Key Takeaways
- Gi BJJ DVD offering a short but detailed and precise overview of fundamentals.
- Covers top pinning positions such as passing, side control, mount, knee on bell, and North-South.
- Features crucial details on concepts such as posture, balance, and transitions.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 9 out of 10.
OLD SCHOOL BJJ RICARDO CAVALCANTI DVD AVAILABLE HERE:
The highly entertaining and extremely useful Old School BJJ Ricardo Cavalcanti Fundamentals DVD caught our eye recently, so we decided to delve deeper into it. Most “old-school” BJJ DVDs are just senseless collections of random techniques that bring no real value to whoever is trying to learn from them.
This DVD is not one of those. It is a carefully crafted instructional that covers the true fundamentals of the game of Jiu-Jitsu, presenting them in a way that is easy to understand, follow, and adapt to fit your game. After all, Ricardo Cavalcanti is one of the true OGs of BJJ and has had more than 50 years to figure out how to filter out the fluff.
Old School vs. Modern Jiu-Jitsu
I love the debate that sparks among grapplers on the subject of old-school Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and the modern-day iteration of the sport. usually, you get young people who have known Jiu-Jitsu as it is today for most of their journey, claiming Gracie BJJ is obsolete and has no role.
On the other side are older grapplers (mostly) who have started training using the old-school Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu principles, and are strong advocates that nothing works without the basics. Both are right, and both are arguing a very obsolete point.
It absolutely doesn’t matter what type of Jiu-Jitsu you train. If you compete, you’re going to adapt to the needs of the match and tournament rules anyway, so such a debate is senseless, really. For those who don’t compete, trying to figure out which period of grappling development is best is an utter waste of time.
I say train everything and make the most out of it. You need the basics to understand why modern moves work, because they all share the same fundamental goals of control and finishing, regardless of their date of origin. Great example are the timeless techniques and concepts presented in the Old School BJJ Ricardo Cavalcanti Fundamentals DVD
Coral Belt Ricardo Cavalcanti
The name Ricardo Cavalcanti is one of those that either doesn’t ring a bell to those who’ve started Jiu-Jitsu in the last decade or represents a pioneer of the sport to those who have trained for a while. That is fitting, seeing as the Brazilian started training back in 1071 when most Westerners were into karate.
Cavalcanti originally began training outside the Gracie family but ended up with Carlson Gracie after a few years, and he stayed with the legendary Gracie family member until his death in the early 2000s. You can understand the wealth of experience Ricardo has in grappling just by the fact that he got his black belt in 1995.
As a competitor, Ricardo holds a world and a pans title, but that doesn’t really say much, as those competitions formed late when compared to his career. In the old days of BJJ, competition record keeping and stats were far from today.
As a coach, Cavalcanti is in charge of his own team, which was originally a part of Carlson’s organization and is now associated with Renzo Gracie. He was also on the roster of the early UFC coaches, brought to America by hall-of-famer Frank Mir.
A coral belt since 2016 under Reylson Gracie (although unrecognized by the IBJJF), Cavalcanti has embraced the modern-day practice of releasing BJJ instructionals, with quite a few titles to his name. Today, our focus will be on the Old School BJJ Ricardo Cavalcanti Fundamentals DVD.
Old School BJJ Ricardo Cavalcanti Fundamentals DVD Review
The Old School BJJ Ricardo Cavalcanti Fundamentals DVD is a very precise instructional that offers around 2 hours of quality material by a coral belt. It is a Gi BJJ DVD that is divided into five different volumes each covering a major top position pin:
Part 1 – Posture and Passing
if there was ever a BJJ instructional that lives up to its name, it has to be the Old School BJJ Ricardo Cavalcanti Fundamentals DVD. you get nothing but the very basics in it starting with posture.
As this DVD kicks off, Ricardo covers the importance of keeping posture during passing, the one thing everyone seems to forget once they go live sparring or in a match. This first volume is very short (around 15 minutes) and addresses the role of posture, how to use it while passing, and how to combine it with your balance to improve both.
As simple and short as this part is, it is absolutely filled with essential information on key subjects that, old-school as they might be, are 100% applicable to grappling today, perhaps even more than they originally were.
