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Josh Waitzkin – Chess Prodigy & BJJ Black Belt – Talks #1 Thing That Made Marcelo Garcia Great

Josh Waitzkin – Chess Prodigy & BJJ Black Belt – Talks #1 Thing That Made Marcelo Garcia Great

Josh Waitzkin, known for his prodigious chess career and later success in martial arts, recently broke down what makes Marcelo Garcia one of the most revolutionary figures in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

According to Waitzkin, Garcia’s genius lies not in static positions but in his mastery of transitions – constantly moving, always playing in the space between positions:

If you’re training Jiu-Jitsu with most people, they’re always finding a position and holding it.

Marcelo, one of the unique things about his training life for most of his life was that he never held positions, he was always moving, he was always in the in-between.

Waitzkin, who co-owned a school with Garcia, describes how most practitioners see Jiu-Jitsu as a series of static positions, but Garcia operates in what he calls “100 frames in between” – allowing him to flow in spaces that others don’t even recognize:

There’s a beautiful clip of him in an old documentary called Suave.
It’s about 25 years old and available on YouTube.

It’s an 8-minute clip of Marcelo training as an 18-year-old, and you can watch him learning this transitional approach even then.
He’s never stopping, always allowing his opponent to move, and living in the transitions.

Waitzkin emphasizes that training this way requires letting go of ego, as most people instinctively want to hold dominant positions because it feels like a victory.

Garcia, on the other hand, trained in a way that prioritized movement over control, giving him unparalleled fluidity and adaptability:

You have to get past the egoic dynamics because you can’t feel like you’re giving up on dominating people all the time,” he explains. “When you’re in a dominant position in Jiu-Jitsu you want to hold it because you’ve won.

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