Blog

I’m embarrassed to admit this. When I walked into my first BJJ class, I really didn’t even know what jiu jitsu was. I stumbled into my jiu jitsu academy on a whim, wanting to try something new. I thought that maybe jiu jitsu was something like karate or kickboxing. Surely, I didn’t imagine that my first day I would be shrimping, drilling take-downs, and  wrapping my legs around some 200lb guy learning how to do a triangle. Until I started training, I never thought of myself as a particularly strong or aggressive person.  I had a friend in school who...

 Over the next few weeks we will be answering questions that affect women in Jiu Jitsu.  This week we will be discussing the ins and outs of training BJJ on your period! If you have any questions you would like answered or think are under-served, please leave a comment! The short answer is YES! You can absolutely train with your period if you want to!  I do and have ever since I started BJJ. I wear a menstrual cup that I love, because it never leaks, it doesn’t feel wet, and I forget that it is there.  Plus it...

Everyday is full of inflection points.  Little forks in the road, opportunities to pivot toward or away from the person you want to be.  When I walked into my first jiu jitsu class, I didn’t know what an important inflection point that day would be for me.  I just thought it was something fun to try, I didn’t even really know quite what is was. But it turns out that, choosing to train jiu jitsu has transformed my life and lead to a cascade of good decisions that continue to make me into the woman I want to be.  But...

When people find out that I train jiu jitsu I am often met with a joking, “wow I’ve got to watch out”, an excited, “That is so cool! I’ve always wanted to do that!” or an approving, “jiu jitsu is so good for women, you need to know how to defend yourself”. While I agree that self defense is an important aclade of BJJ and the reason that many women step on the mat for the first time; there are so many other benefits garnered by women who train.  Jiu Jitsu has radically changed the lives of so many women...