Natália Zumba Success Story

Natália Zumba a Jiu-jitsu karate athlete.

A short introduction to yourself?
Im Natália Zumba, 29 years old, Jiu Jitsu black belt, Alliance Team member.
I’ve been training since 2009, I started to compete in 2010, I have great results since there but especially in 2015 to nowadays. I have a lot of experience abroad, I lived in Abu Dhabi for 5 years teaching jiu-jitsu, I stayed training in the US for a while last year too but now I’m based in São Paulo, training with my Master Casquinha at @alliancemooca.

How did you develop your fondness for your sport and at what age did you start learning Jiu-Jitsu?
I started training at 17 years old at Almeida JJ with Master Caio Almeida, he put the competition in my heart and also a mindset of training a lot and work hard to get a good result. After I trained with him I moved to @alliancemooca and developed deeply my technical jiu-jitsu and some years later I went to Abu Dhabi and meet a great time of BJJ Black belts to train with.

What is your style and what rank do you currently hold in?
I now started to play more No-Gi and I’m in 12th place in the world but I’m working to compete more No-Gi and search for a better position in the ranking.

What do you like about Kata or Kumite more?
Don’t have kata or Kumite in jiu-jitsu.

Do you have a favorite Sensei?
Well, all the teachers who passed in my journey I have a lot of admiration and I’ve always been inspired by them my Master Casquinha, Luanna Alzuguir, Priscilla Cardoso, Caio Almeida, Jack Oliveira. I have the great honor to had them passing in my career.

How did you get into this position and how did your journey in this sport go?
Nowadays I’m just competing, I’m living in Brazil and my focus now it’s 100% to compete, I lived abroad teaching Jiu-Jitsu for past years but now I moved back to come back train and just compete.

Do you take sports as a profession or is it just a hobby?
Jiu-jitsu It’s my profession.

What challenges have you faced in getting to where you are now? You can also share any injury story.
For sure it’s a very hard time when an athlete gets an injury, I have severely hernias on my neck because of jiu-jitsu and I have a very tough moment to keep competing. But with good physical training, I keep my body strong and the injured don’t show up very often, but it’s a continuous job with my trainer André.

What motivates you most about your profession as an athlete?
I’m keep looking forward to the World IBJJF title at the Black belt and also spread Jiu-jitsu into a female community, because jiu-jitsu has been created to a small person don’t be abused by a bigger person, any woman who knows Jiu-jitsu will know how to defend herself in any situation so this motivated me to spread and represent women’s into this sport.

Do you have anything you want everyone to learn?
I always keep work to know more and more about Jiu-jitsu, always training more to develop my positions. I’m a very determined and dedicated person, maybe this is something to learn.

What tournament or match you have won are you most proud of and why

I always think any tournament winning or losing the next one you be always the greatest. So next one always challenges me and I will work more to become better and be proud of myself. But the last tournament was great I submitted my final and won Sul Americano Championship 2021 Ibjjf

I was proud of it.

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