Interview by: Kevin Howell    Photos by: Dave Contreras

The following interview was previously featured in Vol. 5 of the Budovideos magazine (now called Martial Generation Magazine). Multiple time BJJ world champion, and ADCC champion, Leo Vieira shares his thoughts on opening his new school (located in La Habra, CA), the current state of competition, and what it’s like being a new father.

Tell me a little bit about your academy here in La Habra, California.

Everything started when I first met Chris Franco.  He helped and supported me a long time ago in some championships, and we became very good friends very quickly.  When I came back to California, I would always stay at his house and we would always talk about me opening a school in the US.  After some time, we decided to go for it.  Chris showed me the La Habra academy first and we both thought that it would be a good location for my first academy in the US.  Chris had a lot of friends in the area and many of them came to the grand opening to make it a success. It was also important to have a California academy because the World Championships and a lot of the bigger tournaments had already moved to the US and I did not have an academy here.  With that in mind, I knew I had to have an academy here just as much for my team as myself. Once we started the school in La Habra, within a couple of months we opened the second location in Upland, California.  There are plans for a third location, but I need to make sure that a top level instructor from my team would be able to teach there and it has to be close enough for me to attend regularly too. Speaking of this, I would like to talk a little more about my new academy in Upland.  The academy there is taught by myself and BJJ World Champion, Lucas Leite.  The school also has a fight shop and it is very nice addition.  Lucas runs a very good class - he has a very high jiu-jitsu level, and I am always heading up there to teach as well.  They also have muay-thai and submission wrestling. In La Habra, I am the head instructor, but Ricardo “Pancho” Feliciano is teaching as well and I have already had my brothers, Ricardo and Leandro Vieira, teaching classes.

How are your La Habra students dong?

They are doing very well.  We have a lot of white, blue, purple, brown, and black belts.  The academy is new, we have been here for about 6 months, but the academy already has a high level.  My goal is to make some champions from the La Habra and Upland schools in the next World Championships.

How do you measure potential in your academy and team?

I think that everybody who is training looks for a reason for their training.  Sometimes, when a student starts, he just want to make friends and have fun, but ends up developing a very big competitor inside himself.  I look at everybody in my academy as having a good potential to be a top level competitor.  I really believe in all of my students.  The only variable is  himself, if he is comfortable with competing - I think anyone here can do a good job in his division.  First of all, my students have the opportunity to train with the best fighters in the world; we already fought in the No-Gi Worlds and we came away with the best team trophy.  So, we have great people to train with and these guys help push the students to new levels, while exposing them to different games.  This exposure is very important in a successful jiu-jitsu academy.  More importantly though, everyone has to have a lot of fun.  Sometimes, the student comes to laugh, make some friends, and have fun, but he will eventually become comfortable enough to compete because we have a tradition of excellence in competition.  So, as long as he wants to compete and becomes comfortable with this, we have the ability to help him become one of the best fighters in the world.  The key to this is having fun.

Speaking of enjoying jiu-jitsu, I noticed that you really focus on having fun in the academy.  You manage to have a very good environment where everybody is respectful while having a great time.  Is it safe to say that there is not a fear of laughter in your classes?

Yes, we are always having a good time.  I attribute the positive environment with my beginning in jiu-jitsu, starting as a kid and later becoming a children’s class instructor.  When you are teaching kids, you cannot teach them like an adult.  You have to make them have fun and want to come back to class; if they do not love it they will not return.  A long time ago, when I started jiu-jitsu, I got bored a couple of times with jiu-jitsu and I wanted to stop, but my mother did not let me.  Later in life, I realized that if everyday is always the same routine and you always have the same plan, you can get bored and this causes people to lose their motivation and quit.  People are very creative and this should be encouraged in jiu-jitsu.  So, I tried to transfer this philosophy to the adult class as well.  Sometimes, we play, sometimes we train hard, and sometimes we have different types of classes.  We have classes for instructors, fighters and competitors, beginners, and children, but all the classes mix having fun with jiu-jitsu.  The methods change as well, sometimes we train without hands, with tennis balls, and with unfamiliar objectives.  At the heart of my classes is enjoyment.  If you are not having fun, why train jiu-jitsu?

Tell me about the hard training and tournament preparation.

About a month before the competition, I tell my guys something important:  I have to be two wear two hats to insure their success.  One hat is that of the instructor that teaches all of the classes and is always smiling, while the other is the coaches hat.  When this time comes, we have special training for competitors and during these sessions, I am not my student’s friend - I am the coach.  When I am coaching, sometimes I want to say, “Okay you are training hard today, you are doing good,” but I have to coach more than this.  Instead I have tell my student that he can do better, make more effort, and do his best.  At times, the student may get upset, but they know that I am trying to get their best out of them before the competition.  This is why I cannot only be a friend.  I have to listen as a coach, understand their situation,  and help them make positive changes.  Sometimes they complain and I understand their frustrations - a good coach listens.  They are dieting and tired from being pushed hard.  Of course, I like to have fun and keep it playful - this is my personality, but I owe it to my students to  coach them hard when the time comes.

During these times when you are the coach, do you wear a mustache to show the students that you are different?

(Laughs)  No, I do not have a mustache, but I am angry like I have one.  I am more like Gargamel (from the Smurfs) for one month.  This is how I see it - inside of you, you have two lions.  One is the aggressive lion and the other is serene, and they fight each other everyday.  So when the tournament comes around, I just feed the lion that will best help my students. When the tournament is finished, I get to become myself again!

Why do you split the training between gi and no-gi?

