At the Peoria Athletic Club...

We have all levels of jiu-jitsu. We have the first class structured as an hour of nothing but instruction. We use this time to learn the techniques and applications of the technique. After that class the "open roll" starts. During this informal class we pracrice what we learn! This hour long class consists of rounds of sparring. This is a necessary part of learning BJJ. You must learn to put tecniques on an oppent that doesn't want you too. Just pick someone and have fun! There are NO EGO's at the Peoria Athletic Club. If you are inexperienced- thats how you will be handled.

We trace our roots in BJJ back to the source. Our head instructor Brad Peplow is a 3stripe brown belt under Gracie Humaita black belt Jack McVicker (www.jackmcvicker.com). Jack received his black belt from Wellington "Megaton" Dias (www.teammegaton.com), an official black belt representative of Royler Gracie Jiu-jitsu Association. We currently have fighters that have won or placed in the World Championships, European Championships, the North American Grappling Association tournaments, the MidWest Grappling Open, the Nashville Open, the Music City Open, the Indiana State Championships, the Hoosier Open and many more! No matter what your skill level at any grappling game we have members that will make sure you get a good workout!

History of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu...

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) is a martial art and combat sport that focuses on grappling and especially ground fighting with the goal of gaining a dominant position and using joint locks and chokeholds to force an opponent to submit. The system developed from pre-World War I Kodokan Judo, which was itself then a recently-developed sport derived from multiple schools (or Ryu) of Japanese JuJitsu. One of those schools was Fusen Ryu, whose focus was on ne-waza (ground techniques). At that time, Judo was also known as "Kano Jujutsu", and, even more generically, simply as JuJutsu.

It promotes the principle that a smaller, weaker person using leverage and proper technique can successfully defend themselves against a bigger, stronger assailant. BJJ can be trained for self defense, sport grappling tournaments (gi and no-gi) and mixed martial arts (MMA) competition. Sparring (commonly referred to as 'rolling') and live drilling play a major role in training, and a premium is placed on performance, especially in competition.

The art began with Mitsuyo Maeda (aka Conde Koma, or Count Combat in English), a Japanese expert judoka and member of the Kodokan. Jigoro Kano sent Maeda overseas to spread his Judo to the world. Eventually, Maeda emigrated to Brazil in the 1910s where an influential business named Gastão Gracie helped him get established. In return for his aid, Maeda taught the fighting art to Gastão's son Carlos Gracie, who then taught the art to his brothers, including Helio Gracie.

When Maeda taught the art to the Gracies he called it Jiu-Jitsu instead of Judo. It is not known why he chose the name Jiu-Jitsu because Maeda had only trained in Jiu-Jitsu for a very brief time as a child. There is much speculation and debate over this. One theory is that because Maeda was fighting in "no hold barred" type matches that Kano felt was against the principles of Judo, Maeda changed the name because of a falling out with Kano. Another theory is that Maeda included many "dirty" techniques in his teaching that had originated from classical jujitsu. The most plausible reason is that when Maeda brought the art to Brazil, the term "Judo" was relatively new, and what he had learned was still at the time also known as "Kano Jiu-Jitsu".

In Brazil it was simply known as "Jiu-Jitsu" - not "Gracie Jiu-Jitsu" or "Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu." These latter terms came to be when the Gracies went to the United States to spread their art. "Jiu-Jitsu" was also the original spelling of the art in the West and that is why this style retains the original (although technically incorrect) spelling of the art. Other common spellings are Jujitsu, Jujutsu, Ju jitsu and Ju-Jitsu. The variety of spellings are due to the difficulty in transliterating Japanese Kanji sounds into the English phonetic system.

The Gracie brothers trained many of their sons, who carried on the family tradition. Hélio had the opportunity to teach a class one day while Carlos was absent. Through constant technical refinement in training and real fighting, emphasizing ground-work, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as it is known today was created. The Gracie familty continued to develop the system throughout the 20th Century, often fighting vale tudo matches (precursors to modern MMA), during which it gained its focus on ground fighting and refined its techniques. It was proven to be the single most valuable art in 1993 when the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) debuted.