Since the dawn of time man has been evolving through the ages, from our early days of living in caves to rocketing at the speed of sound across the world and beyond , we have been evolving, and never as fast as the past 120 years as we have evolved in the past 100 years, that being said Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or Gracie Jiu Jitsu has also been evolving, but there is only so many techniques and so many dynamics of the human body we can invent. Game changers like Marcelo Garcia ( who by definition is probably the absolute best BJJ fighter we have ever seen ) have a gift that most of us can only dream of having. Hard work and talent can get you very far, but having a gift like Marcelo Garcia changes the way people think about BJJ and how our community thinks about technique and overall physical strength.

While Helio Gracie was at the top of his game in the early days of BJJ , our sport has evolved to include techniques probably never heard of in the early 1900’s when Jiu Jitsu was in it’s infancy. The techniques we know of today like the De La Riva guard, Berimbolo, Tornado Guard, Inverted Guard, etc. were never heard of back then, in fact there was really no such thing as Sport Jiu Jitsu how we know of it today. The question begs to ask, has Brazilian Jiu Jitsu stopped evolving?

With the internet, YouTube, and BJJ schools popping up all over the country and world for that matter, we have been exposed to techniques from every corner of the planet , but have we seen every technique we will ever see? Or will we find that the greatest most effective techniques have yet to be discovered?

If you ask anyone who knows anything about Jiu Jitsu and our rich history, they will tell you the single most influential person to change the way our sport has evolved is Rolls Gracie.

Rolls Gracie ideaology was very simple but incredibly effective. Train in every sport you can to become a well rounded fighter in all aspects of martial arts. Rolls Gracie was the man responsible for the success of future fighters and grapplers like Rickson Gracie , Royler Gracie and so on . Rolls Gracie believed in cross training in other grappling styles like Wrestling , Sambo, Judo and he took with him the techniques learned abroad back to Brazil and taught his other brothers the techniques he learned. Techniques began to evolve to what we know of today from his way of thought.

Will we see better techniques? Will old techniques die off never to be used again? Or will we blend old school techniques with new school trends?

Only constant training and refining techniques will answer this question, maybe the next great moves are buried inside someones thinking mind, BJJ is a game of human chess, the thinking man’s sport and so the thinking man ( or woman ) will be the one to find new techniques.