Interview - BlogChat #2: BJJ Grrl Talks About On/Offline Communities

Here's the second part of my interview with BJJ Grrl. This time, she talks about the amazing community of bloggers in BJJ, which crosses over with the equally amazing community of women in the sport.

Can: Yeah, I am always telling people there is a really awesome community of female bloggers online. You mention the women training page – which is amazing by the way, I love that page.

BJJ Grrl: I should probably revisit it, I would have more to say now.

Can: Yeah, definitely! Again, out of all the bloggers on the internet, you are the one who I think has the closest mindset to my own. The same kind of idea, putting all your experience down.

BJJ Grrl: Some days there are things I don't want to talk about, but maybe it will help somebody. Suck it up and write it down anyway. But yeah, I definitely need to revisit that page, especially the aggression section, because I need to talk about the new thing I'm going through in my head. If I did the technique right and it sucks for you, well, I did the technique right. It's supposed to suck for you. Instead of, "Oh, I don't want to hurt you. Is that uncomfortable? I'm sorry. I'm supposed to be choking you unconscious right now, but if it hurts you I'm not going to do it." I've got to get past that. Still working on it.

Can: Have you thought of building that page up into a more expansive FAQ, like the one I did, or was it that you had a specific set of questions you were interested in answering and you've achieved that?

BJJ Grrl: I kinda just wanted to do it very general questions, the big ones that come up, especially for new women that start training. But yeah, I do need to revisit that one, I'll probably make a list.

Can: A number of bloggers have found they've gone from doing those kind of blogs, the articles you've done, they've proven popular – and I know you've gotten a lot of hits on that page, a ridiculous number of comments – then the blogger has progressed from that to writing articles for websites, magazines etc. Is that something that interests you?

BJJ Grrl: I guess I would kind of like to, but I haven't gone looking for it. I guess for the most part, I still think "Nobody else feels about this the same way I do, no-one else will have this experience," then of course they all say, "I felt exactly the same thing." But I still feel like the oddball out.

Can: Have you had any internet fame, as 'BJJ Grrl'?

BJJ Grrl: Sometimes. I've shown up at women's open mats and people have gone "Gasp! You're BJJ Grrl!" Occasionally somebody from my academy, I'll say something, and they'll be "Oh yeah, I read that on your blog last week." They read it too: crap! It's not anonymous! [Laughs]

I can totally get how people go on the internet and post terrible things, because when they're posting, they're thinking "These aren't real people. They don't know who I am, I'll never meet them." But people are real. I've had people at tournaments come up to me and be like "Oh hey, I commented on your blog!"

Can: Do you see a separation then, between your online and offline life?

BJJ Grrl: I think it's just my brain is kinda weird.

Can: For example, a number of times online friends have become offline friends, like in my case and indeed this trip and this conversation we're having now, with Adrienne sitting right there next to us.



BJJ Grrl: I'm trying to think how I even heard about that first open mat, when I met Chrissy, Adrienne and the others. I don't even know now. I may have read it on a forum, maybe NHB Gear. I think I had done a tournament, with US Grappling, and Chrissy had invited me to the forum. Once I met everybody and kept coming to tournaments, that's how I met most of the women around here.

Although there was a funny incident, a women posted on my blog. It was a comment, asking for advice. So I gave her some advice, then she made another comment about where she trained. It turned out she was thirty minutes from me. I was like, "Come up on Saturday! We'll hang out, do jiu jitsu."

That actually happened twice, from opposite directions. Two different women came in, because they'd found me on the internet, then found out I lived very close to them. "Oh, I'll come train with you."

Antwain: Did they ask you for a lot of pointers?

BJJ Grrl: They were both beginners in jiu jitsu, so asked things like "How do you deal with guys that go way too easy on you and you know they are going too easy? How do you get them to see that you want to train?" Or one of them, I think she didn't know what to do, she was getting beat up all the time, because they were all bigger than her: they were going too hard.

