Women’s Jiu Jitsu at SBG: Empowerment & Community

Half of our Intermediate and Advanced Jiu Jitsu classes, and ALL of our Foundations classes, are conducted in the Gi (the traditional two-piece uniform consisting of a jacket and pants, along with a belt which communicates your rank). The other half of our Intermediate and Advanced Jiu Jitsu classes are conducted in “No Gi” attire, where you will wear a rash guard (a tighter fitting shirt) – either long sleeve or short sleeve – and a pair of board shorts or No Gi Pants (also known as spats) that do not have pockets. The purpose of the tighter fitting attire is for safety, as you do not want you or your teammates smaller extremeties (think fingers, toes, etc) to get snagged in loose fitting clothing causing them to break.

You can wear outside brands, or you can purchase SBG Gear from our in-house stores. In addition, Gi and No Gi classes will be clearly marked so you will know what attire to wear to class.

Of course. Like any sport or physical activity, there’s always a chance to get banged up or injured. At SBG, we have a saying that perfectly sums up our training methodology: ‘Upgrade the software without damaging the hardware.’ In other words, training hard is great, but training rough is stupid. Creating a safe training environment is one of our Core Values, and we pride ourselves on having an extremely low injury rate. In addition, our Coaches will work to ensure that you are paired up with appropriate training partners, especially for our Women Tribe. We understand that sometimes you may be a small female and the only other partner that is available is a large 200lb male… there is really no reason to have these kind of pairs for drilling/training, and some drills may not be possible because of the size discrepancy – so we will step in and swap teammates around so that everyone can SAFELY train and still have a great class. We take every precaution to make sure our students leave class feeling AWESOME, and not hurt.

Do you want to know the biggest determinant in staying healthy and preventing injuries? That would be YOU! If you feel uncomfortable in a training situation – say something (either nicely to your training partner, or to your coach). It’s not rude to let someone know that you are smaller and don’t feel comfortable training with a larger teammate, especially if someone is training out of control. If you come into class with the mindset of training smooth and getting better, and not winning every minute of every practice like it’s the world championships, then you will do just fine.

No, we will never force you to train with men. The majority of our classes have a large contingency of Women that train in them. We also have a Women’s Only Open Mat on Saturdays where you can train with all of your fellow female Tribe Members. However, we have A LOT of amazing male training partners that train very smooth and very safe, so when you are ready we certainly encourage you to train with all genders.

We currently don’t have Female Only Jiu Jitsu classes. Not for lack of females in the Tribe, in fact we have a VERY large female jiu jitsu student base. The majority of the jiu jitsu classes you will find a plethora of female training partners to work with!

We do offer a Female Only Open Mat on Saturdays, and we regularly have Women’s Only Workshops. Our Women’s Tribe also frequently gets together for community building activities and to meet and hang out with other Female Tribe Members. It’s a fantastic and supportive community to be in, so if you are curious about Jiu Jitsu and would like to ask any questions, we are happy to set you up with any of our Female Tribe Members to let them tell you a bit about their experience at SBG!