Another gem from GrappleArts.com, Stephan Kesting; written by Krista Scott-Dixon. This is the same writer who wrote the below article I created a thread about:
Tips for Female Grapplers: - when a (small) girl meets a (big) boy -
Essentially, a great article on how to attract and retain females into your grappling academy (and academy in general but grappling tends to have its own “special needs”). Check it out here:
Interesting article with some pretty good points. As it happens our JJJ club at uni is aiming to recruit more girls next year by going for more of a self defence angle than ‘traditional martial art’ thing.
I’ve noticed that there are a lot of women in Judo. Anyone got any ideas why? Cos it seems that since Judo and BJJ are so similar, it should be fairly easy to exploit that same appeal for BJJ.
Interesting article. I did some no gi for a spell and will be putting on the gi as soon as my meniscus is put back together. The place I trained no gi had a female coach as well as another female that was there on the weekends. I thought the guys were great and welcomed me with open arms-though I will add, I"m a cool chick lol. I can dish it out and I can take it.
I’ve always worked in a male field, electronics, computer repair, corrections officer, so maybe I have a tougher skin than most. I think I should be able to do what the guys do (by that I mean I need to meed their standards, and not have lesser standards). There were positives and negatives to training. Positive was I could easily go 100 percent so it was great training for me. On the other hand, a con, I felt I was sort of short changing the guys a bit. Most didn’t want to “hurt” me, so went extra easy on me, thus their training might have suffered. I’ve never asked anyone to take it easy on me, and honestly got pissed when they felt they had to. After a few classes though…I sort of had the attitude that when they rolled with me it was like a bit of a rest for them, lol, so I put a somewhat positive spin on it.
Another con though was that I felt I had to be extra good. I didn’t want to sit out a turn rolling, because I didn’t want to be thought of as a girl that couldn’t hang…so I pushed myself and that was to my detriment. I did some damage to an LCL and it took a lot longer to heal cause I kept going after I injured it-I didn’t want to be thought of as weak, so I pushed thru the pain. Bad mistake and one that I won’t make again.
I’ll definitely have a different attitude when I put the gi on. As much as it kills me, I have to realize that I’m not a 20 year old male and I won’t be able to keep up with them…at least not in the beginning, lol. I also won’t push myself too hard. I would rather take more time to get up to par, that try and get there in one night and injure myself again. I am certainly not a spring chicken anymore, lol.
I really enjoy training with the guys and I hope they enjoy training with me. I would however LOVE the opportunity to train with women because we don’t really worry about hurting each other. We just do the job and get it done. Hopefully one day soon!
Non-Spazzy Noob guys should welcome the opportunity to train with girls because it generally means you can work pure technique without worrying about any kind of hulksmash shenanigans.
The worst thing I’ve seen in the gym re: Women Training is the 18-22 year old guys that can’t help but have an ego problem when it comes to getting tapped out by a girl. So as soon as the girl gets close to a sub, the kid FLIPS THE FUCK OUT.
I hate that shit.
[quote=Kintanon;2414141]Non-Spazzy Noob guys should welcome the opportunity to train with girls because it generally means you can work pure technique without worrying about any kind of hulksmash shenanigans.
The worst thing I’ve seen in the gym re: Women Training is the 18-22 year old guys that can’t help but have an ego problem when it comes to getting tapped out by a girl. So as soon as the girl gets close to a sub, the kid FLIPS THE FUCK OUT.
I hate that shit.[/quote]
This is exactly right. I wish we had more women at my gym, but we do have one blue belt who will absolutely hand you your ass if you aren’t on your game. We also recently had a couple of high school guys join the BJJ class and you can just smell the fear they have of being tapped out by her. Granted, they don’t want to get tapped by anybody and they always try to just roll with each other (before that b.s. got squashed), but it’s even worse when they think they have to roll with a girl.
Much to her credit, she just lets it roll right off her back and does her thing. But I don’t doubt that other women might be offended and/or put off by that kind of attitude if it is allowed to fester in a gym.
A lot of women are uncomfortable have extended contact with a strange man. Nothing you can do to cure that.
As for the rest of it…well, frankly, I’d just as soon no one made extra effort to get women in BJJ. The ones who’er going to do will be just fine on their own and I’d rather not have to deal with the effect of a lot of whiny women on the mats.
Cause frankly the “I’m a delicate flower” thing will come up and it already makes me sick. It’s for that reason I despise and do not promote or agree with a “woman’s class” in any art. For any reason.
Oh, and sorry, but the gym culture in BJJ is MUCH more a thug culture than any other martial art. It’s just true. The percentage of egotistical asswipes training is wwwwwaaaayyyy higher.
On a side note, I’m also a little sick of people quoting Kesting’s stuff like it’s profound.
He’s a nice guy, and he runs a good gym, but I had to beg to get off his mailing list after getting spammed with self-promotion stuff every day for a week and the articles are really just sort of–well–pedestrian.
To quote Bryant Gumble talking to Stephen Covey: “Isn’t this all obvious?”
Missing post moved here: I can haz Trollshido? - No BS MMA and Martial Arts
Contact like JKDChick pointed out is a big part of it. A lot of women are not comfortable being that close to a bunch of guys. The guard seems to especially freak some out. Its largely a cultural thing as there is a great deal of intimate contact in grappling and that can be difficult for some women, and men, to handle initially.
