I've been training in Brazilian Jujitsu for quite some time and I have yet to find any women in Brazilian Jujitsu. I guess they don't like body contact.
I find that there were a suprising number of women at the U of M BJJ club. It was nice, as it gave me a chance to occasionally roll with people who DIDN'T way twice as much as I did.
I have a friend who does it who's a stunner, and i regularly grapple with her lol Shes got a boy friend, but i reckon i could take him :woo: Thing is, i only find its weird if you think about it, if you just get on with it then it doesn't feel weird.
Wow, I must be lucky, because there are quite a few attractive women at the BJJ place I used to go to. And man, did I feel awkward the first few times one of them had me in their full guard....(For non BJJers, she had her legs wrapped around my waist). But eventually you get your mind out of the gutter and focus on trying to choke her or put her in an arm bar. ...................Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I should rejoin........
I'm most certainly a woman and I've been training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu since Sept 05. I'll be competing in my first tournament this weekend. As for me, I absolutely love BJJ. As for being in well...awkward positions, I don't pay too much attention to how it looks. I'm much too busy trying to avoid being choked, or crushed or having my joints hyperextended. Pain and lack of oxygen and the urgent need to avoid both kind of prevent any sense of embarrassment. Since I'm the only woman in my class, I think some of the men felt a little awkward at first, especially the teenagers. They soon got over it, especially if they tried to be too "nice" to me. I roll hard and aggressively and I'll take any advantage. If a guy plays around with me, he'll end up tapping. A few of the guys refuse to tap, though. I think it's an ego thing. They just can't tap to a woman. This past weekend I choked a guy with my legs so hard that his nose bled but he refused to tap until he lost conciousness. Oh well... Actually, I'm very well accepted in my class. I guess I've passed the "test" as a serious grappler. We all train hard and respect one another and I feel completely comfortable. I do get a kick out of the expressions on the faces of observers, though. It's the folks who watch who seem to be the most embarrassed or surprised or just plain dumbfounded. BTW, I'm a 5 foot 2 inch, 120 pound, red head. And I will have a black belt in BJJ someday!
There's some swimsuit model in my BJJ class and she's the only girl at the place. She's a blue belt and I've never rolled with her. She doesn't come to class often, but when she does come, I don't get a whole lot of good training done and I have very little concentration on what's going on. I can't imagine how well I'd be concentrating if I actually had to roll with her.
Here's a picture i took a while back ago. I think this is the reason why most women don't want to get into Brazilian JJ
with the two other girls in my class, (not bjj but jjj and we do a fair bit of grappling) you learn to pay attention or they'll have you in a head lock or a choke!
You tend to find that the clubs with no women don't get any women, but the ones that have women in them already end up having loads. Its a culture thing. If you have reasonable laid-back blokes then it isn't a problem, and most people don't notice 'embarrassing' positions when they're in the middle of rolling. Plus the more secure men don't go all weird about tapping to a girl. If you had women in your club you wouldn't think about it as much as you do...
i think it depends on the atmosphere of the club. when i did judo everyone there was a guy and most of them were squat, middle aged guys (you know- cliche judoka). the club was about as blokey as it gets. our instructor, a pommy dude, had possibly the foulest mouth ive ever heard (and trust me, growing up in an irish family you hear some fairly poor abuse of the english language) and all of the guys except me were farmers or worked at the refinery. we had a few girls come by showing an interest in joining but none of them stayed long enough to roll. I just could never imagine a woman training at a club where the instructor had curry stains on his gi.
I used to train with women in Tae Kwon Do and I never thought anything about it....well, except for not kicking in their breasts because thats a no no, but in BJJ it's hard not to "think" when your face is between a woman's breasts or when you do a fireman carry where you stick your entire arm between her crotch.
I can actually say that I ran into a woman at my gym that is looking for this particular training. According to her, she is inspired by H. Gracie and knows someone that beat him. This lady is a phenomenal athlete and has overcome all sorts of physical limitations. She is smart, talented, gorgeous, and one hell of a human being. She is absolutely giddy about taking BJJ. Thanks to all the posters here I told here to google for some local schools and information. :Angel:
