Let’s face it; BJJ is a mainly male sport. However, this does not mean that girls do not train at all. It’s even quite opposite! There are more and more of them, in some clubs there are even dedicated classes only for women. The presence of a woman in training should, therefore, not cause any surprise. BJJ brings together all kinds of people. Gender, age, skin color, etc. doesn’t matter here. We should treat everyone equally. Still, some guys just can’t roll with girls normally. First let’s give the floor to the multiple medalists of IBJJF events, Michael Musumeci. He shared his insights as to what mistakes men make when training with girls, emphasizing the importance of training with women. In his post on Instagram we can read:
Rolling with girls 4 strange male behaviors you should avoid
Underestimation
The fact that women are usually smaller than men is not a reason to underestimate them. Especially in BJJ, where our physical strength, “being big” etc. doesn’t matter that much. Although, some guys think differently. They decide, for example, to spar with a girl to rest, because “she is not a challenge anyway”. Some even go a step further. Here goes a personal story: there was no “free” guy to do the fight, it was only me, girl. The guy graciously agreed to the fight and said that he would not use his hands during it so that we would have an equal chance. We both had blue belts at that time. Ok, I understand that the guy is 20, 30 kilos heavier, but still, such behavior and texts of this type are simply out of place. They are disrespectful and show a lack of respect for me as a person, my skills, etc.
Another story from my backyard: be careful with this disregard, because you can take a good ride on it. Once in my club, a very confident guy appeared, claiming that physical strength, weight, etc. would always win with technique and that BJJ is not a sport for women at all. Confident of his beliefs, he bet with the trainer that during the 5-minute fight he will tap at least once a girl with a brown belt. If he managed to do it, he would get a blue belt, if she would tap him, he would wear a dress for training. She tapped him seven times in five minutes. His 80-kilo against her 58 turned out to be of little importance. We never saw him again after this happening.
Take it out on someone
This point does not only apply to women but also smaller people in general, maybe somehow physically weaker, etc. The point is that many guys with too big ego instead of accepting defeat after losing a fight and thinking about why it happened, etc. take it out on the weaker. Unfortunately, women often fall victim to such, for example, one hundred-frustrated guy after the fight. He did not do well in the fight in his weight, thenhe takes someone smaller and simply overwhelm her or him with his strength and weight.
Ok, someone can say why you roll with such a heavy guy? I understand this argument, but there are also rules like “never refuse to spar” or we just know other people of this weight and know that they are ok. Based on the positive experience we assume that this person will also be cool. Unfortunately, later it turns out differently and we finish crushed by 100 kilos live weight.
Even worse are people who are frustrated generally in life, not just through training. At BJJ, they especially search for physically weaker people to prove how amazing they are. Personal history again: once a guy who generally did average on rolling with people of his weight wanted to show me how amazing he is in a fight. He decided that he would go from one finishing technique to others without restarting the fight. According to him, starting the sparring again after each tap would be a waste of time. Let it not be that only women encounter such situations. The same guy fighting anyone after the injury always attacked the injured place.
“You are so fragile”
On the opposite side of the previous points lies too much worry when exercising with women. This type of guy thinks that women are some extremely delicate creatures that will be damaged even by a gust of wind. When exercising with girls, they are extremely cautious, they ask about everything, didn’t they use too much force, etc. Caring for others is important; such questions can be nice, but not repeated after every move. In addition, these guys are simply paralyzed in the fight against women. They are so afraid of hurting them; they prefer not to do anything and are waiting for a move from a woman. They are completely passive. Such a fight is simply not very developmental and a bit boring. Ok, it’s fun to sometimes practice something on someone who doesn’t resist, but for how long can you do that? We are not really that delicate, you can put at least minimal resistance in sparring with us.
Being a creep
BJJ is a contact sport, even very contact. But it’s not strange until you make it weird. When you throw ambiguous comments or even outright sexual allusions, it starts to get weird. In a sparring situation, such things are simply out of place. BTW generally these types of “pick up lines”, sexist jokes, etc. are currently not accepted. Another thing If you accidentally catch or even touch the girl’s breast or ass during a fight, you don’t have to jump back 5 meters and get red on your face. Such things happen, most of us will not even notice that you touched or caught us “there”. It’s your reaction that makes this situation strange. Even worse than this situation can only be when, for example, you try to control a position, you put your hand on our breast, look us into the eyes and then keep this eye contact. This is totally weird. Please, just don’t do it.
General advice: Roll with women just normally, we don’t require any special treatment. And if something goes wrong, we’ll just tell you.
P.S. The above behavior applies only to a small percentage of the guys in BJJ. Mostly male sparring partners are really okay, nice and respectful. However, if you are a man and while reading this text you realized that you are doing, one of these things, maybe it’s time to rethink your behavior?
