in and joins the class and I said, “Today you’re going to fight my dad,” and the kid can’t believe it!
So my dad goes in and the kid throws him around, finishes the old man and chokes him out, which thrilled the kid and the father said, “Oh my gosh, my son is fighting and defeating Helio Gracie!”
Six months into the deal, the kid is now much better, much more comfortable. His father comes to me and says, “Rorion, I got a phone call from school today and apparently the class bully told my son a few weeks ago, ‘Listen, on the last day of school, I’m going to beat you up.’ He made that threat and then forgot. My son came to the bully the other day and said, ‘Listen, I don’t want to wait until the end of the year, why don’t we fight today?’ And the bully said, ‘What are you talking about?’ My son said, ‘Yeah, you told me that you’re going to beat me up, let’s do it today after class.’” And the bully backed down and the whole thing was over along with the idea of ever changing schools again.
Three months later the father walks into my office and says, “Listen, Rorion, my son went to Carnival in Bahia with his mother and two sisters; during a Carnival party there was a guy annoying one of my daughters, so my son said, ‘Hey, leave my sister alone.’ The guy, a 23-year old man, told my son, ‘Shut up, kid, don’t bug me,’ and continued to make rude remarks to his sister. The boy stepped up and said, ‘Stay away from my sister, old man!’ Then the guy pulled a knife and my son didn’t back down.
“Fortunately, the other people at the party jumped in and tackled the guy with the knife and took him away. But the bottom line, Rorion, is that my son did not back down, he was protecting his sister against a guy with a knife!” The father was telling me this, while tears rolled down his face.
I don’t encourage anybody to fight against a person with a knife, but that’s how it went. Courage is not, “Not having the fear.” Courage is no being afraid and going forward anyway, very mindfully and carefully.
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