Capoeira 100 An Illustrated To The Essential Movements And Techniques

What This Book Actually Is

I ran into Capoeira 100 An Illustrated To The Essential Movements And Techniques about three years ago when I was trying to systematize some of the entries for students who kept showing up to roda with half-finished gingas. The book is exactly what the title suggests — a catalog of capoeira movements with illustrations. It covers the foundational kicks, escapes, takedowns, and the general vocabulary you see in a basic academy. Nothing fancy. It won't teach you to play like Mestre Bimba, but it's a solid reference if you need something to point at while explaining why your arm shouldn't be straight on a queda de rins. The illustrations are decent enough for visual reference. They aren't photo-realistic, and they don't capture timing or weight distribution, which is about as useful as a map that only shows cities and not roads. Still, for someone trying to break down a movement into its component parts, having a visual anchor matters more than you'd expect when you're teaching.

Where to Get Capoeira 100 An Illustrated To The Essential Movements And Techniques

You can find it through most major book retailers. It's widely available on Amazon, and if you order internationally, you might need to watch shipping times. I've also seen copies pop up on eBay from third-party sellers. The physical copy is the better bet if you're using it as a teaching reference — screen readers and phone screenshots don't do justice to the detail work in the plates. Digital versions exist but the resolution trade-off makes certain details harder to parse, especially around hand placements and foot angles. When I'm working with new students, I open the book to the relevant section before we even step onto the mat. Say we're drilling rasteira. I show the illustration, walk through the key points — low level, timing the sweep, pulling the opponent's leg — and then we move to the live drill. It cuts down the explanation time significantly. Most beginners need about five to ten minutes to get the visual before they can execute the movement without constant correction. The book's structure works against you if you try to read it cover to cover. It's organized by movement type, which makes sense for reference, but capoeira doesn't flow that way in actual play. A ladainha flows into a meioca, which can transition into an armada, and the book treats each as a separate entry. You'll spend more time flipping back and forth than you would just learning the sequences in a roda.

Here's the thing nobody tells you about this book: it covers the movements but it doesn't cover the music. Capoeira is tied to the berimbau and the cords dictate what kind of game you play. A student who learns movements without understanding that the corda verde Amarela calls for a different style than a corda Vermelho can end up looking lost in roda regardless of how well they know their meia lua de frente.

Common Mistakes When Using This Reference

The biggest problem I see is people treating the illustrations as technical diagrams. They're not. The drawings show position, not force vectors or balance points. I had a student once try to replicate a-au from the illustration and landed face-first because the drawing didn't show that his supporting foot needed to be rotated outward at roughly a forty-five degree angle. The illustration shows the kick. It doesn't show the setup. Another issue is assuming the book covers regional techniques alongside angola techniques as equals. The illustrations lean heavily toward regional, which is fine if that's what you're studying, but angola players will notice the omissions. Movements like cocorinha and negrito get short shrift. If you're coming from an angola background, you'll want to supplement this with other sources. There's also a gap in the book around escapes. Many of the takedown illustrations show the offensive movement clearly, but the defensive responses are either vague or missing entirely. I spent months trying to work through the escape sequences with students before finding a video resource that filled the gaps. The book is strong on offense, weaker on defense.

What It Gets Right

The movement library is comprehensive for someone at beginner to intermediate level. Kicks like armadas, queixadas, meias luas, and cotoveladas are all covered with reasonable clarity. The glossary at the back helps with Portuguese terminology, which matters because everyone uses Portuguese names in training regardless of what language they speak. The illustrations of ganchos and rasteiras are particularly useful. These are the movements that look simple from the outside but require precise timing and body positioning to execute without getting countered. Having a visual to reference while drilling these saves a lot of repetition. Students who train with the book tend to pick up these movements about thirty percent faster than those who don't, based on my rough observation over several cohorts.

Limitations You Need to Know About

This book cannot replace a qualified teacher. No amount of illustrated reference material compensates for the feedback you get from someone watching your actual movement. Capoeira is proprioceptive. You need to feel the weight shifts, the balance corrections, and the timing adjustments through repetition and guided practice. The book gives you a snapshot. It doesn't give you the process. The publication date matters too. Some of the movement categorizations in the book reflect a particular school's approach rather than a universal standard. If you cross-reference with other practitioners from different lineages, you'll find variations in how certain movements are named or described. That's normal in capoeira. The tradition is broad and regional differences are real. If you're looking for something more advanced — detailed breakdowns of complex sequences, historical context, or the philosophical framework behind the movements — this book won't satisfy you. It's a movement catalog, nothing more. For that, you'd be better off looking at works by Mestre Pastinha scholars or the archives from the Centro de Cultura Física e Reabilitação in Salvador. But those are dense reads and not everyone has access to them.

Bottom Line

For beginners and intermediates who want a visual reference to complement their training, this book does what it says. It's not groundbreaking. It's not comprehensive in every category. But it's practical, well-organized for reference, and the illustrations are clear enough to be useful. Pair it with regular roda experience and you'll get more out of it than if you treat it as a standalone study tool. Anything else is just reading about swimming instead of getting in the water.