It's weird when people ask me advice, because when I need advice, I'll ask Chrissy mostly, or Addy, or Val. So I ask questions: why are people asking me questions? Ask the people who know these things. [Laughs]

Can: That's a good point: do you guys have any questions?

Adrienne: Actually yeah, I do. How much time a week do you spend? Training is one thing, but then taking your experiences and putting it down in blogs, this and that, I'm just curious to know how much that hobby takes over your other time. To me it seems very consuming.

BJJ Grrl: And it used to be, I used to spend a whole lot more time on it. I would agonise over my post, it had to follow almost a format but not quite. I'd need to talk about this, get the whole class in there, did I miss a technique, did I miss this. Now I do it when I get to work the next morning and I'm drinking my coffee. I'll write it up. That's one of the reasons they are so much shorter now, because I'm writing them at work as I'm drinking my coffee.

But yeah, I was spending a whole lot of time doing it. I would do it immediately after class, so I was staying up until midnight, writing posts. This is kinda silly. So, now I agonise over it far less. Sometimes I look over it after I've posted it and find a glaring typo...meh. Whereas before, I'd re-edit it, I've thought of something else, I should add that.

Adrienne: Like over-analysing it?

BJJ Grrl: Yeah, though it seems to me I haven't been doing it as much now, over-analysing. In fact, last week I trained on Friday, I completely forgot to write anything until Monday. Part of it was that I'd been out of the habit because I'd been injured, so kinda forgot about it.

Adrienne: So have you always blogged? I know you talked about the weightlifting, but is that something which accidentally happened? Or did you set out with "You know what, I want to start blogging," an active decision?

BJJ Grrl: Total accident. Yeah. Just that the online journal for the weightlifting program I was doing led to it. Although I've always written, so it's a natural thing. I also learn really well when I write things down. It helped me, going back after class and writing down everything that I'd done.

Can: Do you ever revisit posts?

BJJ Grrl: I do sometimes. If I feel like I'm having trouble with something that I've had trouble with before, I'll see what happened the last time. [Laughs] Or if I notice a spike in traffic on a certain post, I'll go back and read it. Sometimes it's interesting, I'll think "Oh, that's why somebody might be reading it."

Can: So you're not obsessive about stats, checking page views and the like?

BJJ Grrl: I used to. I really used to, but I made myself stop doing that. It just seemed silly. I'm competing to be best blog? I should be training jiu jitsu, or working or whatever I'm supposed to be doing at the time. That was part of the staying up til midnight thing, obsessing about "well, if I said it this way, would more people come?" At some point I decided, that's just silly. [Laughs]

Interview - BlogChat #1: BJJ Grrl On Her Blog Beginnings

I have 'known' the blogger BJJ Grrl for many years, having first encountered her online back when she was still writing a weightlifting blog. Since then, she has become one of the most important people in the BJJ blogosphere, consistently putting out posts every week. Leslie was a big part of the reason that Virginia was high on my list of places to visit in the US, so I was thrilled to get the chance to finally speak to her during my trip last month. I'll be putting up this interview in two parts, kicking off this week with a chat about how Leslie got started in both blogging and BJJ.

Can: How did you first get into martial arts and jiu jitsu?

BJJ Grrl: I started doing taekwondo in college, because I'd always been interested in doing martial arts. I got injured playing soccer and couldn't play soccer anymore, so a friend of mine offered to beat me up.

Can: [Laughs] Literally like that?

BJJ Grrl: Yeah: "Come to my apartment and I can beat you up, or you can come to taekwondo class with me." She needed a sparring partner her size. So, this was how we were going to get started. Of course eventually she quit, but I kept going. Through the taekwondo, I found jiu jitsu.

One of the guys from the club came back to do a self-defence seminar. After the seminar, he taught a short jiu jitsu seminar – he was a blue belt at the time. I actually really liked it. At the end, he said "Does anybody want to try rolling?" I said "Sure!" and rolled with another guy who was my size. I usually can't tell if somebody is my size, but he was really my size.

