Ever since I attended the Leticia Ribeiro training camp, I have felt driven to unite the women in the Pacific Northwest. On a school by school basis, there aren't a lot of female jiujitsu practitioners.As a region, there's a mass. Last year, I started Grapplin' Gals, which is an unaffiliated women's open mat. When I left my last school, and started
West Seattle Fight & Fitness, Grapplin' Gals came with me. This desire to get more women to train together fueled the beginnings of a PNW Women's Training Camp, run by Professors Miriam Cardoso and Andrea Emmel, both black belt World Champions, along with good friends and amazing technicians Amanda Loewen and Leah Taylor.
What's interesting is that many women do not realize how crucial it is to train with other women. In class, guys almost never train with you at full speed, meaning you never practice with proper resistance... (if guys do go full speed, you will probably end up crushed under some extraneous weight, not very comfortable). Training with women though, especially if you're preparing for competition, takes your game to a completely different level. Techniques that you weren't able to hit on that dude that weighs the same but happens to bench press your body weight you can now hit on someone your size. It's that realization that "oh wait, I do know jujitsu " I went into my first competition as a blue belt (which was really my second competition ever) not knowing what to expect from my opponents. After training with guys for so long, I didn't know that I would get aggressive and strong women coming at me the way they did. It was like being tossed to the wolves, in a sense, or getting Hulk smashed. How did I resolve this? By training more with women...It was from this competition actually that I was lucky to have met Amanda Loewen, one of the most technical women I have trained with.
Erin Herle, founder of
Pulling Guard Zine and current author at GracieMag describes it best in her article, "
Why Women Only Open Mats are Thriving and How they Benefit the Community." Women only events, whether they are training camps or open mats, builds a real camaraderie and sense of belonging. I feel like they also help the retention of female practitioners because let's face it - it's a male dominated art. Women may have a hard time even opening the door to a jiujitsu academy. I remember the first time I opened the door to my first gym, my heart was pounding... as I walked through the academy to find the head instructor I passed by a bunch of sweaty and intimidating guys. I was shown to the women's changing room - a partitioned section smaller than a closet next to the men's changing room, separated by a curtain. I almost left before class even started, to be honest. The more women unite, the more women feel comfortable, and then opportunities for better training present themselves.
In short, it's this want for a sense of belonging among women training jujitsu and want for women to be able to train with other women that sparked the women's training camp happening next month - for more details, check out the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/118076841693592/
