Gracie Combatives Testing

I recently passed my Gracie Combatives test with a score of 98 out of 100. This is quite the accomplishment since this culmination of ten months of Gracie Combatives training. According to Gracie University I’m now “street ready”, and I can legitimately say that I feel ready should an altercation with an untrained person ever go down. “Untrained” being the key word in that statement.

The Graice Combatives test consists of four positional drills and one fight simulation drive that is filmed and submitted to Gracie headquarters for review by one of the black belt instructors. I’m not 100% sure, but I speculate that both Rener and Ryron Gracie are too busy to review any of the Combatives test that are submitted. The test results don’t show who reviewed them, but I’m going to pretend that both Rener and Ryron thought I was incredible.

There isn’t a hack to passing the test. You have to put in the work to learn and perfect the techniques. There are so many minor details you need to be aware of with each movement that there is no way you could fake your way through the test. Even if you just memorize the correct movements of each of the positional drills, the fight simulation will expose the weakness in your reflexes. All things considered it undoubtedly is a rigorous test and you need to prepare for it.

My preparation consisted of running through each drill once with my CTC instructor to get a feel for the flow of each of the positional drills. I would then film each drill and then compare them to Jamie Harding’s test. Jamie was the first person to score a 100 on the Gracie Combatives 1.0 test¹. By discovering where my mistakes were I was able to go back and review each technique I need to refine and practice them. This included attending classes at my CTC in which the technique was taught, rewatching the instructional videos and solo drills for each of the techniques I need to improve on. Overall I put in about twenty hours preparing for the test outside of my regular jiu-jitsu training. By the time I passed the Combatives test I had over of 130 hours on the mat, twenty hours of test prep, and countless hours watching the online lesions.

Now that I’ve passed the Graice Combatives test, what’s next? The straightforward answer is for me to continue onto the Master Cycle class for Gracie Jui-Jitsu. I plan to continue on my journey with Gracie Jui-Jitsu onto blue belt and beyond, but I do have the options of another stop along the way. For people who score a 95 or higher on the Graice Combatives test the option to become a certified instructor becomes available once you receive your blue belt. This is something I have considered, but may change my mind in the future. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. For the present I’m going to enjoy attending the Master Cycle classes.