We rolled and I was able to sweep him, so I was thinking "I'm able to do this stuff, this is awesome!" Around that same time, I had started lifting: in my parents' basement they had some weights. I began blogging work-outs from that. I was following a program and a lot of people were doing it, so that was my online journal along with all of them.

But I was starting to outgrow the weights, there weren't enough plates for me. I looked around for something else to do and decided I'd probably go do CrossFit. It was coming up to the end of the week: on Monday, I was going to start CrossFit. Saturday was the seminar. I got introduced to jiu jitsu and thought "this is really fun."

Then my Dad came home that night and said he meant a fella named Tim Mannon, who was a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu and they were moving into an academy just down the street. So my Dad said "I know you like martial arts, what do you think about that?" So I replied, "I'm going there instead."

I already had the online journal for lifting, so I started added my jiu jitsu work-outs on there: we were supposed to track everything we did. I began phasing out taekwondo, as it wasn't nearly as much fun. Then as I was doing jiu jitsu more, we actually started lifting. The first gym we were in had some decent weights and a big tyre out back. As we were lifting there, I stopped lifting at home: I'd get home, do one dead-lift, I'm done.

Those things started phasing out, so I was just doing jiu jitsu on my blog, on the weightlifting blog. I realised I should switch it to a jiu jitsu blog.

Can: What was the incentive to do it online, rather than just keeping your journal in a book?

BJJ Grrl: When I started, it was with an online community of people who were lifting, so we were all posting on our threads. I couldn't always log into the site, so I would keep it in a Wordpress site, just for me.

Can: How have you found that has influenced your training, in either positive or negative ways?

BJJ Grrl: I'm not sure if it's either, but I think about what I'm going to write, particularly when I was writing more of the technique down. I would have to think through it, line by line, how am I going to write this, explain this, remember where that goes. How can I remember this by the time I get home so I can write it down.
I think it helped me pay a lot of attention to what I was doing, as I was basically going to have to reteach myself when I got home so I could write it down. But then there were times when I'm rolling with someone and I'm thinking how I'm going to write it down: I'm not paying attention to the fact that he's about to choke me. [Laughs]

Can: This is why I wanted to talk to you, this is like hearing myself. That's exactly the kind of thing that I'm thinking! [Laughs]

BJJ Grrl: Sometimes I'm thinking "Just shut-up in there and roll, we'll dissect it later."

Can: When I'm watching a demonstration, when they're teaching technique, I'm thinking "Ok, their hand is there, so what do I describe that as? Far arm, the opposite arm, right arm?"

BJJ Grrl: Yeah, I think it helps sometimes with technique too, taking notes. The seminar today [with Dave Jacobs, back in April], I'm really thinking of things like 'far side armbar', or 'far side arm', not just watching him do it. You know those people, I see this in class all the time, they will watch it, they go back to do it, and then they're "Wait, which arm do we start with?"

I'll answer, "We start with this one," because I've already written it down in my head. So in that respect I think it really does help. But yeah, the part where you're writing the roll in your head as it happens? Trying to remember the cool things?

Can: I find when I write it down, I want to have something to work on. I'll normally have a specific goal in mind, thinking about how I can progress that and what can I take from the roll. So you're finding it's more just interesting stuff that sticks in your head, it's not particularly "I did this, and it helped me with this technique"?

BJJ Grrl: Yeah, it's usually things that happened, or "I hit this armbar we drilled this morning, isn't that awesome?"

Can: Your blog, and we've talked about this before, does a great job of building a community. It seems a lot of people really felt engaged in your journey through jiu jitsu, which also helped them: you were saying things that they related to. Did that act as a motivator to change the blog or indeed just keep it going?

BJJ Grrl: To keep it going, as sometimes I would say things on that blog and think "I am on the only person in the world who ever has this problem. No one else ever gets in this situation, everyone else is breezing right through it."

But so many people would come back and say "That's exactly what is happening to me too!" So, I'm like "really, I'm not the only one who has that problem? Ok." Especially when it comes back from higher ranks who've been through it sometimes.

