This week the Valente Brothers Facebook page surpassed the 7k mark. Thank you everyone for your support and please keep spreading the word.
This Monday, Professor Gui Valente visited Valente Brothers Fort Lauderdale and taught the fundamentals class. After the class, Professor Gui awarded multiple stripes to students and congratulated the fine work of Instructor Bruce Belfield. Aside from the the fabulous job establishing Valente Brothers Jiu-Jitsu in East Broward, Instructor Bruce is a Fort Lauderdale Police detective and SWAT team member.
Since the school’s recent relocation to the new and bigger facility the number of students training under instructor Bruce has risen very quickly and the atmosphere is great. The school currently teaches classes from Monday to Saturday to adults and children. For more information please visit the school’s page.
After eighteen years since Pedro Valente started teaching jiu-jitsu in Miami and 28 black belts have been awarded, Valente Brothers would like to honor its first black belt recipients Jimmy Robertson and Carlos Villares. Both of them were classmates of Pedro Valente at the American School in Rio de Janeiro and moved to Miami in 1993/94 to attend university. Through their dedication to jiu-jitsu and the Valente Brothers School they consolidated their skills as practitioners and teachers and were awarded the coveted VB Black Belt in 2003 during that year’s Annual Dinner. Today Jimmy is a dedicated and talented professor who is admired and appreciated by the entire Valente Brothers family and Carlos, in addition to his toughness on the mat, is a successful business man who has been able to auspiciously utilize jiu-jitsu off the mat in his flourishing career. Valente Brothers is proud of Jimmy and Carlos’ achievements and recognizes their loyalty and commitment.
The Hélio Gracie Self Defense Challenge was devised by the Valente Brothers in 2000 to preserve and promote a vital element in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu that was slowly being forgotten: Stand up Self-Defense. With the tremendous growth of sport jiu-jitsu, most instructors were lured by the prestige and excitement connected with positive tournament results and started focusing their classes almost exclusively on point grappling rather than realistic street fighting. However, several jiu-jitsu masters still regard the defenses against strikes, bear hugs, headlocks, collar grabs and other common street attacks as the most important component of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.
Under the supervision of Grandmaster Hélio Gracie, this challenge was elaborated to test students’ technique and reflexes as they perform defenses against randomly selected stand up attacks. The attacks are executed in a realistic manner by the professors and expert judges award points based on the participants’ precision, technical proficiency, timing and realism. After three rounds the top four contestants are announced to the audience.
Thank you all who came to the dinner. Sorry to those whose tables are not in the pic. More photos coming soon!