We had some degree of success at my school with getting female students and I would attribute that to strick codes of conduct among students and the cultivation of a friendly competative atmospher. Many times I recall people remarking that our gym did not feel like other MMA places they has been.
We also made regular use of gi’s instead of the t-shirt and shorts that a lot of MMA gyms use, we still rolled like that too but we had gi nights as well so it was a bit more balanced. Female students tended to show up more on the gi nights than the no gi nights.
This is a brilliant idea on how to do it
read the blog
http://blog.betterjudo.com/judo-for-moms/#more-794
In my limited experience…
Training qin na (nearest I get to grappling with my group) I have no problem at all with close contact providing that my partner is clean. To clarify further I don’t care if he is covered in mud, I just want it to be recent mud and not old, smelly stains. I do not care if he is sweaty as being sweaty is pretty inevitable, providing that he showered in the morning and therefore does not stink.
Bad experiences;
Training for a couple of classes in ju jitsu where I kept getting partnered with a guy who stunk. I had to put effort into not throwing up, he stunk so badly. Put me off ju jitsu (well that group) for ever.
In my group people are for the most part very clean however during an intensive attended by people from other training groups I got partnered with a very dislikeable man who had made himself unpopular with everyone due to his arrogance, boasting and constant complaining. He is fat and unattractive which would not usually bother me at all, however given his personality I felt repelled by him.
He also had a problem with excessive sweating and for some reason insisted on sparring with a bare chest, so that I had no alternative but to come into close contact with his flabby, hairy, sweat drenched gut.
I suggested to him that he might like to use a towel to remove some of the sweat before sparring with me and he cheerfully replied “Naah what’s the point I’ll only get sweaty again?” before lunging at me.
He also had a habit of being far to rough with newbies (he was reprimanded for this by the instructor) and so I was able to talk my way out of sparring with him after that on the basis that I was intimidated by him (I was a complete newbie at the time).
I know it’s shallow to not want to spar with someone just because they are physically emotionally repulsive but I suppose I am that shallow person.
Had he been friendly, likeable and not insisted on sparring only in shorts and support stockings I probably wouldn’t have cared at all.
I’m pretty sure that all the men in my group hated sparring with him too but I think it was even worse for me.
So my contribution to this would be, to attract more women
don’t be arrogant
don’t assume that women will be OK about sparring with you being bare-chested, especially if you are very overweight and have a problem with excessive perspiration
don’t stink
er, that’s it
Missing post moved here: Forum detritus #465 - No BS MMA and Martial Arts
All right - IMO this is not complicated. Girls in grappling are usually there because they are friends and family of other grappling school members. A few girls with other goals like to have MMA fights will find good gyms without this, but by and large it needs to be a fun, and not highly competitive environment where they feel safe.
We now have 4 girls in our jits/MMA whatever the hell we do now gym. It is no gi BTW and we only have about 10 people who train consistantly. The reason that they felt cormfortable I think is because they joined in groups and got to know the people who trained beforehand.(we are a small town)
Going easy at first and building up their confidence has made them have no qualms with with wrestling with boys and now new girls who join up will have girls to play with and so on.
I suppose the best thing for instructors who want to get a feel for what the girls go through is to do a Zumba class and see how you go.
So funnily enough it’s my first day on this site and this is actually a topic I’ve written on twice… So after I post on here I will go introduce myself on the new is forum…
Here is the first artilcle I wrote: having to do with Bjj women and pregnancy
http://navitabjj.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-obstacle-for-jiu-jitsu-women.html
And here is another article on the Bjj hump…
http://navitabjj.blogspot.com/2010/11/blue-belt-triangle-part-1.html
Missing posts moved here: Forum detritus #468 - No BS MMA and Martial Arts
Atama makes a women’s cut:
http://www.atama-kimonos.com/WOMEN.htm
Fenom too (as mentioned above):
http://www.fenomkimonos.com/product.html
On The Mat makes one:
http://www.onthemat.com/products/otm-womens-gi
Break Point has a newer one out:
http://www.breakpointfc.com/store/Jiu_Jitsu_Gi/Break_Point_Women_s_Gi_c14/
There are a LOT of new women’s ones coming out.
It used to be a year or so ago the Atama one was the only one with a women’s cut; my wife bought it and has been VERY happy with the fit.
(I know. I know. This is Trollshido. There shouldn’t be any redeeming information posted here, but since there was interest… :-P)
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Chick here-
I’ve avoided BJJ for years because to me it was just adult wrestling and I had no interest in that.
Later, I realized that if I’m really interested in self defense, I’ll need to be able to get out from under a guy at some point. Enter BJJ. Now I realize that all of the positions/moves will help my goal and I see more value in choking someone out than possibly trying to throw/tie them up.
The guys at my gym are great- no egos, very helpful, also clean : )
We don’t do much no gi, which might change my opinion if we did.
One thing I cannot stand is when a guy (esp. in judo) refuses to throw me or practice a technique completely and treats me differently than the guys. I am not made of china. Just fucking practice the technique already. Also, DO NOT ask me constantly if I am ok. I’ve been doing martial arts for a long time and do some pretty rough sports in addition. I can handle the bumps/bruises/whatever happens in class. Don’t treat me any differently than any other student, or I will not stick around.
Gearing classes a bit more towards self defense would definitely be a good idea for attracting/keeping women. Best of luck.