When I first put up the training with women page, so many people, like Jen Flannery and a couple of black belts even, Hillary Williams commented on it. There were a whole bunch of women commenting on it, saying "That is exactly what it's like."

"It is? Ok. I was right, it's not just me!" That's why sometimes I will post about how I had an absolutely horrible day, totally could not get this one technique to work. People will post comments, "I have days like that." People who have been training longer still have days like that. We all have days where we think, "Why don't I take up table tennis, this sucks!"

Part Two now up, here

Article - The Dreaded Beast-Men

Article #21, by guest writer Allie McClish

For a fighter, I’m not much to look at. I’m an average sized girl: 5’5’’, 135 lbs. In a sport dominated by men, most of my opponents boast a significant weight advantage. Add onto that the spastic craziness of a new, white belt male and you have a creature I like to call the beast-man.

I used to complain about the impossibility of grappling beast-men. They were too big and strong. They used too much muscle. I cringed at the thought of grappling them, secretly rejoicing whenever my instructor, Fabio, assigned me to grapple someone with a little color on their belt.

When I got my blue belt, my distaste for beast-men increased. I felt I had something to prove. I was supposed to be more technical than them now, right? Mysteriously, that technique was missing on the mat. I was still getting crushed. The more I tried to beat these guys the more frustrated I got.

My breakthrough came when I realized I was looking at them in the wrong light. Beast-men weren’t my enemies. They were my training partners. Not only that, but I realized that these guys, with all their strength and spasticness, were some of the best training partners I could ask for.

If you take BJJ for self defense, who would be more like a real attacker on the street? A seasoned brown belt who rolls with control and courtesy, or a white belt who is coming at me with all of his strength and random bursts of movement? The white belt would be more like what I would actually face.

I realized I only wanted to defend myself against people who were going to attack me nicely. I was complaining about the most realistic mock attackers that I would get in a safe setting. Having training partners who relax and teach me things is an invaluable treasure, but having guys whose only goal is to crush me into oblivion is equally valuable.

After I stopped looking at these guys as evil villains who wanted to ruin my evening of happy grappling, and started looking at them as real-life scenario tests, everything changed. I took the pressure off myself to perform. I stopped letting my own frustration and anger cloud up my mind while I was grappling. Instead of thinking about how unpleasant the grapple was, I started thinking about what I was doing; paying attention to where I could move, where they were off balance, where both of us were vulnerable.

The results were instantaneous. Not only did I grapple better, but I started growing again in general. I started enjoying jiu-jitsu again. I stopped hating the beast-men and actually learned to look forward to the challenges they present.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re big or small. Eventually, you’ll encounter people that seem created for your misery. When you come up against them, the difference between frustration and growth is your point of view. You can decide to complain, or you can be thankful that beast men are there to point out the holes in your game. You can be the victim against an insurmountable enemy, or accept the challenge of a training partner who has something to teach you. The distinction is yours to make.

Allie McClish is a blue belt, who has been training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for a year and four months under Fabio Novaes in Florida. She maintains a blog at Allie the Clear Belt.

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Article - A Women's BJJ Class (4)

One woman's journey into creating a women's jiu jitsu program
Article #19, by guest writer Chrissy Linzy [FAQ Entry]
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I’m now five months into teaching the women’s BJJ classes at my academy. It’s been an interesting journey, for sure. I’m still learning the methods that work for teaching smaller classes, and how I should handle skill disparity between students. I’m getting the rhythm of the classes down, which was one of my concerns when I started teaching.

One of my least favorite things about drilling techniques in jiu jitsu is that they often require one person to do something wrong, over and over again. For example, when drilling a kimura from guard, we’re often asked to start by putting our hands on the mat so that our partner can begin right at the kimura setup. That’s great for the muscle memory of the person on the bottom, but it’s teaching the person on top that sometimes when you’re in the guard, you feel the mat under your palms. It’s teaching you to have bad posture. This is one of the easier ones to fix, just by requiring the guard player to break the posture and move the hands to the mat before setting up the kimura.

