Women should be sparred with the same way you would spar with a man - by training level. You work to their level and a bit beyond to help them grow. To hold way back is as pointless as pounding the tar out of them. No one gets anything from that.

Experience - not gender, race, social class or anything else.

Hi, I'm 20 years old and I'm new here. I was browsing through the forum when this post caught my eye. I started sport ju-jitsu about six months ago and I'm a white belt who's going for yellow belt grading next month. In addition, I am one of the very few girls in my dojo.

I've sparred with guys, but most of the time, it's with the coloured belts rather than the white belts. While they don't hold back too much when I spar with them, e.g. they will not hesitate to throw or sweep me several times in a row, they actually make sure that my breakfalls are somewhat gentle and that I'm perfectly fine before starting again.

In addition, they're always giving me advice like why they do what they do, how I should look fiercer and so on, which I find very helpful. I've learnt a lot from them.

However, with all that said, there was this orange belt guy who refused to attack (punches, kicks and throws; groundwork training was on another day) and only defended himself. After a while, the Sensei switched him to another guy partner who was more willing to attack.

I haven't really sparred properly with a guy in groundwork before, so I can't comment on that.

Bottomline: It's okay to spar with girls in training, with a few modifications here and there like lesser strength. We can take it; that's why we're in the class in the first place, right?

very nicely put celest, welcome to the forums

Thanks!

Hi Celest, welcome to the forum.

Somethig that I have seen in different schools of MA is that woman sem more prepared for sparring in judo/jujutsu/bjj classes than they do in striking arts. This is not to say that in striking arts woman are less prepared for sparring because I happen to be part of a school which has several woman state champions.

But it just seems that woman are far less intimidated by grappling than they are with striking an opponenet. Because of my observations I'm ofthe opinion that woman would benefit far more from a grappling school than from a striking school. Does anyone agree? Or has anone seen similar observations?

Well I've only read a couple pages of this thread, and I'll read some more later, but for now I'll just put in my two cents.

At my sparring class there is no division of gender, size, or experience. It was about 1/2 contact with no hits below the waist, and thin foam hand/foot protectors. Most people kept to manageable opponents, but there is nothing stopping a noobie from getting stomped by the sensei if he so requesed. This being the case, I quickly became accustomed to fighting bigger, stronger, faster guys than myself, and lost more often than not, but it tought me not to hold back (or at least to use minimal necessary restraint.)

There were a few girls in the class, but they rarely fought with guys. But I thought that fighting some of them could benefit both parties. So the first girl I fought was a short, squat blackbelt. I felt a little squeemish at the idea of really going at it, for fear of looking like a bully or a**hole. Well, she stomped me pretty good. The second time I fought a girl who was about the same size I was ruthless and ultimately stopped the match when I winded her with a spinning back kick. Well, she bitched at me for a minute, and then I never saw her in class again. Two girls, two entirely different attitudes.

I would conclude that we can draw no generic conclusions about the combat suitability of the female gender and expect them to hold up.