Roosevelt Sousa got heel hooked by Gordon Ryan in about ten seconds. His reaction was not to avoid leg locks for the rest of his career. He went home, found the best leg lockers in his gym, and put his own foot up as the price of learning. That instinct, more than any technique, is the thing worth stealing from him. Roosevelt is a gi and no-gi black belt world champion, an ADCC Worlds bronze medalist, and the head coach at Sanctum Jiu-Jitsu in Miami. He is competing in Poland this September. Caleb sat down with him for about 25 minutes, and while we came in expecting to talk technique, almost the entire conversation ended up being about the mind. Full video below, and the complete transcript is at the bottom of this page. He started at 21, which he was told was too late Roosevelt grew up poor in a small city in Brazil, in a neighborhood his mother considered dangerous enough that she gave him an ultimatum: find a job or find a sport, but get off the street. He picked volleyball because it was free and he was tall. He was chasing a professional career in it when a purple belt at his volleyball club talked him into trying jiu-jitsu. He walked into the room, saw a group of overweight masters division brown and black belts, and decided he was in far better shape than any of them. An hour later he could barely move and was close to throwing up. Three months after that he entered a local competition as a white belt knowing essentially one thing, how to close his guard, and won it. He went home and told his mother he was quitting volleyball. He was 21. She thought he had lost his mind. Black belt came six years later. It should have been five, but the gyms closed during the pandemic. The part he keeps coming back to is that he never believed it was possible on his own. He was competing against blue and purple belts who had started at seven or ten years old, and the insecurity about his age sat in the back of his head the entire time. What moved him past it was the room he was standing in. The advice: get around people who are hungrier than you Asked for the single piece of advice he would give someone trying to improve fast, Roosevelt did not talk about mat time or drilling or a system. He said to surround yourself with people who are better than you, and then immediately redefined "better." He does not mean higher belts. He means people who think differently than you do, who want more than you want, who are hungry. People who have something to teach you and a life you find interesting. He watched his professor and the black belts around him, decided their lives were worth having, and that belief did the work his own confidence could not. The flip side is the warning. It has never been easier to end up surrounded by people who only want to have fun and live in the moment. Roosevelt is careful not to make that sound like a moral failing, but he is direct about the cost: if you want to get better, your training partners and your friends have to want something too. Everyone has the same technique now, so the mind is the separator This is the most useful thing he said, and it came out almost as an aside. His view is that after the Gordon Ryan era, everyone is basically studying jiu-jitsu the same way. The instructionals, the systems, the approach to breaking down positions, all of it has converged. Technically, at the top, the gap has narrowed. So what decides big competitions is who shows up mentally prepared and who makes better decisions when both people are exhausted. He came to this because the mental side was wrecking him. He spoke with a therapist about it and could not get rid of it that way. What he eventually worked out is that he had been training only half of what a competitor needs to train. The system he built has three pieces. Breath work, to clear the intrusive thoughts The everyday version is unglamorous. He has a hard day in the room, he is tired, the voice in his head says he does not want to do this anymore. Those thoughts drain him before the next round starts. So he breathes, deliberately, until his head is clear enough to go again. He treats training days as the reps for competition days, because a skill you have only used under low pressure will not be there under high pressure. Being present, which is a routine problem Roosevelt describes a scenario every competitor recognizes. You get to Worlds, you look at the bracket, you see the guy you have to fight and how big he is and what he has won. Then you go to warm up, except you are not really warming up. You are running the fight in your head over and over. By the time you walk to the mat you are already spent, and you panic, and you gas. His fix is a routine where each piece gets your full attention. Warming up means warming up and nothing else. Then you finish the warmup and you go fight, and you arrive there fresh instead of already used up. He is honest that this is not something you learn overnight. It is discipline, and it gets easier the longer you practice it, until the anxiety is something you can steer. Conserving mental energy, because decisions win matches He is blunt about this one. Do not scroll your phone before you compete. Do not try to solve a problem from work. Do not get into an argument with your partner. Every one of those things spends energy you are going to need. His reasoning is specific rather than vague. He has won gi matches in the final seconds, and he