A big part of the drills that I’m using are drills that will help both people improve. My current favorite drill is switching between a triangle and an armbar from guard. The person caught in the submission alternatively postures up or stacks the bottom player as the bottom player alternates between the two submissions. The top person works to actually finish the escape and the bottom person works to actually finish one of the two submissions. The women work to tighten the triangle or the armbar with each switch between the two submissions. I believe that I’ll add the omoplata into the mix after a few more weeks of this drill, and after the women have learned the omoplata on its own.

I believe that these drills are working because I’m seeing the women look for these transitions during sparring. When I spar with them, I set them up from both the offensive and defensive sides of the drills, and they’re starting to react automatically now that they’ve worked these drills for a few weeks. I think as an instructor, that has to be one of the most gratifying things that can ever happen.

I’m always looking for other drills that benefit both training partners, so if you have any that you use in your academy, please post them in the comments!

Now that September is over, I’m happy to report one of the women who was a bit reluctant to train with men has started attending the co-ed classes. She came on a night that she knew I would be attending for the first one, so she could drill with me, but she also sparred a round or two with some of our nicer fellows. She left class soaked in sweat and smiling from ear to ear. She’s been back for a few more since then, and has even come in a few times when I wasn’t there. That was really a big accomplishment for her, when you consider that she was pretty sure that she never wanted to try a co-ed class just two months ago. I’m glad to see her branching out, and I hope some of the other women follow in her footsteps soon.

Chrissy Linzy has been training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for 5 years, and is one of the owners of US Grappling, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and submission grappling tournament circuit that travels across most of the United States for events. She (rarely) blogs at www.clinzy.com.

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Article - A Women's BJJ Class (3)

One woman's journey into creating a women's jiu jitsu program
Article #17, by guest writer Chrissy Linzy [FAQ Entry]
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Post-Tournament Wrap-Up

Thanks to injuries and cold feet, we ended up with one woman competing at US Grappling’s Dominion Grappling Championships on August 7, 2010. Rachel Prestipino took 2nd place in her white belt division, losing to a woman who was promoted to blue belt the following day. Rachel trained very hard for the tournament, and I’m really proud of her. I think this is her first time competing with women instead of teens (she just turned 16 this summer), and the first time she’s competed in about a year. I can’t wait to see how she does in her next event.

Class Progress

July brought several new women to class, which meant retooling lesson plans nearly every week. This is a great problem to have, and I’ve structured the August classes so that new women can jump right in. This month, we’re working from the closed guard. I’ll be introducing the women to passing, sweeping, and submitting from there so that they get a taste of both top and bottom games. I’m trying to incorporate both sides into the drills, but sometimes it means that we work the same basic position for two classes in a row. I actually like doing that, since it means that the students get more reps from a position and they spend less time practicing bad technique (like putting their hands on the mat so that their opponent can practice a kimura, for example).

Curious Problem

I think it’s fairly common practice for the instructor to (kindly) submit students when they first start jiu jitsu. The problem comes in when I’m training with the teenagers. I don’t want to train so hard with them that they are too discouraged to return. I also don’t want to train so light with them that they think that jiu jitsu is easy or ineffective. I’m also a bit worried about the perception of the parents on the sidelines that don’t train, who are watching their children get beaten repeatedly by an adult. Being a teenage girl is hard enough without this sort of extra pressure, and I’m trying to find the right balance.

So far, my solution has been to reward good grappling choices and to “punish” bad ones, much like I would do if I were training a puppy. If the teenagers flail around under side control, the pressure slowly increases. If the teenagers attempt proper escapes, the escapes will work. I’m still working out if this is the best way to work with them or not, and I’d love some feedback from anyone that has trained teenage girls in the past. I don’t want to treat them like delicate flowers, but I also don’t think that treating them like a full-grown adult is the answer.

