Why Women Need to Train With Other Women (It's not the men making us nervous)

Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a male-dominated sport. Women are finding their way onto the mats in greater numbers every year, but walk into most academies and you will still find far more men than women. I was one of those women, and for a long time I wore that as a kind of badge of honour.

I trained with the big guys. I was never afraid. I would cheerfully launch myself at training partners who outweighed me by fifty kilograms or more, and people seemed to find this endlessly impressive. They cheered when I caught someone in a choke. They marvelled when I climbed onto someone's back and refused to let go. I felt tough, capable, fearless.

I was fearless, that is, until I travelled to Abu Dhabi for the World Championships and found myself on the mat surrounded by other women who did jiu-jitsu.

Within about three minutes, I realised something was very wrong with me.

I was nervous. Around women. Doing jiu-jitsu.

It was a different kind of awareness than anything I had felt in a gym full of men. With my male training partners I never thought twice about where they had trained, what their background was, or what they might know that I did not. But standing in that room, I found myself quietly sizing up every woman around me in a way I could not entirely explain. Not superficially, but something more unsettling than that. A low, persistent question running underneath everything: what does she have that I do not know about yet? What am I missing? What is she about to show me?

Then we rolled, and I found out.

These women were faster. More technical. Less interested in muscling through things and more interested in actually doing jiu-jitsu. The tricks I had spent years developing to make my lighter frame feel immovable against heavier men? Useless. Nobody was giving me top position to begin with. The setups that worked reliably on my male training partners did not translate the way I expected. I was slow. I was smashy. I was thoroughly out of my depth.

I got beaten. Badly. Repeatedly.

I had two choices after that trip. I could go back home, return to the comfortable training environment I had built, and keep feeling like a competent grappler inside the bubble where my game worked. Or I could accept an uncomfortable truth: my jiu-jitsu education had a significant gap in it, and that gap was shaped exactly like another woman.

What I really wanted to do was leave and never think about it again. Because I had realised something that took more courage to admit than any match I had ever competed in.

I was afraid of other women on the mats.

I do not fully understand why this happens, but I know with certainty that it is not unique to me. I have spoken to enough women over the years to know that this particular feeling is almost universal. Something in us responds to other women with an immediate, instinctive wariness, a rapid and largely unconscious assessment that does not switch on in the same way around men. It plays out in workplaces and schools and social situations, and it absolutely plays out on the mats.

In competition it is startling. The woman who will cheerfully take on every large man in the gym goes quiet when a female competitor steps onto the mat across from her. The bravado steps aside. The heart rate climbs. Something about a woman opponent lands differently, and it is not because she is more physically imposing.

Men in the gym often mean well when they say things like: "You beat all of us up every day, you are going to do brilliantly when you compete against women." They are being encouraging. They are also, without realising it, missing the point entirely.

Women know other women. We know what another woman is capable of, even before the match begins. We know she has probably had to work twice as hard to earn her place on the mat. We know she is likely technically sharp, highly prepared, and not there to roll around casually. Many women fight with a different kind of intention than their male training partners. They are faster in different ways, more strategic in different ways, and they will expose weaknesses in your game that you did not know existed.

If you train exclusively with men and then compete against women, you are preparing for the wrong room.

So here is what I would encourage you to do, wherever you are in your training: find female training partners and train with them deliberately. Seek out women's open mats. Look for female-only events and seminars. When you visit another academy, find a woman you have never rolled with and ask her for a round. If you are choosing a new gym, look for one with a strong women's programme. If you cannot find those things near you, build them.

Do not sit comfortably in the bubble where your game works. Go to the place where it does not, and learn why.

Training with women changed my jiu-jitsu in ways I am still uncovering years later. Not because it was a pleasant experience at first, but because it was not. The discomfort was the point. That is where the growth was.

If you are going to compete against women, you need to test yourself against women. There is no shortcut around that, and there is no shame in admitting it took courage to figure it out.

Your jiu-jitsu will never be the same after you do.

That is a very good thing.