won them on decision making, not on being fresher or stronger. Late in a hard match, when the grips are gone and you are tired, the question is whether you can still recognize where you are and choose the right thing. That only happens if you arrive sharp. Everything else waits until after the competition. Jiu-jitsu is software, and there is always an update Roosevelt spent his early years ripping straight foot locks. He was athletic, it worked, and he did it without much technique. Then he hit black belt and found that people would let their foot break before they tapped. He stopped using it. Then he questioned the decision, because questioning his own decisions is what he does. Maybe the technique was fine and he was the problem. Maybe he needed more hours and better research. His phrase for it is that jiu-jitsu is like software, always updating, always changing. The Gordon Ryan match settled it. Ten seconds, heel hooked, and a very clear picture of what was missing. He went back to his gym, sought out the best leg lockers there, and rebuilt that part of his game around heel hooks instead of straight foot locks. At the ADCC Miami Open he finished his last match with an inside heel hook. He is 13 years in, a world champion, and he still takes notes from purple belts and blue belts. His explanation is that learning fires the same part of the brain as pleasure and joy. The moment someone who has been beating you for months stops being able to beat you is, in his words, amazing. That is the whole reason people stay. What to take to the gym this week Roosevelt trains full time and competes at the highest level in the sport. Most of us do not. The parts of this that transfer anyway: Look at who you are training next to. If nobody in your regular group wants anything, that is the thing to fix first, before your guard retention. Pick one thing you quit because it stopped working, and ask whether you quit too early. On competition day, put the phone away and leave every unresolved conversation for tomorrow. When your head is loud in the middle of a hard session, breathe on purpose before the next round instead of just enduring it. The last question Caleb asked him was whether he prefers liquid or bar soap after training. Liquid, without hesitation. Bar soap slips out of his hands, and he is a big guy. He wants to wash and be ready to go. We build our body wash for exactly that moment, the one right after you get off the mats. Shop Kimura Soap Co. Full transcript Lightly edited for clarity. Roosevelt speaks English as a second language, and we have cleaned up the transcription without changing what he said. Caleb (0:01): What's up guys, Caleb with Kimura Soap here. I had the chance to interview Roosevelt Sousa. He's the head coach at Sanctum Jiu-Jitsu in Miami, Florida. He's a gi and no-gi black belt world champion, he's a bronze medalist at ADCC Worlds, and he's looking to take gold in Poland this September. So Kimura Soap wishes you good luck. What got you to start training jiu-jitsu? What's your origin story with the sport? Roosevelt (0:26): Well, I started training jiu-jitsu almost 13 years ago in Brazil, in a very small city, a very small school. I was trying to become a professional beach volleyball player. I come from a very poor background and we didn't have a lot of options there, so I hopped into the sport that I had available. I was a tall guy, a tall kid, and I decided to try any sport that I could start training for free, and that's how I got into volleyball back then. Roosevelt (1:05): At volleyball I met this guy, actually he's one of the legends in the sport, and he used to train jiu-jitsu for fun. He was a purple belt back then, and one day he told me, you should try jiu-jitsu. And I was like, man, you're crazy. I don't even know what that means. This must be some type of crazy martial art, I'm not going to do that. I love volleyball, I want to do this for my life. But somehow he convinced me, and that same day I was there on the mat. Roosevelt (1:30): I look over and I see all these master three, master four, overweight brown belts and black belts, and I told myself, those guys are not going to do anything with me, man. I'm super in shape. This is not legit. One hour later I was almost throwing up. I could barely move my body. Honestly, I humbled myself, and I decided to start training at least once a week, because I thought, I better learn this so nobody kicks my ass in the street. Roosevelt (2:13): Three months later I was already thinking about competing. We had this small competition in my town, and I asked my coach, can I do it? And he said, yeah sure, try. I was a white belt and I barely knew any moves. The only thing I remember I had learned was how to close my guard, and I was very bad. I don't know how, but I won this competition, and it was one of the best feelings of my life. Roosevelt (2:53): Remember, I was doing volleyball and jiu-jitsu at the same time, and like I said, I was trying to become professional. That was so hard, way harder than jiu-jitsu. So after this tournament I decided to move on to jiu-jitsu. I got home and I told my mom, mom, I want to do jiu-jitsu. And she thought I was getting crazy, because I had dedicated so much time to volleyball, and I was 21. It was crazy, irresponsible back then. Just give jiu-jitsu a chance, I'll prove to you it's a different, amazing sport. I feel like I belong to it. And