What are the most valuable things you try to learn from your parents and teachers?

As the Brazilian writer Ruy Castro once said, "the second noblest thing within a human being's reach is to learn. The first, naturally, is to teach."

To be a hungry learner, or a generous teacher, one must first have good influences. This is what Master Rickson Gracie was lucky enough to count on, since his most famous master was also his father. Helio Gracie, creator of several jiujitsu techniques and levers, faced all possible challenges in a ring—a man who taught what he knew how to do and did what he knew how to teach. He was a great guy who, as a Brazilian expression from his time used to say, "didn't let any shrimp pass through the mesh."

Rickson, naturally, learned from his father several techniques of attack and defense on the mat. The most inspiring lessons, however, were of a different variety. He once told an inquirer what he remembered most from the lessons of his father and master Helio:

"I think the most important thing I learned from my father was not exactly the practical side of jiujitsu. Obviously, the basic application of the levers is something you learn and develop, and he taught me that concept—that of always trying to find the easiest and least stressful way to do things." 

"My father's biggest influence and great presence was to embody a whole way of living based on the concepts of jiujitsu. That is the spirit he taught me and that to this day makes me go to the mat, makes me talk to students, be curious about what I haven't discovered yet, to investigate and learn," Rickson added. "I learned from him to seek emotional control, serenity, precision. And what was most valuable was not the gi training, but the conversations we had at the table, his descriptions of how he reacted to certain situations. This, you absorb and little by little it becomes useful, you start trying to imitate and adapt in your own way. Because everything my father lived through, his fights, the opponents, the situations and reactions, in other words, all the situations he went through, were specific to his time. So I seek my own personal evolution, but connected to the jiujitsu philosophy that he showed me."

Check out below what else Rickson learned from Helio, as in this useful detail to enable you to finish on the neck.