Nestor's teaching methodology has been carefully described in his "The Nestor Capoeira Trilogy", that can be found in bookshops or ordered by e-mail through North Atlantic Books (www.northatlanticbooks.com ) or Amazon (www.amazon.com):

•	The Little Capoeira Book.  Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1995.
•	Capoeira, Roots of the Dance-Fight Game. Berkeley: NAB, 2001.
•	A Streetsmart Song, Capoeira Philosophy and Inner Life. Berkeley: Blue Snake (NAB), 2006.

Notwithstanding this more thorough and complete approach, below we will give a few insights on the Escola Nestor Capoeira teaching methodology.


All students participate in the roda at the Escola Nestor Capoeira, in Rio de Janeiro.  But “medium" and "advanced" students, when playing with “absolute beginners" and "beginners", do not deliver kicks or swipes (they only move and do "floreios" and the "esquivas", they do not attack).

Using this strategy, the "absolute beginners" and "beginners" can develop quicker the attack movements they are learning because when playing they are not afraid of being hurt.  Later on, they are introduced to the "defensive part" ("esquivas", etc.) by specific training and exercises, and then "beginners" start to interact normally, in the game in the roda, with the graduated students and teachers who are careful to give them space to move and play as well as not to hurt them.

On the other hand, “medium" and "advanced" train exhaustively the "defensive part" ("esquivas", etc.) when playing with "absolute beginners" and "beginners".

During the roda, “absolute beginners" and "beginners" have the same time and opportunity to play as “medium" and "advanced", and even as the teachers of the Escola Nestor Capoeira.

The interaction between beginners and experienced players

This interaction, part of the teaching methodology used at the Escola Nestor Capoeira, it is not an "invention" of mestre Nestor.  It is part of a philosophical approach to teaching that was handed down to him by his "mestre", mestre Leopoldina.  And Leopoldina, by his turn, had received it from his "mestre", the young and lethal Quinzinho in the 1950's. 

Nestor explains:
"Quinzinho, a dangerous outlaw who had already killed and served time in prison before he was 20 years old, was Leopoldina's first 'mestre' in Rio, around 1950 (mestre Leopoldina was Nestor's 'mestre', starting 1965).   Quinzinho, notwithstanding being the leader of a notorious gang, a violent young man always armed and on the lookout against the police and enemy outlaws, shoved his 9 mm. Parabelum pistol up and into the mouth of an experienced capoeira player who hit lightly Leopoldina's head with a kick, when Leopoldina was a 'beginner'.  Quinzinho shouted: 'I've told you before, never hit a beginner or he will turn out to be a coward'.  And he would have wasted the experienced player, there and then, if Leopoldina had not interceded in his favor".


Another basic part of the Escola Nestor Capoeira teaching methodology is the "improvisation exercises" created by Nestor, starting 1990:

"In the first two books of my "Nestor Capoeira Trilogy" I proposed training exercises in chapters titled "Learning Capoeira". The exercises described in those books complement each other, starting from a beginner level and advancing to that of a more experienced player.

In The Little Capoeira Book (North Atlantic Books, 1995) I gave a panoramic view of how modern capoeira is taught in its various lineages and styles. I pointed out the differences between teaching methodology in academies with significant Capoeira Regional influence and those with greater Capoeira Angola influence. Mental approaches (attitude) and other tips were offered that I believe might help the beginner in his first two or three years.

I also presented my own teaching method, which is distinguished not only by my version of the contemporary teaching methods but also the development and introduction of what I call "movement improvisation exercises", "standing up", and "on the ground". I think that most contemporary teaching methods are too strict, that they overly stress the importance of doing a movement "correctly" and by "correctly" they mean the way that movement is done in the specific style practiced in that academy. This doesn't mean that contemporary teaching methods aren't good or effective. The mechanical and repetitive exercises to be done by a pair of players, such as sequences of pre-determined movements (attack, defense, throw-downs and swipes, acrobatic movements), the blow and esquiva (dodging movements) or quedas (swipes), etc., are simple but effective tools as an introduction to the free body dialogue that we call the jogo (the game played in the roda). The mechanical and repetitive exercises to be done by one player alone, or by everybody following in sync the movements of the teacher, are also a useful part of these contemporary teaching methods. Such exercises focus on perfecting each different "classic" movement. They are used by all teachers of all styles, with each one adding his personal touch and adapting the movements used by one's style (Regional, Angola, etc.) to the method's infrastructure.