she gave me a chance. So I dove right into training, and it was the best decision of my life. Caleb (3:57): Wow, that's incredible, man. And you got your black belt in six years, eh? Roosevelt (4:02): Yes, I got it in six years. I was supposed to get it in five years, but then during the pandemic we all stopped training. I got my black belt in 2021 or 2022, I don't remember exactly. I was supposed to get it in 2020, but then the pandemic happened. So yeah, six years of hard work. Caleb (4:32): Wow, that's incredible. As soon as you had that first tournament you were just full on dedicated. Roosevelt (4:37): Yes, man. Because I came from a team sport, where most of the time you need your team to perform in order for you to perform as well, in order for you to get results. In jiu-jitsu it's all on you. If you do something wrong, you're responsible for that, and the other way around too. Somehow I felt like I belonged to this sport. I felt like I'm a fighter, and that was something very unique. Roosevelt (5:15): It's hard to explain, because honestly I had no role model in my family. I never had that. My parents, like I said, we came from a very humble financial situation, so we were mostly just surviving. And where I was raised, it's such a dangerous neighborhood, all my neighbors were always getting in trouble. My mom was like, I don't want you on the streets, go find something to do, either a job or a sport. I had always been very competitive. Like most kids in Brazil, we want to become soccer players, we play soccer everywhere, and I was playing street soccer and getting myself in trouble. And my mom told me, look, it's over, find something to do, do sports, whatever. And that was it. This amazing sport definitely changed my life. Caleb (6:22): That's incredible, man. Do you have any advice that you learned from getting your black belt in such a condensed period of time? What would be the number one piece of advice you'd give to somebody looking to achieve things in this sport? Roosevelt (6:39): Man, honestly, you have to be surrounded by people who are better than you first. And when I say better, I mean people who think differently, who are hungry, who are smarter than you, who want more than you. They think differently than you. They have something to teach you. That's what I was doing when I started training. I was surrounding myself with my professor and the other black belts, and I thought they were so cool. They had cool lives, they had cool histories. I was inspired by them all the time, and that actually made me believe that I could achieve the black belt one day. Roosevelt (7:24): Even at such an old age, you know. Most of the kids I was competing against as a blue belt and purple belt back in Brazil were young. They started training when they were 10 or seven, whatever. I have kids now, I'm a coach, I have kids that start training at four. So of course I always had that insecurity in the back of my head, thinking, oh, I'm too old, I would never learn this. But because of the people I had around me, they made me believe that I could become good, or potentially compete, and not even become a world champ like I am now, but at least get something out of it. Roosevelt (8:11): Honestly, when I first started I never thought about becoming this world champion that I am now, one of the best in the world. I was just trying to get better and become a good person. That's how I actually got very lucky, because my professor was a very good coach. He's not famous or anything, but he's responsible for my improvement. Roosevelt (8:41): So if I can give advice, it's that today it's so easy for you to get distracted and get yourself around people who only want to have fun, who want to live the moment. But I think, especially if you're young, you should surround yourself with people who actually think differently, who want something in their life, who want to be the best, who want to improve and keep improving. And that goes not only for jiu-jitsu, for everything in life. Caleb (9:14): That's really good advice, man. Like you said, you're the head coach at Sanctum Jiu-Jitsu in Miami, Florida. How's the room looking? Are there some good up and comers we should be keeping our eyes out for there? Roosevelt (9:29): Yeah. We are mainly focused on kids. We have a very solid kids program, and we're one of the few schools here in Florida with competition focused training. We have a group of kids that are very talented. Not only talented, but they have the support of their family. They're always competing. We have Cris Medina, he's eight years old, he just started training, he's a grey and black belt, and he's been winning every single competition. Roosevelt (10:02): If you ask him what he's going to do when he's about to fight, he knows exactly what he's going to do. He says, I go for the submission, and if that doesn't work, I'm going to win somehow. He's very smart, very talented, such a hard worker, even though he's so young. I get inspired by my kids every single day. It's incredible to see them with such a good mentality even though they're so young. So I'm very happy to be there pushing them every day. Roosevelt (10:41): All my life I've been dedicated to fighting, and as a black belt I became a coach, and this is something amazing. I never thought I'd be a jiu-jitsu coach, especially for kids. But here I am. I believe my wife brought me here, and it's a