Shownotes
About This Episode
In this episode of Tapped In, host David Figueroa Martinez of DFM Coaching dives deep into his personal library to share his favorite Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu books. From world-traveling memoirs and deep historical deep-dives to business blueprints and practical handbooks for beginners, David breaks down the essential reads that will change your perspective on the art, whether you are a white belt or a seasoned coach.
3 Key Takeaways
- Expand Your Perspective: Books like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Globetrotter offer a look into the global lifestyle and community of BJJ beyond the walls of your local gym.
- Uncover the True History: The Rise and Evolution of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu separates marketing myths from historical facts, highlighting the forgotten figures who shaped the art.
- Professionalize Your Passion: Fabio Gurgel's Unshakeable serves as a masterclass on how to structure, market, and run a Jiu-Jitsu association like a legitimate corporate business.
Chapters & Timestamps
- 00:00 – Introduction & Reading Habits
- 00:30 – Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Globetrotter by Christian Graugart
- 01:31 – The Rise and Evolution of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu by Robert Drysdale
- 03:47 – Unshakeable by Fabio Gurgel
- 06:04 – Worth Defending by Richard Bresler
- 07:44 – The Ground is My Ocean by David Young
- 09:05 – BJJ White Belt Handbook by David Figueroa Martinez
- 10:49 – Honorable Mention: Breathe: A Life in Flow by Rickson Gracie & Outro
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Transcripts
Episode Transcript
00:00 Welcome to Tapped In. My name is David Figueroa Martinez of DFM Coaching, and today we're going to be discussing some of my favorite Jiu-Jitsu books. If you don't know, I'm a big reader. I try to finish at least a book a month, maybe two if I'm lucky. I also do a lot of audiobooks for those moments where I just don't have the time to sit down and read, but I know I'm going to be driving for a bit.
00:30 The first one that I I highly suggest for people is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Globetrotter by Christian Graugart—forgive me if I mis- mispronounced the last name. So, it's about a guy who gets into Jiu-Jitsu and then he kind of just travels the world. And he is, in large part, responsible for the Globetrotters brand and Jiu-Jitsu association that is massive—I'm also a part of it. And it's one of those things where you watch him just kind of get into the lifestyle and go from one country to the next. It's a real fun read. You get to see a guy just kind of go through the entire gamut of Jiu-Jitsu. From being a beginner—he was a surfer—and then he gets into different things. You cover his entire journey as an athlete. Um, it's really, again, a really fun read. I highly suggest it to people who just want to kind of get a different perspective for Jiu-Jitsu as as a whole because it's kind of from when he started to I'm pretty sure after he got his black belt. And you just you get to see someone's entire perspective opposed to just like yours or someone who you might train with. Great read.
01:31 Another one that I like is The Rise and Evolution of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu by Robert Drysdale. This is different in that he takes it's a pretty big book. He takes like he becomes a nerd historian. And he's he goes into the entire history of Jiu-Jitsu, early until the modern times. What I thoroughly enjoyed about it was learning the different characters, the authentic stories behind them, why there's so many people who are genuinely large parts of the creation and evolution of this art that we love that are largely forgotten about. He makes a big connection with all these different people who kind of either helped the Gracies or helped Jiu-Jitsu within Brazil, and maybe weren't the marketers that the Gracies were, who didn't put their names out there the same way, and have not been able to capitalize on their portion or their their their assistance in the art.
02:46 I have we've all heard the same stories that get let out about the creation, quote-unquote, of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Robert Drysdale, in this one, actually goes into a lot of the myth, a lot of the things that we have been heralded as facts that really weren't facts, and were just kind of played up stories for marketing purposes. Um, I personally feel that Jiu-Jitsu is Judo in the facet of Judo, the Newaza portion, and that it was not created, quote-unquote, in Brazil. He touches quite a bit on that. He touches quite a bit on the Jiu-Jitsu aspect, oh I'm sorry, the Judo aspect and how it allowed or how it came to Brazil, how it started to mature within that country, and then all the other facets that we we we know about and do not know about. He does a fantastic job really getting into the story. We have a, in my opinion, we have a bad habit of not understanding the complete story or getting into it, and really that's on us. And so this book, he really took the time to develop and give you a broad look at all the characters that played their part, um, how some of the the these stories that have been brought out weren't quite what they were, and that, you know, it's it's such a larger story, such a larger story. Then it really needs some some time, and me personally, I would love if if this book was more in a like a documentary movie or a series type, and I'm hoping it gets that someday, because there's so much information in this that one pass through, you you miss and forget quite a bit.
03:47 The book that I recently read was Unshakeable by Fabio Gurgel. He's the creator of Alliance. In this book, he he covers how he got into Jiu-Jitsu, his background, his childhood, the different instructors that he had, um, the idea that of what Jiu-Jitsu ended up becoming for his own life, how he was skipping school and going to Jiu-Jitsu and getting bad grades and had to do some some summer school to kind of catch up. He discusses the various moves he made when he started teaching his own and and when he put together his own Jiu-Jitsu school and the ups and downs of operating. He also gets into how he came about with the Alliance brand and gym, and how he started kind of bringing people in. He talks about the various, again, serious ups and downs that he went through business-wise. A building would shut down or they would have issues. He goes through the the issues that they had with COVID and how they handled that. He talks extensively about how he started getting into business and wanting to learn how to run a business, uh, effectively.
