Pedro Sauer
Head Instructor Master Pedro SauerÂ
8th degree Red/Black BeltÂ
Professor Pedro Sauer was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where from an early age, he began training in the martial arts. At age five, he began boxing and later took up judo and taekwondo. At age fifteen, however, his friend, Rickson Gracie, invited him to train jiu-jitsu with his younger brother, Royler, who at the time was only nine years old. The outcome of this experience convinced him that jiu-jitsu was the most effective of all the martial arts, and he began training the very next day.
His training under both Helio and Rickson took place during a time when jiu jitsu was making its crucial transition as an obscure Brazilian art to a worldwide martial arts phenomenon.
Pedro worked towards a double major (Economics and Business Administration) in college, and took post graduation course at Fundacao Getulio Vargas. He worked in Brazil as a stockbroker for eleven years before deciding to move to the United States and pursue a career teaching jiu-jitsu. With Rorion leading the exodus in 1990, Pedro was part of the first generation of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu instructors and fighters that moved to the United States to reveal the art of BJJ to the world. He lived in California with Rickson Gracie and trained daily with the Gracie brothers (Rickson, Rorion, and Royce), their father, Helio Gracie, their cousin, Renzo Gracie, and the Machado Brothers, as well as many others. In December of that same year, he moved to Utah where he has lived for the past eight years, pioneering brazilian jiu-jitsu in the American southwest.
After moving to Virginia in the 2006, Pedro has now opened a brand new martial arts academy in Sterling, Virginia and still teaches all his classes every day.
