Early history

Hélio Gracie was born in Brazil on October 1st, 1913, the youngest son of Gastão and Cesalina Gracie's eight children. He was always a frail child, prone to fainting spells after physical exertion. After the completion of second grade, he convinced his mother to that he didn't need to go to school.

After the family's move to Rio, some of the children moved in with various relatives due to financial hardships. It was during this time, that Hélio found work as a coxswain for a local rowing team, eventually moving in to the team dorms. A few years later, when he was 13 years old, he moved into a house shared by his older brothers, who taught Jiu Jitsu for a living.

Due to Hélio's frail health, Hélio was recommended by doctors to refrain from excessive physical activity, so he was not allowed to participate in Jiu Jitsu. Instead he spent his time watching his brothers (especially Carlos) teach. From the age of thirteen to sixteen, Hélio sat on the sidelines watching all the moves and listening to the instructions his brothers gave.

Beginnings of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu

When Gracie was 16 years old, he found the opportunity to teach a Jiu-Jitsu class, and this experience led him to develop Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

One day the Director of the Bank of Brazil, Dr. Mario arrived for class as scheduled. Helio's brother Carlos was the instructor but was running late and was not present to begin the private lesson with Dr. Mario. Hélio, not wanting to lose the fee for the lesson, offered to teach him and he accepted.

Later, when the tardy Carlos arrived offering his apologies, the student assured him it was no problem, and requested that he be allowed to continue learning with Hélio instead, as he actually preferred Helio's teaching methods. Carlos agreed and Hélio began as an instructor.

Hélio realized however, that even though he knew the techniques theoretically, in actuality, the moves were much harder to execute. Due to his smaller size, he realized many of the jiu-jitsu moves required brute strength that his physical nature simply did not allow. He began adapting the moves for his particular physical attributes, and through trial and error learned to maximize leverage, thus minimizing the force that needed to be exerted to execute the move.

From these experiments, Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, was created. Using these new techniques, smaller and weaker opponents gained the ability to defend themselves and even defeat much larger opponents.