Marcelo Garcia

Marcelo Garcia is a legendary black belt competitor and instructor under the powerhouse Alliance BJJ team led by Fabio Gurgel. He is widely considered the most influential No Gi competitor in history. Every No Gi competitor today owes a debt of gratitude to Marcelo Garcia and his grappling innovations he put on display during his 4 ADCC Gold Medal performances and his 5 IBJJF World Championships. Garcia has written the book on positions such as Butterfly Guard, X Guard, and Single Leg X Guard, as well as submissions like the Guillotine and Rear Naked Choke.

Marcelo Garcia Achievements

Pan American Championship 2007
4X ADCC Champion (2003, 2005, 2007, 2011)
5X World Champion (2004, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011)
3X Brazilian National Champion (2004 & 2006 middleweight, 2006 absolute).

Marcelo Garcia Instructional Videos

One of the biggest contributions Marcelo Garcia has made to the sport and art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has been in the area of the Butterfly Guard. As a relatively smaller competitor who is well known to take on larger and stronger opponents, the butterfly guard offers Marcelo the ability to withstand pressure, sweep opponents and set up other positions like Single Leg X and X Guard.

The Complete Butterfly Guard

Marcelo helps you build your butterfly guard from the basics up, in a simple and effective way that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners of any belt can understand. Learn the body movement concepts that make butterfly guard so important, and how you can begin keeping your opponents off balance as you launch your attacks. Once you have these key skills, Marcelo begins showing the techniques that made him so successful, explaining the step-by-step systems he created.

The Complete North South Choke

Marcelo teaches his unique approach to this smothering submission. Cover every nuance with this devastating technique!

The Complete Guillotine Choke

Learn all of the details to secure and finish with the same razor sharp precision that Marcelo's legend was built on.

The Complete Back Attack System

If you're like most of us, you've watched the almost grainy footage of Marcelo Garcia competing back in the glory days of ADCC and easily taking the back of many of his opponents. Now you can pick up the entire system of back attacks that helped make Marcelo Garcia the legendary coach and instructor that he is.

Marcelo Garcia Biography

Marcelo Garcia was born far from the epicenters of BJJ in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. His journey would take him on a circuitous path eventually to Sao Paolo and then to New York City. Drawn by the influence of pop culture and karate movies to the martial arts at an early age, Marcelo made his way through karate for a number of years, before discovering judo.
After training and competing in Judo for some time, he discovered that his coach at the time also trained BJJ. After a number of years bouncing around various local academies, he was eventually invited to a larger school under the leadership of Paulo Rezende where he would eventually begin training 4 or more times a day.

It was these early days of hard training and competing where the young Marcelo would begin to hone not only his legendary guard game, but his even more legendary tendency to take on larger opponents. After competing with and defeating a 300lb opponent in a terribly grueling 45 minute match, Marcelo vowed to enter all of the Open Weight divisions he could to test himself.
His next stop on his journey would lead him into the Fernando Terere's school where he would be an assistant coach. Already stacking up impressive wins in the World Championships, his future wife Tatiana helped convince him to consider moving to a bigger team to continue challenging himself.
The General, Fabio Gurgel himself would eventually offer Marcelo a role as an instructor at the Alliance HQ. It was not until he was at Alliance HQ as a brown belt that he would begin experimenting with No Gi.

While training at the Alliance HQ and becoming more acclimated to No Gi, he decided to try his hand at the ADCC Trials in Brazil. Though he did not win the competition and the trip to the ADCC World Event initially, fate would be on his side as he was called in as an alternate due to an injured athlete being unable to compete. In this event he would defeat fellow legends Renzo Gracie and Vitor Ribeiro to win his first ADCC Championship.

He would go on to win several more ADCC and World Championships, taking a brief break to explore MMA, joining American Top Team in Florida. His MMA career would be short lived as he moved to New York and opened his academy in 2009. He ended his MMA run and dedicated himself to his academy and grappling, coming back to win another ADCC and IBJJF Championship in 2011.
Today Marcelo Garcia runs one of the premier BJJ Academies in the world with champions such as Bernardo Faria, Matheus Diniz, Jonathan Satava, and many more having trained and honed their craft there.

In this excerpt from Marcelo Garcia's Guillotine system and new release The Complete Guillotine Choke he highlights the importance of not only defending the opponent's advancing choke with the double leg takedown, but also making sure that you are not just "taking them down" but taking them down to the correct side and not simply putting yourself into more danger. Notice the details of protecting his neck even when he's going to the proper side. The devil and the escape for Marcelo Garcia are truly in the details with this move.