One of the world's best Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) instructors was in Collingwood this week.

Sylvio Behring of Rio de Janeiro is a sixth-degree black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and was at Barton's Martial Arts this week teaching students.

Behring has worked with current Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight champion Anderson "The Spider" Silva and heavyweight UFC fighter Fabricio Verdum.

The sport of Brazilian jiu-jitsu is in Behring's blood. His father was one of only five people in the world with a ninth-degree black belt in the art and learned from the legendary Gracie family, the most famous family in the sport as the Brazilian jiu-jitsu is also known as "Gracie jiu-jitsu."

Behring runs an academy in Brazil called Xtyker and has an association called Franco-Behring Jiu-Jitsu Association, which has members across Canada. He runs the association with Shah Franco, who is a jiu-jitsu instructor and one of Canada's foremost mixed martial arts coaches.

The association has more than 600 students across the country.

Behring says his method of teaching is designed to allow students to learn the skills of the sport quickly. He said he developed the system in the early 1990s because of the large number of students - about 250 - that he was teaching. He needed a way to allow them all to learn the sport.

"I needed something solid for the beginners," he said.

He said the key is everyone works with a partner.

"You can't do it alone," he said.

Behring said one person is on their back and the other is standing. He said the person standing moves closer and closer and the students must learn how to defend themselves with each movement.

The student who was standing ends up in the guard - a position where a fighter wraps his or her legs around the opponent to gain control - of the grounded fighter.

Behring said he has a poster on the wall with 90 potential attacks from a bear hug to a choke, and it is the job of the student to determine how to defend from that particular attack.

"They can all be used as self defence," he said.

Behring was impressed with the students in Collingwood, saying when they first started it took an hour to run through the opening workout, by the third day, they all had it done in 20 minutes.

Behring says he comes to Canada twice a year and expects to have his first black belt trained in the next several years.

"I plant the seeds and water and then it becomes a beautiful garden," he said.

Patrick Barton, owner of the Collingwood club, has been training under Behring for several years and always learns something. He said because Behring travels around the world to tournaments, he always keeps up on new trends that otherwise wouldn't reach Canada for a decade.

"Sometimes it's little things you pick up," he said.

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