journey of learning and teaching at the same time, and I'm really enjoying it. Caleb (11:10): That's super cool. What do you think it is about the Miami scene that produces so many good grapplers? Everybody always talks about Austin and San Diego and New York, but Miami is becoming a hotbed of its own, eh? Roosevelt (11:23): Bro, honestly, I have to be very careful how I say this, because I feel like it's something with the Latinos, man. The Latinos have the hot blood. They like to fight. We don't like to lose. Brazilians, and we have a lot of South American people here, Cuba, Venezuela, everywhere. I believe South American people are hard workers, but there's something that makes them go after it. They work hard. And if you look at every single big school here in Miami, when you see who's the coach, who's the best fighter, they're Latinos. Caleb (12:28): What are some training habits or rituals that you've found are unique to you, or that somebody's shown you throughout the years, that you really like to implement in getting ready for tournaments or just for training? Roosevelt (12:43): That's a great question. Honestly, I'm not a nerd in jiu-jitsu, but I try to find ways to understand myself better. When we learn something new we try to do research, we study, we watch video instructionals. But I try to understand myself. I try to see how my body responds to a specific type of training or a specific type of situation. Roosevelt (13:22): The last few years, something that was really bothering me was the mental aspect of fighting. That was taking away my focus and draining my mental energy. I spoke with a therapist and I could never get rid of it. So I realized that my problem was not only the physicality, it was not just the training, it was not just being in a competition environment. I had to train my mind to get ready for competition. Roosevelt (14:02): I was like, okay, I've identified that I have to train my mind, but how do I train my mind? There are a few basic things that a lot of people are talking about right now, which require a lot of discipline for you to be able to understand and make work smoothly and automatically. Roosevelt (14:23): For example, breath work. Why do I do breath work? Breath work helps me clear my mind. For example, if I'm in the training room and I have a hard day, I'm tired, I don't want to do this anymore, I have to reset my mind somehow. How do I get out of that state of intrusive thoughts that bother me and drain my mental energy? Simple. Doing breath work. I do a lot of breath work, and my mind gets ready for the next round or whatever I have to do in training. And this is how I prepare for competition. Roosevelt (15:02): Another thing, I call this being present. Imagine yourself going to a competition, Worlds for example. You get there and you see the bracket, you see all the guys you're fighting against, and you go to the warm up area, and in your head you're like, oh my god, I've got to fight this guy, he looks so big, he's so good, he's a champ. Instead of thinking about what you're supposed to do in the moment, which is warming up, you're draining your energy. By the time you're walking to the mat you're so drained that you panic, you don't know what to do, you get tired. Roosevelt (15:42): Being present means you have to have a routine for competition, for training, and whatever you do in this routine, you have to be present and focused on what you're doing. If you have to warm up, focus on the warm up. Do your warm up, don't think about anything else. Because when you go to the next step, when you finish the warm up and go to fight, you're going to be fresh and focused. Your mind's going to be fresh. You're going to know, okay, now I'm going to fight. Roosevelt (16:14): Of course, it's not something that you learn overnight. That takes time. Like I said, it's a discipline, you have to constantly train yourself for that. But once you're used to it, it becomes easier and easier to do, and you control your anxiety, you control anything that goes through your mind during that moment. So that's the second thing I do. Roosevelt (16:38): And the third thing is stocking your mental energy. Mental energy is important for decision making. A lot of the time, if you watch my fights from Worlds, no gi and especially gi, I won on the last second, because it was more of a decision making thing. When I was there, even if I'm tired, even if I don't feel my grips anymore, I have to be able to make the right decision. That's only going to happen when you're sharp and focused and you can understand what's going on in the moment. Okay, I'm fighting, I'm tired, I've been here before. I need to be able to make good decisions. Roosevelt (17:30): How do I do that? Stocking mental energy. How do you stock mental energy before the match? You don't scroll. You don't keep scrolling your phone trying to distract yourself, because that's just going to drain your mental energy. I don't try to solve a problem from work. I don't argue with my girlfriend before the fight. I leave all my problems. Everything I have to do, we deal with that after competition. But before, you have to stock mental energy. Does that make sense? Caleb (17:56): Yeah, that's really well said. Roosevelt (18:03): Those are the things I'm doing. Because honestly, if we talk about jiu-jitsu itself technically, I believe everybody's kind of doing the same thing right