Getting Girls to Engage

How do you get girls to engage? No, I am not talking about getting girls to get engaged. I am talking about getting girls to engage in grappling.

We've had good luck getting girls out to the barn and, even better, getting them to keep coming back. But I am finding that it is difficult to get some of them to want to grapple. I've also found the same is true for some of the younger boys we have coming out to the barn.

They sit down on the mat and stare at their opponents, clearly terrified. When they do engage, they are tentative and deferring, not resiting when they are swept and just laying there when someone is in mount or side control. It takes every ounce of self control I have not to start "coaching" them from the sidelines. Usually, they only want to do one or two grapples each class.

I can remember feeling like that when I first started. My first grapple, the teenage guy across from me said, "Attack me." I just stared at him. He was like, "Come on. Attack me. Get into a dominant position." I remember thinking, What the heck is a dominant position?!?!? But it didn't take long for my competitive nature to take over. I was spazzing like a champ in no time. I couldn't get enough grappling.

Some of these girls are different. If they didn't keep coming to class, I would think they didn't like grappling. I never push them to grapple. But I would like to figure out some ways to encourage them to be more aggressive. I know everyone has different personalities. And I have no problem if they want to take things slow. But should I be challenging them more? Or is this one of those things that just takes time?

I know part of it is that they know very few things at this point. All we have taught them so far is what the basic positions are, one main guard pass, the rear naked choke, an armbar from mount and the americana.

That's another thing. I am so tempted to overload them with techniques every class. I think to myself. Oh, we really need to teach them the basics of side control. But wait! They don't know anything about taking the back! And then there's guard. We haven't gone over anything from guard! AHHHH!

For me, training has been going...Ok. I am still not allowed to go inverted because of my neck. And I am still not adapting well to doing other things. I see some glimmers of progress. A random sweep here. A break down of posture there. But it is really slow going and I find myself cheating sometimes and going inverted. Then Fabio gets onto me. "Porra, Allison, I saw you go upside down like five times that round. You need to stop." lol

I noticed the other day that I am starting to pick up some Portuguese. There are a few people at our school who are Brazilian and Fabio talks to them in Portuguese. I was grappling one of those guys and he went for a gi choke on me. I heard him talking behind me in Portuguese and I can't tell you now what he said, but I immediately said, "No, it's ok if he chokes me. That doesn't hurt my neck." Both Fabio and the other guy looked at me. I shrugged. Fabio sighed and said, "You need to be careful. No chokes for now. We'll see how it goes later." lol! Ok, so maybe I'm not actually picking up Portuguese, but I can at least tell what they're talking about sometimes!

Another One Hooked

Last night, we had six girls and Phil (the lone ranger--lol) at my barn doing Jiu-jitsu. Three of them had never done jiu-jitsu before. We would have had three other boys, but one couldn't get gas money and the other two didn't do their chores and weren't allowed to come! (This made me laugh because I am an evil youth pastor).

This is us attempting to be scary. I generally fail at intimidating expressions.



One of the girls who came last night one that I have been trying to get into jiu-jitsu for about six months. I tried everything. Begging. Bribing. Sweet talking. Nothing worked. She said she didn't like closed spaces. I let it go for a while, but when she recently moved in with my husband and I due to some circumstances going on, I picked up my jiu-jitsu nagging right where I left off. I was convinced that if she tried it just once, she would be hooked. Finally, after questioning her further, I found out the real reason why she didn't want to try it.

She had a stepbrother (who I also know) who had trained jiu-jitsu for a couple years. Being an older brother, he frequently tortured her with what he learned. Didn't hurt her, but wrapped her up like a pretzel and kind of bullied her. This kid is well over 200lbs, and the girl is about my height, so she felt helpless and it really bothered her.

When we started doing jiu-jitsu out in the barn, I told her she could come and watch if she wanted, no pressure to practice. I told her if she wanted to try some moves, she could do them with me only if that would make her feel better. So, she came out.

We were waiting for the rest of the group to get there and she asked me if I could show her how to get out of something that her boyfriend does to her that really makes her mad. I said I would try. She told me he gets down (he was in her guard, but she didn't know what guard was) and would pin her arms down and then tickle her. She said he was too strong for her to get off. I have had people do that to me in class on MANY occasions, so I knew several techniques to show her, which I promptly did.

After the very first technique I showed her, she said, "Ok, Allie. I will be doing Jiu-jitsu with you from now on."

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeees!! I knew she would love it! She stayed for the rest of the "class" (I don't know what else to call it) and talked about Jiu-jitsu all night. It was so funny because, afterwards, she came up to me and said, "I don't want to bother you, but do you think I could come out here and learn more than just two days a week?"

Clearly she fails to realize how obsessed I am with Jiu-jitsu. I said absolutely. It would be great practice for me to go through all the basic positions and submissions again. You can never practice those enough.

The other two new girls are hooked too. We started warming up at around 5:30 and the last few stragglers didn't leave until almost 10 at night. It just brings me so much joy to see these girls light up as they realize that they CAN do jiu-jitsu and that it DOES work.

