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Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Women's Self-Defense/Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Class

We had our first Women's Self Defense Class last night at Fabio's and I think things went pretty well! Including me, there were seven girls. Three of us have been coming regularly to Fabio's, the other four were new to bjj.

I had SO much fun teaching the class. We went through the three basic submissions that are always shown on the first day of class at our school: an armbar from mount, a kimura from mount and an RNC. But, because this is a class focused on defense, I also showed a hip-out mount escape during warm-ups. When they were learning to hip out, I showed them one of the ways the hip out was used--doing your basic hi-out mount escape. I had planned on going over the mount position in more detail, but I cut that because I didn't want to overload them with too much.

Since it was a smallish class, we were able to go over a lot of the details with all the positions and still have enough time for 4 grapples for each person. To my surprise, three of the four girls that I grappled tried to use the hip out escape during grappling. I had barely touched on it during warm-ups because it was not one of the main techniques for the night, but I was happy to see that they were all paying attention. They also went for armbars and the kimura. A few of them went for the rnc as well.

Seeing them trying the things they had just learned during class was great because it means they understood the basic concepts. They were all willing to be the aggressor during the grapples and weren't afraid to try things. One of the guys at Fabio's is calling the girl's class "Bear Trap Class" because all of us girls are nice and sweet and then when we grapple we turn into...well, less sweet versions of ourselves. If the girls from last night continue like they did, our class will live up to the Bear Trap reputation! Well done, girls!!

I also want to give a shout out to Stephanie and Joyce (A.K.A. Mean Joyce!) for coming and helping out. It made big difference to have a few extra people to help explain the techniques and to make the girls' first grappling experiences safer. You guys rock!!

The only downside of the night was that I was having so much fun that I forgot to take pictures! Doh!

I do have a really cool video of Delilah the Lion Killer--known by the few mortals who call him friend as Josh Hagan--being interviewed by the local news stations. Couldn't figure out how to embed the video in here. It's funny because Josh was more nervous to have to talk in front of the camera than he was stopping a carjacker! He did great, though. My ugly mug is in the back ground in a few places. You'll notice that I am getting tooled by Ben, one of Fabio's black belts. Enjoy!

6 comments:

Jiujitsunista said...

It was a blast! I had so much fun! And you did a really awesome job teaching! Well done my friend, well done!

*standing ovation*

... seriously, I just stood up and clapped for you. =)

Aaron Bair said...

Congrats on your first class! Keep up the good work!
I wish we could try and get some females to grapple, but most women like my wife don't want to grapple with men.

Gina said...

Congratulations on having a successful first class! I think it's funny that you think 7 women is a small class, at our school we would consider that huge, lol. Keep up the good work.

Dev said...

Congrats!!!! that is so awesome! Keep it up!

I would put more stuff with exclamation points, but it's already starting to sound cheesy. :) short version, I'm totally proud of you.

Liam H Wandi said...

It's always an honour and privilidge to teach someone BJJ, more so a brand new student and of course more so a female.

They are in great hands :)

A.D. McClish said...

Aww, thanks you guys!! So far, it has been a lot of fun. And it is helping me a lot. It's amazing how many details I realize are a little fuzzy when I have to think about explaining a technique. It's really forcing me to get down to the little things.