People often say that jiu-jitsu is like kinetic chess, so I suppose the Gracie brothers sparring match is comparable watching two chess masters play kinetic 'speed chess'. This is not a cooperative slow roll demo, and I will not even try to explain what goes on because I will not do it justice.

Whether you are planning to test for a stripe or not however, the highlight of this DVD is the 'brotherly battle' section, in which Ryron and Rener spar competitively for 25 minutes. In particular, I easily foresee 'Drill 3' requiring the most practice outside of regular class because it includes Chapter 6 in the Master Cycle (foot locks, toe hold foot locks, knee locks, heel hooks, and their counters) which are rarely practiced, and even forbidden at many schools. It is hard to watch the drills and not want to train on the spot, and the DVD drills served as a quick reminder to me that I have a long way to go before I am Stripe 1 material. (Stripe 1 alone has approximately 160 technical variations and over 52 hours of video instruction!) The biggest difference in the technical demonstrations of the stripe 1 test versus the Gracie Combatives (aside from the number of techniques) is that the demonstrations are done with much more conviction, intensity, and crispness. completed the Gracie Combatives white-to-blue curriculum, and was very curious to see how the Gracie family would create a test for their Stripe 1 curriculum with such a large amount of information. The Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy recently released their Blue Belt Stripe 1 Official Test DVD, and I wanted to give some feedback on it.

Gracie master cycle dvd