Part 2 – Side Control
Side control is next for Ricardo Cavalcanti to deconstruct, which he does in great detail in the second volume of the Old School BJJ Ricardo Cavalcanti Fundamentals DVD. Some basic positioning kicks things off before the key information emerges – how to seamlessly transition between different side control variations without losing the position.
As the volume draws to a conclusion, Cavalcanti slowly introduces the next one, by offering the bare essentials of unstoppable transitions to mount. This section is particularly useful, as he explains certain aspects of these transitions that most people get wrong most of the time.
Part 3 – Mount
having arrived in the mount in the previous volume, Ricardo just keeps going, offering more than just the fundamentals from the position. This third part of the Old School BJJ Ricardo Cavalcanti Fundamentals DVD contains a complete mount game plan that is perfect for Gi or No-Gi.
Positional fundamentals kick things off, just like in the previous volumes, with Cavalcanti covering both mid and high-mount. There are some great tips on stabilizing the position and launching direct and indirect attacks.
On the indirect attacks front, he offers crucial S-mount tips to ensure you don’t lose mount while establishing the S-configuration with the legs. Understandably, armbar finishes follow.
Wrapping up the volume are a couple of sections covering how to retain mount against opponents who constantly buck up and move, tying in the back mount as a natural follow-up. Mount escapes complete this detail-packed volume.
Part 4 – Knee on Belly
The next position on the Old School BJJ Ricardo Cavalcanti Fundamentals DVD roster is knee on belly, which surprised me simply because I expected back mount to feature instead of it. As a matter of fact, Cavalcanti does not cover back attacks outside of those in the mount volume, focusing on front pins instead.
Once again, the basics of positioning come first, before Ricardo breaks down how to place immense pressure on the bottom person by manipulating your posture. I particularly enjoyed the explanation of intermediate positions and the systematization of the knee on belly within them.
A real treat comes at the very end of this volume, with Cavalcanti revealing the Carlson Gracie Senior knee on belly “system”, complete with a set of attacks that made the Gracie particularly feared from this position.
Part 5 – North South
The final part of the Old School BJJ Ricardo Cavalcanti Fundamentals DVD addresses the North-South position, which despite being a side control variation gets its DVD. Ricardo finds the position highly useful for both grappling and MMA and deconstructs it thoroughly.
The positioning portion covers alignment and the inevitable principle of posture. He then launches into transitions that include side control, knee on belly, and mount, as well as offering versatile attacks from the position that tie everything together.
Ricardo Cavalcanti brings the entire DVD to a wrap by sharing his thoughts on how hard you need to train, how to set up your training as a competitor, and how to use the material in this instructional.
The Best of Both Worlds
Can you learn how to drive a car without going through the basics of how it operates and how traffic works first? Certainly, but you’ll never be as good of a driver as someone who has that base. Moreover, you’ll just end up learning those things anyway since there is no way around them, it’ll just take more time and effort.
Well, it is exactly the same with Jiu-Jitsu. If you want to learn how to drive the latest race car model of competitive Jiu-Jitsu, you need to figure out how to drive the Civic first, taking it slow and steady through the streets of your neighborhood before moving on to the race track.
The old-school BJJ has its crucial place in the foundations of the sport, but make no mistake that it contains just as much fluff as modern grappling does. At the end of the day, it comes down to the filtering abilities of your coach, and as you progress through the sport, also your own.
A great way to cheat the system is to get the endless already filtered out by using a resource such as the Old School BJJ Ricardo Cavalcanti Fundamentals DVD.
FULL DOWNLOAD: OLD SCHOOL BJJ RICARDO CAVALCANTI DVD
Go Old-School!
Don’t bother too much with the origin date of the Jiu-Jitsu you explore. Learn everything, but make sure you understand the basics that drive the entire sport. The Old School BJJ Ricardo Cavalcanti Fundamentals DVD is an awesome release, completely fluff-free and only offering crucial aspects of grappling that will help anyone in the sport, white belt to coral!
BJJ Bridge – The Fundamentals Of A Fundamental Grappling Movement
