BREATHE

A jiu jitsu and mixed martial arts legend delivers a prideful account of his accomplishments inside and outside the ring.

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1958, Gracie never met a fight he didn’t like. A couple of generations back, his ancestors fell in with a Japanese immigrant who taught them jiu jitsu, a battlefield martial form, and judo, “created in the late 1880s…as a safer, more sporting, weaponless alternative.” Gracie took up the family martial arts tradition, and though he tempered the fierce warrior attitudes of jiu jitsu with the laid-back ethos of a surfer, he was a fighter from elementary school on. Some of Gracie’s life lessons are humdrum: “Meals were spaced five hours apart to allow the body to absorb the nutrients from the food.” Others are more in the ascended-master vein: “When I put physical pressure on students, I see their true personalities because they immediately show me things that they are able to hide when they’re not on the mat: their state of emotional balance, their ability to manage pressure, and many other things.” One constant is self-regard, and Gracie airs numerous grudges. For example, in one match, he defeated Chuck Norris “in about a minute,” though Norris went on to train with a rival branch of the family. The author also recounts his rocky relationship with his brother, who once had a “monopoly” on jiu jitsu training in the U.S. “When my brother lost control of me,” he writes, “I became his greatest adversary, because I had the image, ability, and leadership skills that he lacked, and worst of all, everyone knew it.” A little of this boasting goes a long way, and there’s a lot of it, though peppered with interesting, hard-won insights on the psychology and philosophy of martial arts. Jocko Willink provides the foreword.

Read between the braggadocio and clichés to find some useful lessons.