If you are a girl in a gi, a female who does jiu jitsu, you’re missing out if you haven’t already join the Women’s Grappling Network group on Facebook. It is a group for women who train grappling arts to share thoughts, promote open mats, share tournament info, and support […]
It all began with the new girl. She showed up a few months into my BJJ journey, slightly bigger than me and somehow already wearing a matching set of colorful rashguard and spats. I pictured myself patiently teaching her the one move I had learned, giggling at how awkward […]
I was just halfway through the tournament from hell. Earlier that morning I was pumping myself up for victory, knowing this tournament would prepare me for my first super fight the following month. Yet, here I was, losing match after match in my division with my gas tank at […]
Long before starting BJJ, I did karate in a small dojo on the upper west side of Manhattan. My instructor at the time was well known (in karate, anyway) and our Friday night sparring class was where all the champions were- big black belt men with dark eyes, quietly taping […]
The sisterhood. The brotherhood. Our mat family. Any way you put it, jiu jitsu is all about community. Sure, we talk about armbars and triangles and that sick takedown that our professor taught us last week. But when you ask your average jiu jitsu athlete what keeps her coming […]
This global pandemic has left me missing several aspects of my daily life, one of the most prominent among them being jiu-jitsu. Something that has become such a large part of my weekly routine, has left a big hole in the wake of its absence. Jiu-jitsu is not only one […]
The women’s movement in Jiu Jitsu has grown tremendously. We’ve gone from having “a women’s division” to having close to the same divisions as men when it comes to belt, weight and age. There are more and more women’s organizations offering open mats, seminars and camps. More and more academies […]
On October 23, 2016 Girls in Gis (GIG) took a much anticipated bite out of the Big Apple hosting its first event on the east coast. In just 28 hours after opening registration, the event sold out at a record rate filling to capacity with a waiting list of 88. […]