This approach to teaching and "learning capoeira" that I'm calling "contemporary teaching methods" started in Salvador, in the state of Bahia, with Mestre Bimba (1900-1974), the creator of Capoeira Regional, around the 1930s. Later on, in the 1960s, it was further developed by the Senzala Group in Rio de Janeiro, as well as by other young mestres strongly influenced by Capoeira Regional in São Paulo and Salvador.

By the 1970s, some young (and also older) mestres of Capoeira Angola used the same structure but adapted it to the Angola movements. Notwithstanding these few Angola mestres and teachers, we must remember that starting with Bimba in the 1930s, Capoeira Angola was obscured by the growing success of Capoeira Regional, and for that reason it didn't have a major presence in the capoeira scene for the following decades. But when Capoeira Angola "returned" to the scene around 1985, all Angola mestres used this structure.

The contemporary teaching methods are good, they work, and in two years a beginner is already playing capoeira. In five or seven years, if he has dedicated himself to several hours of daily training, like many players in Brazil do, the player reaches a reasonably competent level, although he has not had time to mature and to embody the philosophy, the malícia. There is a gap between his knowledge how to play the game, which is already a high-level game, and the (body) knowledge that expands to the mind and the soul regarding what the Game in fact is. This latter type of knowledge is still at a low level. But that is not a problem. It is not a problem because there is no solution to "mend" this gap. Only time, twenty years or more, will educate the dedicated student until he "understands" capoeira at the same level as he can play it.

The problem that can be mended is that the contemporary training methods do not give space for improvisation and creativity.

This fact usually is not fully acknowledged in the first ten or fifteen years of playing because the student is still striving to "get there".  It is only after he has mastered a sufficient skill level as a player that he faces the problem of being trapped inside the teaching methodology that has enabled him to progress. Some don't care because by then they are experiencing the "success" and opportunities that capoeira delivers to its players. But others feel as if they've bought a pair of shoes that is a few sizes too small, and they will have to work very hard on their own to break through.

Notwithstanding this general picture, in a few academies we see students playing with creativity and improvisation. But this is due to the influence of an exceptionally creative mestre who plays in the roda with them. Or it is because the student has "gone around" since the very beginning of his capoeira career visiting and playing in other academies of other styles, and the Game itself in its variety of styles and lineages has taught him.

What I mean is: when we find creative students, it is due to the Game itself; it is due to contact with the few older players who are creative and improvisational, and the student's own creativity emerges despite the strictness of the contemporary teaching methods he or she has gone through. And this is why around 1990, when I was forty-five years old and had been playing for some twenty-five years, I began trying to create "movement improvisation exercises" to be used in parallel and sometimes together with the best of the exercises back then, and used today (2006) in our "contemporary teaching methods".

The Little Capoeira Book contains the basic exercises for blows and take-downs (a more sophisticated element); Bimba's sequence (which is part of our contemporary teaching methods) ; and my "movement improvisation exercises", "standing up" and "on the ground", which I have been creating and experimenting with over the last fifteen years. This presentation covers the first two to five years in the beginner's education.

In the second book, Capoeira: Roots of the Dance-Fight-Game, I started by proposing "movement on the ground for one player" exercises (which is part of our contemporary teaching methods). These can be done by beginners, they are not difficult. However, in my academy I only start to teach them to students with at least three or four years' experience, or else I risk having "robot" players who move well on the ground (due to the mechanically organized exercises) but are incapable of improvising and being creative when moving on the ground. They get "stuck" in the several sequences they learn, and also in the combinations that are possible to do by interchanging the elements.  