Coming Up

After August, I will start trying to get some of the newer women over into the co-ed classes. I think they’ll have enough of the basics to start trying things on a larger variety of opponents at that point. I also don’t want them to become too spoiled by always having sparring partners at their size and skill level. Plus, they need to find ways to adjust techniques for shorter and longer limbs and so on. If they’re always training with the same body types, they’ll never learn to make these small adjustments that will make their jiu jitsu more effective.

I’ll be spending a week at a women’s grappling camp in Toronto for the last week of August, and I hope to come back with some more ideas about developing the women’s program.

Chrissy Linzy has been training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for 5 years, and is one of the owners of US Grappling, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and submission grappling tournament circuit that travels across most of the United States for events. She (rarely) blogs at www.clinzy.com.

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Article - A Women's BJJ Class (2)

One woman's journey into creating a women's jiu jitsu program
Article #16, by guest writer Chrissy Linzy [FAQ Entry]
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The Classes

The day of the first class, I couldn’t really think about anything else. What if no one showed up? What if I forgot everything I wanted to show? What if jiu jitsu techniques magically stopped working?

None of these things happened, of course. I had two students for the first class, and have had at least two students for nearly every class since then. I have designed the classes so that the warmup, the self defense move of the week and the two BJJ techniques all tie together somehow so that there are common motions being repeated.

At the end of each class, we do some positional sparring and then review the techniques from the class. During the first class, I covered details of mount escapes and then my “rules” for maintaining mount. The positional sparring was solely to maintain mount, without working for any submissions. I wanted to make sure that the women become comfortable with making adjustments in their posture and base automatically, before thinking about submissions.

Since most of the women that have been attending classes are fairly new to jiu jitsu, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the basics. I want these women to feel confident in the co-ed classes, and to have a lot of repetitions of the fundamentals. I also spend a good bit of time on the principles behind the movements so that the women understand other places that these movements will be effective.

Nearly every jiu jitsu academy talks about posture while you’re in someone’s guard, but I try to point out what good posture is from every position so that they’re always thinking about how to be safe, even if they don’t quite know what to do next. This is where I think that the positional sparring is the most helpful. Now that I have 3 months or so under my (blue) belt, I’m going to start making a few changes. I’m going to drop the second BJJ technique and add in more sparring. A lot of my students are teenagers, which means parents are very prompt about picking them up. This means that they expect class to end right at 9 PM, so the teenagers are missing out on the open mat time after class ends.

The Future

Right now, I have a few students who are planning to compete at US Grappling’s Dominion Grappling Championships, so we’re spending July and the beginning of August working on tournament strategies and on what to do if the plan goes awry. We’ll have some women coming from other academies to visit for classes between now and August 7 to help prepare for the tournament. In addition, I know I’m going to be getting a few new students in the next week or two, and I’m excited about seeing the program grow. Planning the lesson is one of my favorite parts of the week, especially when I work out the alternate ways to explain things, or to accomplish a particular technique with a different body type. I feel like it makes me a better instructor and a better grappler.

Chrissy Linzy has been training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for 5 years, and is one of the owners of US Grappling, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and submission grappling tournament circuit that travels across most of the United States for events. She (rarely) blogs at www.clinzy.com.

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Article - A Women's BJJ Class (1)

One woman's journey into creating a women's jiu jitsu program
Article #15, by guest writer Chrissy Linzy [FAQ Entry]
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The Setup

About 3 months ago, using what must have been some sort of black belt trickery, Klint Radwani (my instructor) convinced me to teach a women’s class at our academy. I hesitantly agreed once I was absolutely sure that there was no way our purple belt woman could do it. Of course, when I agreed, I was sort of banking on this class starting sometime in the future. The distant future. Instead, it would start on the first Tuesday of May. I had two weeks. Crap.

So, I did what any panic-stricken gal would do – I dashed off an email to friends of mine who teach women’s classes and begged for help. Adrienne Adams (Yamasaki), Jen Flannery (Fifty/50), and Alaina Hardie (MECCA MMA) all started teaching women’s classes back when they were blue belts, and were kind enough to talk me off of the proverbial ledge and back onto the mats where I belong.

