Let me start with a disclaimer.
I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that JiuJitsu master Ryron Gracie has any interest in the Quran.
However, I do know that the brothers Rener and Ryron Gracie put an enormous amount of intelligent thought into helping people achieve something that’s also incredibly difficult: mastering Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
One of the most interesting things the Gracies do – something almost no other Jiujitsu schools do – is that they insist that for your first year of training, you do no sparring.
This makes it MUCH easier for… how shall I say this… ‘non-meat-heads’ like me to enjoy learning jiujitsu. This approach means you get to learn a lot of technique first and get super comfortable on the mats before starting to fight.
And, this turns a lot of people off.
In most dojos, on your very first class, when you know literally nothing, you immediately start rolling with other beginners. Nobody knows what they’re doing, and it’s a miracle nobody gets hurt.
But the Gracies are different.
They say that for the first six months to a year, you must learn the essentials – what they call the “Gracie Combatives” course.
They are very serious about this.
They take a register. You must attend every single Combatives class 4 times before they allow you into the so-called “Master Cycle”, where you begin sparring. This means, for a full year you learn the fundamentals that will be most useful for real-life self-defense before playing the ‘sport’ of jiujitsu.
Why am I telling you this?
Because it relates directly to a beautiful prophetic teaching:
“Religion is very easy and whoever overburdens himself in his religion will not be able to continue in that way.” [Collection: Bukhari]
A lot of people want to memorise the Quran.
They get excited. Maybe they hear a lecture or watch something on YouTube. They dive in immediately, trying to recite Arabic, maybe using an app or listening to a famous reciter.
They memorise a few verses…
And then they completely quit.
(This is exactly what happens with Jiu Jitsu too. People skip the foundations, get overwhelmed, and give up.)
The Gracie solution is simple: master the fundamentals before sparring and you probably won’t ever want to quit.
Also, after you start sparring… you’re going to continue doing jiujitsu for many years to come. So, in the long run it won’t have made any difference to do it the ‘slow’ way. But it will make a huge difference if you quit early because you tried the ‘fast’ way of diving right into hard sparring.
This same logic applies to Quran memorisation.
Most people try memorising when they don’t yet have the fundamental Quran skills to do it.
What Quran skills? Things like:
- Understanding the Arabic.
- Reciting properly.
- Reciting fluently
- Falling in love with the Quran, because you’re so swept away by its message.
That’s why I designed “Quran for Busy People”.
Think of it as the Gracie Combatives of Quran study.
With just 11 minutes a day, slowly built up over time, you develop the essential skills so that a few months down the line, memorising the Quran becomes natural, enjoyable, and sustainable.
I’m pretty sure that’s what the Gracies would do.
Check out the Quran For Busy People program at:
