Photo courtesy of Hywel Teague
Frustration – everyone gets it. But being a small(ish) female in a male dominated sport is just asking for more than your fair share. One of the most common things I get asked when I talk to other women who train is how to deal with bigger, stronger training partners who seem to just want to sit on top of them. Maybe some think that I’m immune to this problem, or that I have some kind of magical solution. The real answer is…. get used to being frustrated. A lot.
That’s easier said than done, though. A few months back, I got a message from someone who was suffering from exactly this. Recently, I dug out the reply I wrote to her, because – well – I needed reminding of my own advice.
I spent pretty much the first six months of training grappling, more or less just getting sat on. Eventually things did start to improve, but even now I still go through periods where I get really frustrated with it all. When I’m trying to drill a new technique on someone twice my strength whose only goal in life seems to be to pull hard enough to detatch my head from my body… or when someone who’s been training three months gets a submission using pure brute force and ignorance, and I just wonder whether I’m wasting my time… or someone won’t take me seriously because he’s 200 lbs and I can’t make anything work on him… or when I’m rolling with guys who just want to sit on me and hold me down for a five minute round…. or if I’ve got a coach calling instructions to me, and I know what I should be doing, but I’m simply not strong enough to do it. I get annoyed when they use too much strength… but I feel patronised if they’re “going easy on me”.
Over the years, there have been many, many occasions when i’ve left the mat wanting to either hide in a corner and cry or to break something. I know exactly how you are feeling – and i know it’s tough. Often, I wonder what I’m actually doing in this sport. But stick with it.But… if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from doing this, it’s that frustration is not just normal, it’s an essential part of the learning process. You’ll keep going through it over and over again… but in between the frustrating bits, you’ll have wonderful moments where it all comes together and you manage to do something that makes you smile for weeks just thinking about it. And then it gets frustrating again. But eventually, you start to realise that the times when you’re experiencing the most frustration, when you feel like you’re wasting your time – they’re the times when you’re actually learning and growing the most. So that’s the time to hang in there, grit your teeth and dig deep… because it WILL all be worth it. When all of a sudden, one day you find yourself able to do something you couldn’t do before… when a new guy walks into the club and you see the look of shock on his face when he gets tapped out by the small female who he thought would be an easy roll… when one of the bigger guys looks at you in confusion because they can’t work out why they can’t get you off them… when you catch a beautiful submission out of nowhere on someone you thought you’d never submit…. when you win that competition, or that title that you’ve been aiming for…. THEN you’ll look back on these times and understand what it was all about.
“the times when you’re experiencing the most frustration, when you feel like you’re wasting your time – they’re the times when you’re actually learning and growing the most. So that’s the time to hang in there, grit your teeth and dig deep… because it WILL all be worth it. When all of a sudden, one day you find yourself able to do something you couldn’t do before”
Printed out and positioned in a visible place at work and home!
d.
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt
I just started mma recently and have found it pretty frustrating so far, for the reason of being the only woman,being sat on etc. I have been pretty frustrated doing a stand up ma for a few years,again fighting men,but the above post was really helpful! I’m going to keep it and remind myself of it when I am finding it tough again! Thanks
Louise
We all struggle with 200lb guys who want to rip your head off… as my last blog can attest to!
Since I wrote this, someone pointed me towards this article from time magazine (http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1717927,00.html) about the “science of experience”:
“Ericsson’s primary finding is that rather than mere experience or even raw talent, it is dedicated, slogging, generally solitary exertion — repeatedly practicing the most difficult physical tasks for an athlete, repeatedly performing new and highly intricate computations for a mathematician — that leads to first-rate performance. And it should never get easier; if it does, you are coasting, not improving. Ericsson calls this exertion “deliberate practice,” by which he means the kind of practice we hate, the kind that leads to failure and hair-pulling and fist-pounding.”
Thanks.
I’m not a woman, but I am a small guy (64kg and 5′7), so often have a similar problem. The “being sat on” experience has continued on since I started BJJ (though that wasn’t all that long ago, in Nov 06), but I think by approaching training with a purely technical mindset, its possible to significantly reduce frustration.
When I go to class, I’m not thinking about ‘winning’ or ‘losing’, only about learning. Because I’m very geeky about taking notes, I know exactly what I want to work on that day, so I’ll focus on a few techniques during sparring. It doesn’t matter if I get tapped along the way (and I often do), as long as I can take away some small positive from the lesson.
That tends to mean that a lot of the time, my focus is working escapes, as being small I’ll normally end up on the bottom. It also means being relatively picky about training partners: I’ll try and restrict my rolling to people who I know aren’t going to simply crush me and go for machine gun taps, even if they’re more than capable of doing so, but instead will stay controlled, take note of what I’m doing, and then offer advice. Its not a good idea to only roll with the same person every lesson, of course, but as I train at a big club, I have the luxury of a lot of choice.
Then again, I’m not much of a competitor (been to a whole one so far, where I lost immediately), and have a fairly passive personality, so that most likely affects my approach to class.
Thanks so much for this. I’m thinking of starting MMA…just went by a school today. I’m far from small (female, 6′, 200lbs, large frame) but I’m still a bit intimidated by the idea of grappling with men. I’ve been through a lot of frustrating processes (mandarin, weight loss, dance) but I’m still a bit hesitant to start MMA. Thanks again!