I think it's better to just give the "movement improvisation exercises on the ground" in the first years and only after that, when the student is moving freely on the ground, to go into the "movement on the ground for one player" exercises. In the second book I also described "throws when attacked on the ground" (which is part of our contemporary teaching methods), they are a sort of "back-up' for those who are developing the game "on the ground". These also can be done by students with less training, although I recommend them only when the "basics" have been learned, four to five years of training.

These training techniques work very well, and the player "on the ground" has many chances to throw down players who attack them when they are in that position. Though these take-downs are as easy (or as difficult) to do in the actual game as (for example) giving a cruz on a benção, a banda on a martelo, or even a rasteira on an armada, we rarely see them being applied in the game even though the opportunities are there. Teachers generally don't propose these training methods, and players just don't dedicate themselves to doing them. Not withstanding they are a typical contemporary teaching method gadget.

Finally, I proposed the "upside-down exercises", a series of acrobatic movements to be inserted at the proper and convenient moment in the player's game, what we call floreio (to place flowers). Some of these movements are quite difficult to master. 

As in the first book, I also gave some tips, strategies, and "mental attitudes" in the second book that I believe might help the student who already has some experience in capoeira.

In the third and last book, A Street-Smart Song, I proposed exercises (of the contemporary teaching method type) that complement the "movement improvisation exercises standing up", in a similar way to what was proposed, in the second book, the exercises to complement the "movement improvisation exercises on the ground".  Some of these movements are used by many "high-level" players; others are used by only a few. But, as far as I know, it is not common to specifically train these movements.

When we are playing and the game is fluid, without "breaks", without the primitive roughness resulting from the need to show that one is "better", without the mediocrity of unconscious ego trips that are rooted in the lack of self-confidence, then we understand what Mestre Pastinha meant when he wrote in his manuscripts: ". . . muitos adimira essa belissima luta quando dois camaradas joga sem egoismo, sem vaidade; é maravilhosima, e educada". Translation: "Many admire this most beautiful [form of] fight when two camaradas [pals, friends] play without selfishness, without vanity; it is extremely marvelous, and educated".

Pastinha's style of writing is always baroque and metaphorically poetic. He creates words that, in fact, do not exist, such as maravilhosima.  Maravilhosa means "marvelous", and the suffix ima, which is used to upgrade an adjective to a superlative form, cannot be used here (if one is to follow the "correct" Portuguese grammar) because maravilhosa is already a superlative of maravilha. But Pastinha, at least in his writings, is less involved with a correct grammar trip than he is with an intentional poetic sensibility. And, indeed, on the (unfortunately rare) occasions when you play with somebody "without selfishness, without vanity", or you see two camaradas playing in this way, capoeira is really maravilhosima. On the other hand, and paradoxically, when such a game happens you also understand what Mestre Bimba meant when he said with a crooked smile and a dark glint in his eye: "Capoeira é mardade", "Capoeira is evilness, mischief".

Here, again, the word mardade does not exist. What exists is maldade: evilness, mischief, to do harm or to be mean to someone.  But Bimba, similar to Pastinha, appropriates words and slightly changes them to show he is not talking about something that is known to anyone who speaks Portuguese, maldade. He is speaking of something slightly different, mardade. But the "slightly" different, although only slightly, makes the whole difference: only experienced players know what he is talking about; although any beginner with a couple of months, if he relaxes and doesn't try too hard to understand, might have a sideways glimpse of the concept Bimba is referring to. Bimba is saying that a good game has to embody both the dark and the luminous aspects of energy, the negative and the positive sides of human beings, even when the game is played without violence, "without selfishness, without vanity" (and with a lot of creativity, playfulness, and aesthetic beauty).

All of this light and dark, positive and negative, has to be there, even if it's in a ritualistic, theatrical, make-believe-but-can-turn-real-at-any-moment way.

Because that's what capoeira is all about. Because that's what makes capoeira unique, and distinguishes it from dance, martial arts, sport, etc."