With some excellent advice from them, I got my head back into the game and got to work on my game plan. Common themes from all of the women – develop consistent patterns, show movements that the women can build on from class to class, and reinforce what they already know. With these things in mind, I developed lesson plans for May and June, starting with the positions that I always wished I had spent more time working when I first started jiu jitsu.

The Requirements

Klint wanted to ensure that any women who were only attending this class would be getting self-defense techniques, so each class would need to include at least one of those. I have eight self-defense techniques that relate directly to jiu jitsu that cycle through the classes, and I tie them to the lesson for each week. Other than that, I could teach whatever I thought would be most beneficial. Knowing that I would have a mix of experience levels (including women that outrank me on occasion), I started working on a curriculum that would be scalable enough for beginners to jump in, but would also offer a challenging session for the more experienced women as well.

After I had the first nine sessions outlined, I asked for feedback from everyone I’ve already mentioned, plus Valerie Worthington (Carlson Gracie/New Breed). Val has a background in both BJJ and education, and among other things, she recommended being prepared to handle the “But What Ifs” (aka Mission Creep) in each class. I tried to do this by teaching both sides of each technique. For example, if I teach a submission, I will also teach the defense. I’ve used this format since the first night. This way, the students all know that they don’t need to ask how to defend that cross choke because I’m going to show them in the next section. Then, they’re going to start sparring from that position so that they can work on the submission and the defense. I like to make sure the women are getting some sparring time in during each class, and to see that there is a practical application for these techniques.

In the next installment, you’ll hear about the first week of classes, and what I hope the future will bring for the Yamasaki Jiu Jitsu women’s classes.

Chrissy Linzy has been training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for 5 years, and is one of the owners of US Grappling, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and submission grappling tournament circuit that travels across most of the United States for events. She (rarely) blogs at www.clinzy.com.

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Article - Amazon Jiu Jitsu: BJJ & Larger Women

Article #14, by guest writer Megan Williams [FAQ Entry]

I…am a large woman. That’s not a euphemism for overweight or exceedingly muscular. I’m 6’ tall, with an almost 7” wrist and 22” shoulders. I weigh 180lbs when in good shape. Like the majority of women that train BJJ, I showed up for self-defense reasons (even though, aside from an incident of a man telling me that I was “so tall he wanted to put his fist through my chest”, I’ve seldom felt threatened), but the similarities begin to die off there.

Yes, a large woman will face the same “lady problems” that any other female would in training BJJ…dealing with inappropriate behavior, managing the intensity of sparring with opponents that either want to man-handle you for fun or go way too soft on you because they don’t want to hurt you, feeling out of place as the only female in class…but the issue of size is a creature unto itself. I outweigh most of the women in my school by 60lbs or more and am a solid 10” taller. I worry more frequently about putting too much of my weight on smaller opponents (male and female) than I do about being crushed by the 220 lb guy that shows up on Wednesdays. The idea of being picked up or tossed around doesn’t really cross my mind and sweeps only work if they’re technically clean. Still though, I’m not as strong as men my size, or even those smaller than me.

I’m guessing the guys at the gym have to be thinking something similar…wondering what’s got the Amazonian chick interested in a sport that’s designed to shift the balance of power in favor of smaller, weaker opponents. Their comments on how strong I am, or have gotten are great motivation, but they’ve given rise to some new concerns. I used to worry about being weak. Now I wonder about life beyond the white belt and if my size plus a pigmented belt will cause resentment or backlash. I wonder if my manly size will result in my being manhandled. I’m guessing it will, and that’s fine. Just a new challenge with which to deal. While I’m sure the heel I took to my left breast last class is a problem that’s particular to women, I suspect there are fewer differences specific to gender in Brazilian jiu jitsu than one would expect, and that’s part of what makes it beautiful.