now. I think after the Gordon Ryan era, he kind of brought in this mindset of how you study for jiu-jitsu, how we should all think about jiu-jitsu. I think everybody's kind of doing the same thing now. So I think what's actually going to make the difference when it comes to big competitions and all the big names is who's ready there, who's more focused, who's mentally prepared for the decision making, and eventually gets the good results. Caleb (18:46): Yeah, that's amazing. Are you a Christian, do you mind me asking? I see the cross on your shirt. Roosevelt (18:52): Yeah, I'm Christian. Caleb (18:55): Super cool. That kind of plays into it. My brother and I were having a conversation once, and I was raised Christian as a Baptist, and he was saying that a Hebrew word for God is Yahweh, and Yahweh translates to I am. Just being present, that is being like God. Like what you're saying there. Roosevelt (19:19): Yeah, without faith we can't do anything. Nothing makes sense. You work, you make money, you buy things, you achieve things, but then what? What else? What is the point of it? Life cannot just be all about that. I think if you don't have faith, if you don't believe, and this is not religion, this is life, if you don't have something to believe in, to look up to, like God, Jesus Christ, you're not going to find meaning for life, you know what I mean? Caleb (20:02): I've just got one or two more questions, I don't want to take up too much of your time. As a black belt, are there any techniques that you saw or learned early on in your career that you stopped using and have recently come back to? And if so, what were those techniques and why? Roosevelt (20:22): When I first started training jiu-jitsu I learned how to do straight foot locks. I kept doing this because I'm pretty athletic, I've always been very athletic, and it helped a lot ripping people's feet off, and I was doing that as a white belt. No technique, just ripping feet off. As I started getting more experience and learning more, I started adjusting that. But when I got to black belt, I was going for everybody's feet, and they would let me break it, they would never tap. So I realized that was just a waste of energy, because nobody would tap for that. So I stopped. Roosevelt (21:09): And then honestly I was like, man, why? I like to question every decision I make, and I question my own thoughts. So I was like, why stop it? No, this is a good technique. Maybe I just need to get better. Maybe I need to spend more hours, I need to do more research, because jiu-jitsu is like software. There's always an update. There's always something changing, there's always something coming out. So I started restudying again and doing more research and getting better. Roosevelt (21:44): Also, after my fight against Gordon Ryan, where I got heel hooked in like 10 seconds, I realized, man, that is something that I'm missing and I need to get better at it. So I went back home, I started working, putting my foot at risk. I started training with the best leg lockers from the gym, and I started doing that again. My last fight now at the Miami Open, I finished the ADCC Miami Open with a heel hook, inside heel hook. So I just shifted a little bit from the straight foot lock to heel hooks. It's been working pretty well. Caleb (22:24): That's really cool to hear, man. It's super cool to hear how much of a lifetime learner you are too. You're always questioning, always trying to improve. You're not just accepting where you're at now and saying this is where you're at. You're looking to get better. Roosevelt (22:37): Yeah, man. The best thing about jiu-jitsu, and I believe that's the reason why people do jiu-jitsu, is because we're always learning. Learning is the most enjoyable thing that we go through in our mind. I believe it's responsible for the same part of our brain that's responsible for pleasure and joy. When you learn something new, when you always get in trouble with some specific position and you can never get out of it, or that person always kicks your butt, and then one day somehow you learn something that you can actually fight back with against that person, it's so amazing, right? Roosevelt (23:15): So I believe learning is something that you should not limit yourself on. Even being a black belt, I learn from purple belts and blue belts. I'm always trying to learn, and that's the fun part about jiu-jitsu. Caleb (23:30): That's a wonderful mindset, eh? Last question I have for you. After training, do you prefer liquid or bar soap? Roosevelt (23:43): Liquid. I mean, because it's so easy. I feel like it's easier. Bar soap, I feel like it's, how can I say this, man? This is a good question though. I prefer liquid. It's easy for me, because I'm a big guy, so for me it's just easier. Bar soap keeps falling off your hands all the time, it slips out of your hands. Liquid, you just go wash yourself and that's it. Ready to go. Caleb (24:29): Ready to go. That's perfect, man. I really appreciate your time. I appreciate being able to talk to you and I wanted to thank you. You're a pioneer in this sport. I've only been doing it for five years, but I'm super passionate about it, I want to see it keep growing, and because of people like you it's grown a lot. So thank you, sir. Roosevelt (24:49): Thank you for the interview, thank you for your time. Caleb (24:56): All right, I appreciate it. Have a safe drive.