LV:  I think that these two really complete each other.  First of all, it is about the concepts.  When you do both together, you improve in different areas.  If you train with the gi, you can control your opponent with more distance, there are more positions, and you have more options to grip.  Without the gi, you do not have to do this.  You have to be tighter and expend more energy being tight, but you benefit by working more controls with your body and how it adjusts.  So, sometimes your make mistake with the gi is that you give too much space - the answer is to train more without it to correct for this.  The same is also true of using the kimono as a tool to strengthen your no-gi escapes, defense, and transitions.

You are also an exponent of teaching strategy in your classes.  When did you begin developing this aspect of your game and teaching?

Sometimes, you develop this at black belt and sometimes this never develops.  Once again, this depends on you.  For me, I began thinking about this when I was studying physical therapy.  We had some classes that studied body language and when we worked with patients who could not communicate verbally, we had to use body language and feeling to communicate.  Eventually, I learned that the body often shows much more than words.  Afterward, I transitioned this concept to jiu-jitsu and I discovered that it is the same.  This also relates to tournament fighting.  Some people say they do not want to compete, but as long as you are in the academy, you are going to compete with yourself.  You will always challenge yourself.  When you are training, it does not matter if it is fun training, the goal is the same.   You want to control the guy, submit him, and you do all of this without tapping yourself.  You may say, I do not care if the guy passes my guard and makes me tap, but of course you want to make him tap, you want to sweep, and you want to be the one passing the guard.  So, as long as you are training, this is your personal competition.  Of course, this is different than a tournament competition.  In a tournament, you cannot make mistakes, but in the academy you can be wrong.  This is also where my strategy comes into play, because your goal is always to control and submit.  You need strategy to do this and if you do not have one - how do you hope to be successful?  Whether you train for fun or competition, you need a strategy to accomplish your goals.  This goes for everything in your life.  When you want something bad enough, you have to make a strategy to achieve it.

So you believe you are always competing with yourself?

I think the biggest problem that we have most of the time in the jiu-jitsu academy are people who compete against other students when they should be competing against themselves.  You have to challenge yourself to learn something different.  When you compete against your friends and students, you repeat mistakes because you are not learning - you are just trying to win against the wrong opponent.

What do you like to outside of jiu-jitsu?

Anything really involving friends.  Sometimes I’ll go surfing or boogie boarding with you and other friends, I like skateboarding, being with my family, and going to the movies.  Anything involved with my friends.

I also hear you are an avid bodyboarder, but you do this on a surfboard?  Why don’t you just stand up?

(Laughs) I don’t know what you are talking about and I have to tell this story.  The first time I met this guy named Kevin Howell, we were working on a book and he took me surfing.  I thought that he must be such a good surfer, he is from Huntington Beach, he is always at the beach, he has a mustache, and he has a good surfboard.  So I thought, “Cool, let’s go surfing, I love surfing.”  Anyways, I saw him paddling for a wave and I couldn’t wait to see how he rode the wave, but when he caught it he rode all the way down the face on his belly and I thought that something must be wrong.  Second wave, he did the same, he paddled his hardest and then rode on his belly.  At this point, I was confused and I thought that I had to do the same, so I took my first wave on my belly too.  Later, I just realized that Kevin is the one that loves to “surf boogie” and I went back to regular stand-up surfing.

What happened on my last wave?

Okay, on the last one you took a huge wave, and rode it on your belly all the way to the sand (laughter).  I am only kidding, you did good on the last one, but I knew you really wanted to boogie board it (laughs).

Recently, you became a new father as well.

Yes, I am so happy.  You have to see his face, he is so funny.  He will have fun like me no matter what.  Maybe he will become a competitor, maybe not, but he will definitely train.

How do you handle belt promotions?

I do not use stripes - I just give belts.  Basically, I have a concept for each belt.  The white belt has to survive and learn positions.  I have a program for learning basic concepts and when the student finishes it, practices the program, and shows that his jiu-jitsu is maturing, then I promote to the blue belt.  To get this blue belt, you will have to learn as many positions as you can and survive.  This is the belt for collecting your techniques and building your library.  As for achieving the purple belt, you have to get all the information you already know and you have to use the right positions for the right situations.  You cannot be confused anymore and you have to begin reading your opponent’s body language.  This will also involve using strategy and utilizing the best move at the best time.  To get the brown belt, you must have the ability to control your opponent.  At this point you will know positions and strategy, but you need the comfort and confidence to control.  When you show that you can use all of these concepts seamlessly and adapt them to your life, then you are ready for the black belt.  Brown and black belts almost have the same levels, and this is obvious when you watch team tournaments where brown and black belts face each other in competition.  The level is almost the same, but the maturity is usually what separates the two.   To get to this level, the student has to train with me for a long time and I will know every nuance of his game.  The prospective black belt must challenge me while controlling himself.

Any future products?

Yes, I have so much work with my new team, Check Mat, and we are going to promote the entire team.  Besides  this, we already shot a new book and some DVDs as well.  The book will focus on guard passing for submission wrestling and I show a very good game for this position.  I think my passing will make much more sense to everyone after reading the book.  The techniques are basic to advanced concepts with a focus on body language and strategy.  I show how to pass very good competition level guards and how to become comfortable when your opponent defends certain passes. Also, we recently shot a two day seminar at the academy in Upland.  Each seminar was about three hours and we will be making this into a DVD set.  The seminar was gi and no-gi and I had so much fun sparring with my students afterward.

What are your future plans with teaching?

I want to follow all of the major championships.  I want to make successful academies in each place that has one of the major tournaments.  I want to have incredible instructors teaching at every location with the fighters traveling to all of the championships and training at each other’s academies.  For example, when we all go to the European championship, I want to make a camp with everyone there fighting and traveling together.  This will be the same for all of the other championships and we will be able to share a lot of technique and perspective as well as make new friends.

Thanks a lot Leo!

Thank you and God Bless.

Tags: Interviews

Tags: BJJ, Leo Vieira

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