Luciano Bernert: “The guy is playing human chess”
The head coach of Instituto Start Doing, from Florianópolis, says Jiu-Jitsu is now studied with pen and paper and that training alone is not enough
Luciano Bernert sees Jiu-Jitsu as a sport that works the mind as much as the body. He is the head coach of Instituto Start Doing, a team from Florianópolis, in the south of Brazil. For him, people who step on the mat today need to think several moves ahead, and this has changed the way the sport is taught.
“Inside Jiu-Jitsu you have a huge mental development. The guy is playing human chess. Today Jiu-Jitsu is being studied, written down with pen and paper. It is not only training anymore, it is study,” the coach said.
Why people compare Jiu-Jitsu to chess
People have compared Jiu-Jitsu to chess for decades. Every grip opens a set of possible answers. The fighter who can guess the opponent’s reaction gets to the position he wants first. A good sweep, the move that takes a fighter from the bottom to the top, often starts two or three moves earlier.
What changed is the way people learn. Today there are video courses, websites with tournament matches, and students who film their own training. Writing down positions and building a game plan is now part of the routine, even in beginner classes.
Who is Luciano Bernert
Luciano leads Instituto Start Doing in Florianópolis. As an athlete, he won the IBJJF Master World Championship in 2023. The IBJJF is the sport’s main federation, and the master division is for athletes aged 30 and over. He is also a Brazilian champion in the gi, the traditional uniform, and in no-gi, which is fought without it. As a coach, he likes to describe his job in one sentence: “I show the path of Jiu-Jitsu.”
His method is working with young athletes. At the 2026 IBJJF South American Championship, Start Doing won the overall team title in the juvenile division, for 16- and 17-year-olds, with eight athletes and 13 medals. Three athletes from the team also competed at the AIGA event in Argentina.
Full interview on the VF Comunica channel
In 2024, after his master world title in the absolute division, which is open to all weights, Luciano talked to VF Comunica about how the master division has grown. He also analysed the game of Piter Frank. The full 31-minute interview is on our YouTube channel, in Portuguese.
And you, have you ever written down on paper what you learned in training?