Can't wait for next class on Sunday. :)

Teaching Noah

A few friends of mine came over to the barn tonight to grapple and Noah, my son, was begging to come out with us. I decided to give it a shot. We did some basic warm-ups, drilled and arm-bar from mount and Noah "grappled" with me and with my friend Phil. In all, he was out there for about thirty minutes.

He absolutely LOVED it.

I will say, though, it is hard to explain how to do BJJ moves to a five year old. We had to get really creative. Like, when we were trying to teach him how to hip out, I had to make him pretend like something was chasing him at his feet in order for him to learn to use his feet to push his body backwards. He never quite got the real motion of the hip out in drilling, but he did do it randomly when he was grappling with me.

It was really fun. And hilarious. I have a video of Phil trying to teach Noah how to do jumping jacks. Pretty much the entire class went like this. It was awesome. And yes, he is wearing a ninja costume with a whitebelt on it. He doesn't have a gi, but he really wanted to wear something "like mommy's". This was the closest thing we had. lol



He did end up getting it eventually. And he was so excited. It made me happy. :)

Thoughts from Last Week

My life has been stuck on full throttle for the last week, so I neglected to post here. Since I know all three of you that read this blog are just dying to hear what I've been up to (Hey! I can see you smirking at me! Stop it!) I've come up with my Top 5 Jits Thoughts for the Week!

1. The Gym Feels Like My Home Away From Home-- With everything else crazy going on in my life, Fabio's is the one place where I feel like I can go and just completely relax. Well, relax in the I'm-fighting-not-to-get-choked-out sort of way. What I love about being there is that everyone who is there is there to have fun. We can just relax, grapple and laugh. Priceless!

2. Home Away From Home At My Home?-- We "christened" the mats in my barn by rolling on them for the first time last week. It was awesome. Me, Stephanie, Phil and his girlfriend Kara, who has been training for a few months now, all grappled. We even went through a mock technique lesson just to get used to teaching. We haven't brought in the newbies yet. We are working on a waiver and trying to work out some insurance issues too. But we think by next week we should be starting with the kids. I'm excited, but still nervous. Also, a guy who had a wrestling school in the same shopping complex as one of my fellow youth pastors is closing his doors and selling his mats. I might get to buy real mats!! We'll see, though.

3. Side to Side Guard-- I went to open mat on Saturday and rolled with PP, a purple belt at our school, who told me that my guard needs some work. I am doing too much back and forth movement and not enough side to side hip movement. If I get more side to side going, I will get a lot more sweeps and will be able to take the back easier. That is my focus for this upcoming week: side to side hipping in guard!!

4. My son who is 5 asked me this week when he was going to be allowed to start training "wa-jit-su". This is not the first time he has asked. A few weeks ago, we asked him what sport he wanted to play this year: football, soccer, basketball? He said "wa-jit-su". I'm kind of torn on the issue for several reasons. Might do a post on that later.

5. I got my MRI for my neck on Tuesday and am STILL waiting to find out the results. Grrrr. Patience is not my forte. I am wanting so bad to be able to roll like normal again. I know, I know...I need to be careful and wait it out. BOOOOO! :)

Pouco Casa de Dor para Iniciantes.

Maybe the title of this post should be "Newbie's Pouco Casa de Dor". My Portuguese sucks. Mainly because I don't speak it. :) But the sentiment is there: Newbie's Little House of Pain.

So, now that the barn is actually starting to look a little bit like a gym, a few of my youth who have never done jiu-jitsu before want to come learn at my house. These particular kids don't come from well off families and can't afford to go to Fabio's. There are also a few youth who used to go to Summerlin but don't have regular transportation to Fabio's and so have quit bjj since Summerlin closed down. They want to come too.

At first, when Phil, Stephanie and I talked about it, I was concerned because I feel that I am still a beginner and not really fit to be teaching. Phil had more confidence in us and said he thought we would do fine teaching the basics.

I think we could teach basic positions and submissions. But my worry is that, since I still get details wrong on some basic moves, I would be worried that I would either leave out important details or teach bad habits. Also, there are a LOT of things I have never even seen before at this point. I have a feeling my answers to a lot of these kids questions would be, "Uhhh...I'm not sure...maybe try this?"

I went to both Fabio and Ben and asked them about it and to my utter shock they were completely supportive of us teaching these kids. In fact, they said it would be good for us and would sharpen our own grappling skills, because it would force us to learn the details better in order to teach them.

Even typing this makes me nervous. To be honest, I don't want to be responsible for teaching the foundational techniques to these kids yet. I would be much happier if I could convince one of the higher belts at the school to come and teach. They would have to teach for free because of the situation--I would be able to pay them a little bit but the kids wouldn't.

I don't know. It's not like we'll be trying to teach flying armbars or anything. If we do teach, we'll start with just positions and control and a few basic submissions. I just don't want to teach them the wrong things....