05:07 And in reading this, I I now understand why Alliance is what Alliance is. You watch so many of the associations throughout the country and the world as a whole, and there are very few associations that you look at and you're like, "That's run like like a legitimate Fortune 500 business," in a sense. And then you see others where you're like, "Okay, that's strung together. It's effective or it's working, but there's things that could be done." And if you're in an association, you you kind of can attest to some of that. When I look at Alliance, and I'm looking at how they run their social media, how they run the marketing, how they put together gyms—they all have an aesthetically pleasing atmosphere. Looks beautiful, looks not futuristic, but very like, you put thought into every corner of the gym. And in reading this book, I see why that occurred. It wasn't by accident. This man went out of his way to kind of put certain pieces in play. He discusses that. He discusses his self-education of how he wanted to run the business, what works in a non-Jiu-Jitsu business that he can apply to a Jiu-Jitsu business. He kind of gets into that, and it was a fun read. It was fun having him map out the course of his life and his career as a Jiu-Jitsu athlete, coach, and business owner, and really talk about his mistakes, his errors, the the things that he maybe wishes he did different, the things that he thinks things that he genuinely attributes to his success now and the success of Alliance. It was a great read in that sense, and it gave me my own almost perspective and maybe some insight on things that I want to do within our own gym and the association there. But yeah, great read. I highly recommend this one—all of them, but this one was was a special one.
06:04 Also, Worth Defending by Richard Bresler. He recently passed away, I think last year. I can't remember of what—it may have been cancer. He is Rorion's first student in America, and he details the garage days, he details um how they trained at that time, which is very different than how they train now. He goes into his relationship with uh Rorion and the the family, the kids. He goes into what it was like training as an American in that and the the various challenge matches and fights that they had, how Rorion advertised the gym and Jiu-Jitsu as a whole within the community, the brilliance behind some of that. He also gets into how they started getting into the UFC, and if I remember correctly, he himself donated or invested into the creation of the UFC or that Pancrase-style event. And he also he doesn't pull any punches about some of the heartbreak that he had suffered as a student in Jiu-Jitsu, and how certain things were sometimes promised and they did not happen. He gets into his his own ups and downs of trying to get through the sport and and always just kind of the same things that we see now, in a sense, where sometimes things occur in a gym that shouldn't from your instructor. They were occurring then, and he doesn't necessarily pull punches when it comes to his fallout and some of the relationship issues that he had at the time. But it is a fantastic read. It also shed some light on like, if you're a history buff, it's going to really touch on a lot of that. It was unfortunate he passed recently, but great read. I again, highly recommend it, especially if you're into like that early history stuff that we don't get a whole lot about. Great for that.
07:44 I also read, a couple years ago I should say, I read The Ground is My Ocean by David Young. It's on Amazon. It's also paperback, if I remember correctly. This is a fiction novel about a high school student who gets into a car accident of some kind, and then he loses his leg. He goes through depression, and he has all these thoughts about like how he's he's inferior or he's he can't get out of his own way, and he eventually gets into Jiu-Jitsu. And you can imagine what that's like not having a limb and trying to have to kind of overcome some things. I loved it for the idea that Jiu-Jitsu kind of bonds or adheres to any specific person regardless of the limitations they have, and it goes through his his his understanding of Jiu-Jitsu, the pitfalls that he has, the emotional aspects that he has of getting into the car accident, of having to deal with Jiu-Jitsu without a limb, and maybe not liking it, pushing forward, and then ultimately, I think if I remember correctly, he ends up competing and so on. Fun, great read. I enjoyed it for the storytelling, the characters. I wish there was more, but I don't think the author is writing another one of these. But I genuinely wish there was another, and I wish there were more fictional stories and novels related to this art, but they're hard to come by sometimes.
09:05 Lastly, and I'm only throwing this in here because uh because it's mine. Uh, I wrote a handbook back when I was a blue belt, uh, called BJJ White Belt Handbook. And I think I was late white, early blue, something like that. And it is a short read—under 40 pages if I remember correctly. It covers like the first year, year and a half of your training, what to expect, certain scenarios, uh, tips, tricks, things that you should keep in mind, like all the common shit that we talk about now—hygiene, nails, how you should kind of create a game, how you should view training, how you should approach competition. But really in a in a simplistic way, something that white belts can kind of get into really early. It covers just the stuff that I never, not never, but it was hard to come across at the time. Nowadays, you got information everywhere, but I think there's topics in there that we don't necessarily discuss all that often, and it was really put together for the brand new student who just didn't know what was going on. And I came through and I didn't well, I had to figure so much of this shit on my own, and and through weird conversations and off and on and trial and error, and so I decided to put the book together because at the time, there just wasn't a whole lot covering it. You can find books on techniques, you can find books on some history, but you couldn't find any books just on acclimating to the culture of Jiu-Jitsu, especially early on.
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