Shanti Abelha

Shanti Abelha is jiu-jitsu fighter.From the age of six and through high school she did a lot of gymnastics, football, volleyball, and basketball. her first contact with martial arts was through Capoeira, which she did for about five years before trying Wing Tsun for self-defence. During an internship in Brazil (where she is originally from) she tried BJJ and then she was hooked!

she have always been driven by the challenge of pushing one’s physical, mental and psychological limits – she think it is amazing what the body and mind can accomplish when they work optimally as one. For her, grappling is chess with her body . The amount of technical and tactical insight necessary at the higher levels she find fascinating, and grappling’s advantage compared to other martial arts is that it is possible to train/spar at 100% without hurting your training partner.

her body responds well to high volumes of training and rarely has problems with restitution. This means that she can train six times a week; some weeks she feel tempted to not take a rest day, but she know it is not healthy so she make sure she get one day a week off. Usually she split the six days into about four grappling trainings a week, each one lasting 1.5 to 2.5 hours, and two sessions at the gym.