Valente Brothers ™

Sonny: Hi Gui, this is Sonny Parlin from Submissions, Inc. How are you?

Gui: Very well, how are you?

Sonny: Excellent, first of all, thanks for speaking with me today. As I said via email, I wanted to give you a call after reading that very inspirational story about Dr. Mark Silbret, your 74 year old student, reaching the rank of blue belt. I thought that was a fantastic story.

Gui: Correct, yeah, It is fantastic.

Sonny: I think the question on most peoples’ mind is he some kind of super human being withspecial powers?

Gui: No! I would say Jiu jitsu gives special powers to those of us who remain very human! We follow the philosophy that Jiu jitsu is for any age, a philosophy taught to myself and my brothers Pedro and Joaquim, by the man we were fortunate to also have teach our father and grandfather, Grandmaster Helio Gracie. As you probably know, Grandmaster Helio Gracie trained until he was 95. Two weeks before he passed away, he was still teaching. In his last TV interview, you can see him getting up and teaching the reporter some techniques. And in his book and his videos he demonstrated techniques when he was in his late 80′s and early 90’s. So age has never been a barrier. In addition to Dr Silbret receiving his blue belt we recently graduated another 71 year old student, Scott Penley, to blue belt. So we actually have two 70-plus students who recently received their blue belts. What makes this possible is the style of Jiu Jitsu we teach following Grandmaster Helio’s methods. The purpose behind the techniques and everything he taught was so that everyone could do it without any barriers. The moves are very simple and at the same time they are very effective and very easy to do. Our youngest student currently is 11 months and our oldest student is 74 years old. And we have many students in their fifties and sixties.

Sonny: That’s fantastic! Is there any special approach that you need to take when you’re training someone at an advanced age like that?

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