I do think though, that my situation sheds light on an opportunity for instructors, bloggers and others to adapt how they address techniques and abilities. My instructor, (I like his method and think it could be a benefit to both genders) instead of giving advice on techniques that are good for men or women, teaches based on body type or situation…leg length, relative weight of opponent or flexibility. I’m sure there are men out there with legs that are stronger than their upper bodies, be it because of freakish genetics or injury. There are definitely men out there that are small for their gender, and I believe they could benefit from more specialized attention.

All that said, I’m glad to have found the likes of Lana Stefanac, Gabi Garcia and a few other ladies online, so I can see how other large women move and work with women their own size.

Megan is a white belt, who has been training for six months at American Top Team in West Palm Beach under Marcos "Parrumpinha" Da Matta. She maintains a blog at bjiujitsu.blogspot.com

BJJ for the Larger Woman: Further Reading

Megan Williams: Big Girl Syndrome
Fenom Kimonos: Annemieke DeMaggio Interview
Open Mat Radio: #23 - Emily Wetzel Interview
Megan Williams: Commentary on Emily Wetzel Interview
BJJ Heroes: Gabi Garcia Profile
Erin Herle: Gabi Garcia Interview


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Article - Kyra Gracie and the Treatment of Women in BJJ

Article #8, by Can Sönmez [FAQ Entry]


One of the threads you're almost guaranteed to see on a BJJ forum, along with "what gi should I buy" and "when should I compete", is a series of photographs like the one on the left, featuring Kyra Gracie. That will be accompanied by a succession of posts along the lines of "man, I'd like to be in her triangle!" Essentially, it's akin to a bunch of drooling frat boys in a locker room, crowded around a dirty magazine, giving each other macho slaps on the back after every lewd comment. Kyra's looks are discussed far more often than her technique.

It is a sad reflection on our society that female athletes are often objectified, their abilities ignored in favour of their appearance (women's tennis is a well-known example). Women who do not pander to that trend may find their achievements fail to get the recognition they rightly deserve. For example, I think everyone can agree that winning two gold medals at the Mundials is an incredible accomplishment, especially if you do so with humility and skill. Yet I rarely hear people talk about Lana Stefanac, the first American woman to win both her weight category and the absolute at the highest levels of BJJ, while still a brown belt. I suspect it is because she is large and powerful, a very different body type to the petite Kyra Gracie.

Emily Kwok did a great interview on Kombat Clinic back in December last year, which fits with this topic. I felt the following quote stood out:

[...] some men still believe that this is a man’s sport and a man’s world. And those types of men could care less about the fact that I managed to achieve anything at all, because they feel that there really is no room for women to be taken seriously. At most, they will say that you are good at what you do ‘for a girl’. They believe that your Jiu Jitsu is not the same as a man’s Jiu Jitsu, they feel that your technique and understanding of the sport is inferior [...]

I think we struggle greatly to be appreciated on the same level as our male counterparts. Women have been doing a phenomenal job representing the sport, providing some of the most exciting matches at elite level tournaments. But we still don’t get much press coverage; we are never talked about as much as the men, and I feel that we still have a long way to go. I think we are still sometimes seen as a novelty, and not seen as serious athletes.

Stefanac herself related a particularly relevant experience in regards to MMA, a sport in which she both competes and trains others. She spoke to Psychology Today about managing female fighters:

You've got this whole Barbie-doll thing, where a promoter will call me and be like, "Do you have a girl at 125 pounds I can use?" Yeah, I sure do. Then they say, "But what does she look like?" How does her appearance affect her fighting?

There are some good signs, however. Shawn Williams made a point of emphasising the excellence of female BJJ during his commentary for the 2009 Mundials. In the US, several senior female belts run a Women's Grappling Camp, an idea which is set to come to the UK soon. Open Mats for women are also available on both sides of the Atlantic. Meg Smitley organises regular events at Dartford MMA, while in the US, there are frequent opportunities in Richmond, VA.

Hopefully with the continuing growth of female BJJ, a woman's ability on the mat will become a more prevalent point of discussion than the way she looks.

[Update: See Meg's excellent follow-up piece here.]

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