BJJ ladies, team up!!

Having a girls' team does not mean training only with girls, it means having a group of girls to share experiences and practice. 

My female BJJ team is composed of girls who are willing to work twice as hard, and train in ladies'class in addition to the regular bjj class.

(Original picture by Tuomo Väinämö)

It is undeniable that there are some guys who clearly do not feel comfortable rolling with girls. Some actually shake or get visibly scared when they are paired up with me, no joke!

Usually those guys are beginners who lack technique and try to overpower me; some are more experienced guys who get confused with my speed and strongly try to block my movement. Sometimes it even feels that a guy does not enjoy training with girls as much because he has to "be careful". This happens when guys are not used to roll with girls and when they have to, (even with the best intentions) they can make a sparring session dangerous or horribly boring.

However, I do not restrict myself to roll only with "smaller people" because rolling with "bigger people" helps me work on specific parts of my game, especially submissions. In any case, training with girls is good and necessary since I can actually try techniques and not just "survive the round". 

(Original picture by Tuomo Väinämö)

When I started BJJ it was in some way easy for me to do anything because everyone would just let me do it, but as I got better everyone else started resisting hard against my techniques. It was quite confusing... Wasn't this the arte suave where you don't need to be the strongest? How was I suppossed to try a new sweep in sparring against a guy who is 20kg heavier than me? How was I going to learn to do triangles against a guy whose chest is twice as big as mine? For a long time I was the only girl in bjj class and somehow I got the idea that a lot of techniques were "not for girls" because they just did not make sense against a huge man. 

After I started to train with girls a huge window of possibilities opened for the develoment of my style: there were no "techniques for men"anymore!!! I couldn't think "I'm not strong enough" or "I'm not big enough". Today, the techniques I use with the guys are the same ones that I have practiced already a hundred times with my girls... And I can totally tell if a girl has been training with girls or not: rolling with girls of about your size makes your game much more resourceful and you learn to have better control of your movement.

I'm proud to say that in our team we have a wide range of sizes (from -50kg  to +69kg) and, although I am the second lightest of all, I do not feel that size matters that much. This is because we have made the effort of training together and we have come to develop trust. That is the main reason for me to have a girls' team, my team-mates are my sisters and I know I can trust them with any movement.

I realised that actually the question I ask myself in order to pick a training partner is not based on size or strength, but rather is "do I trust him/her?" 

Ironically, some people think that in a girls-only training we sit around and giggle, or we don't want to face stronger opponents. To those people, I invite them to come and check out our training, and see how absolutely all of the girls who take part in it have higher technical level and motivation than the ones who do not come. 

And in any case, girls compete against other girls. Isn't is obvious that we should train with girls for that? I have won matches against girls that probably were technically better than me but my experience rolling with girls every day was the decisive factor.

And on top of all these reasons, I cannot imagine a better inspiration when training BJJ than having an incredibly successful female coach driving your team!

Especially if she is as tiny as a shoe, probably the tiniest World Champion ever :) Yeah, when Outi Järvilehto is your coach you just won't allow yourself a single excuse and you can only believe you are the luckiest potato in the world! :D

(Original picture by William Burkhardt)

In my next post I will write about other female teams in Funland, Finnish female fighters who are successful and inspirational, and how they all make possible a female bjj community!!! :)


-Latifah