Ihave to be honest – I wasn’t completely aware of the significance of Francisco Mansor in the whole history of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu until I started really getting into it. “Mansor” just isn’t a name that’s bandied around the casual MMA fans, like “Gracie” or even “Machado” (largely due to Eddie Bravo’s friendship with Joe Rogan). Mansor appeals largely to the BJJ purists, though.  After starting training under Helio Gracie at age 17, he later became a policeman in Rio De Janeiro, eventually becoming Chief of Police for the entire city, a job he held for 35 years.  During that time, he continued to train under the Master.  Mansor developed a relationship with the Tijuca Tennis Club, the historic site where some of the first modern BJJ tournaments were held.

Mansor was awarded his black belt and professor’s diploma by Helio Gracie, one of only six men that can make this claim.  Mansor moved to New York and began his own school and style, Kioto BJJ.  Following the passing of Helio Gracie, Grand Master Francisco Mansor is now the highest-ranking BJJ professor in the world, one of seven living 9th-degree Red Belts.

I train under Daniel Thomas, at Zeus BJJ in Monterey, CA.  Daniel received his black belt from Claudio França, a 4th degree professor in Santa Cruz who received his black belt from Mansor.  So the lineage is direct, and the first thing the Grand Master told us during the seminar was to ensure that we never stray far from our BJJ origins.  Likening it to a tree, he said that the further you get from the trunk, the weaker the branches get. In order to stay strong, you must maintain those ties to your professor.  If Claudio is his son, he said, then Daniel is his grandson, and we - Daniel’s students – are his great-grandkids (bisnetos).

My first impression of this unassuming guy was when he walked into the studio.  A couple of us had arrived early to help out, and he walked in and started hugging.  Not your typical “handshake-and-back-pat” manly BJJ kind of hug, but a no-kidding “I’m glad to see you, and you’re family” hug. Threw out the Tapout-wearing, testosterone-laden, MMA-watching stereotypes from the beginning. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu began as the “gentle art,” and despite its capability to inflict damage, men such as Helio Gracie and Flavio Behring developed the sport as a way for smaller, weaker men to control much stronger opponents.  Mansor continues that tradition, and much of the technique we learned in the seminar focused on exactly that – leverage and technique instead of power and strength.
The Flow.  I know Rickson espouses the whole idea of “flow with the go,” and Mansor teaches in a sort of flow.  Basically, his argument is that if the techniques are too disparate, you won’t remember anything.  “If I teach you an armbar here, and a foot lock here, and a guillotine here, afterward you try to lock an arm with your head – it no work,” he stated in his accented English.  So everything we did involved a sequence.

First, he explained his Five Types Of Jiu Jitsu:

-      Visible: Everything you know

-      Invisible: Everything you don’t know.  Once you learn it, it’s visible.

-      Preventative:  Stuff you do to make sure you don’t have to defend something, like keeping your elbows in to not allow a triangle attempt.

-      Defensive: Stuff you do to stop an attack that is happening.  Basically it means you neglected to prevent it.

-      Aggressive:  The attacks or progression of your position.

Techniques.  We basically followed a progression starting inside your opponent’s guard, working forward to side control, and then to mount.
The keys inside your opponent’s guard are hip control and preventative techniques.  Mansor advocates keeping both hands on your opponent’s belt, “like a handlebar,” because you can move enough up and down to both keep your opponent from sitting up as well as controlling his hips from moving side to side.
He did show an armbar defense that was pretty effective, as he demonstrated; picture this little 70-year-old man with his arm held by a 3-time black belt world champion who outweighs him by probably 30 or 40 pounds, and you have an idea of what it looked like.  But despite the obvious efforts of our Coach, he couldn’t extend Mansor’s elbow, and it resulted in Mansor tapping Coach with a paper-cutter type of choke from inside the armbar setup.  Obviously, you wouldn’t want to just give a guy an armbar so you could surprise him with this attack, but it was a very effective demonstration.
We worked from there into several types of control from the side, talking about cross-face versus far-side placement on the “top” (near the head) arm, and three places for your “bottom” arm: far-side (like a wrestling holddown), near-side (blocking the hip), and a leg weave (under the near leg and monkey-paw overhook on the far leg). When you’ve got a crossface and that leg weave controlling you, it’s pretty depressing for the lack of ability you have to do anything.
From there, Mansor moved into discussion of north-south control, and then to attaining mount.
“Having a spare.” One of the principal points Mansor reinforced throughout the seminar was the idea of having a spare.  In any position, to control your opponent, you need at least three points of contact.  That fourth limb, or point of contact, is used as your spare – in a lot of cases, if you’re on top, you want one hand free to post if he tries to roll you, or contain an escaping limb.

Many of the techniques he showed us are in his book, “The Bible of Jiu Jitsu,” which is available from amazon or wherever.  You don’t typically see it in a list of “must-read” BJJ books, mainly because there’s not many words – it’s arranged in sequential pictures that are fantastically easy to decipher and follow.  Definitely worth picking up, and it follows Mansor’s philosophy of focusing on the basics.
It’s always about the basics, of course, and you can listen to Rickson’s musings as well as all the discussion about Roger’s dominance (Ryan Hall’s recent controversial interview is a great example), but the simple fact is that they wouldn’t be the basics if they didn’t work.  Some of the small things, though, that Mansor provided, took that understanding to another level.  When working a pass from side control, he mentioned the point that you use your chest to push down on your opponent’s leg, instead of trying to grind your head past it.  “Many people ask me why my ears no look like this (like many fighters’ or wrestlers’ ears tend to, with cauliflowered cartilage and whatnot), and I tell them that my ears no fight jiu jitsu,” he said.  “Use the strong parts of your body to control your opponent, not your ears.”

Near the end of the seminar, Grand Master Mansor demonstrated the way that he ties his belt.  There’s a million different ways to do it, but in this case, he advocates this particular method because once tied, the belt doesn’t come undone nearly as easily.  So he showed us this technique, but then the real humbling part happened.  First, he tied Coach Thomas’ belt for him, then Mansor personally tied the belts for just about every white belt in the seminar.

The last part of the seminar, though, was a truly amazing experience.  Grand Master Mansor took off his kimono top and rash guard, showing a 70-year-old body with sobering evidence of his time spent as a policeman in Rio – 11 gunshot wounds.  Regardless of your religious convictions, his argument that “God looked out for him” is pretty compelling.  Nonetheless, his last, most important point in the seminar was simply to enjoy your time with friends and family.  “For your friends and family, don’t wait until their funeral to give them flowers,” he said.  “Give them a flower today.”