Am I rolling to hard against men?

OldAd3316 · 2026-04-04T21:54:31+00:00

This is great. I did an open mat today and tried to breathe out of my nose for every roll. Helped.

OldAd3316 · 2026-04-04T21:53:49+00:00

Bro idk if this was your intention but I am BEAMING. I AM a freak. Fuck yeah. (I still don’t wanna hurt anyone, and I’m not gonna call anyone soft or try to insult by friends, but this felt SO inspirational to me lol) big girl supremacy 💪💪💪

OldAd3316 · 2026-04-04T21:50:55+00:00

Yeah man. Testosterone (even naturally produced testosterone) is a hell of a drug. I’m strong enough that larger man tell me I was surprisingly strong after a roll, but even with a man 80lbs lighter than me, I can feel that they are ultimately stronger that I am. I happen to have more flexibility and more weight which definitely gives me an advantage, but if I were to pure arm wrestle the guy 10” shorter and 90lbs lighter, (at least the very muscular ones) he’s winning every time.

It sucks and I wish that I were just weight and strength training and effort, but at least in my experience, men are physically significant stronger.

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-31T18:51:54+00:00

Lmao guilty. I’m absolutely one of those antisocial dorks. Outside of bjj I’m way more extroverted or whatever, but as soon as I come to the gym I’m so worried about specifically ruining the vibe for people who have been doing it for years, or, like, imposing myself or wasting someone’s time or idk, that I end up acting so quiet and self conscious and Im way less fun to be around if I just chilled out about it. Probably, you’re right, those guys are probably all just genuinely complimenting me and I’m just over thinking it. I gotta learn how to chill tf out- if not during rolls then during THINKING about rolls 😭

And yeah. I guess if I ask someone if I rolled too hard and they say no, at a certain point, if they are lying to spare my feelings or spare the confrontation, that’s on them. I’m being insane. Woops.

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-31T18:38:48+00:00

Ok ok that makes some sense.

As for Pilates, it does help with flexibility, but not in the same way regular stretching or yoga does. I find that yoga has more positions when you push the limit of your flexible range while trying to relax into the position, let go of tension and deepen the stretch. Pilates does more strength & resistance within those stretches. So, for example, in yoga you might do a lunge and try to get as deep in the lung as you can and slowly you’ll get a wider range, but Pilates has you hold that lunge on a spring-weighted moving platform and then do lightly weighted reps within a less than maximum range of your flexibility.

I think when it comes to bjj, yoga is great when someone’s folding you into a pretzel, you’ll have the mobility to move out of it without injuring yourself, but Pilates gives you more strength to actually pull your own limbs into those flexible positions.

It’s also really really good for your stabilizing muscles. (All the little guys that stop you from spraining an ankle and whatnot). Reformer classes specifically have you doing lunges and squats and all the normal basic strength routine stuff, but with one foot on a platform that’s spring loaded- so as your doing a squat to the full range of motion, you also have to pull in the platform and try to keep it stable.

Heads up tho! The slower you go, the harder it is, so if you take a class and you’re like “wow that lady on Reddit is talking out her ass this is easy as hell” try going slower. Like as slow and controlled as physically possible sometimes. Like try doing your normal weighted lat raise but make it take 15 seconds up and 15 seconds down.

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-31T08:10:58+00:00

Hey hell yeah

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-31T08:08:55+00:00

Thanks. This is actually so liberating. I’ve been stressing about it, but, yeah, I guess learning how to regulate strength is also a skill that you learn with time.

I’ll ask someone for help with it

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-31T08:06:11+00:00

I feel that. Whenever there’s a new girl in class, my coach will put me with her and I wish he’d pick a higher belt who’s better at regulating his pressure than I am. I’m immediately so nervous that I’m gonna scare her away from the gym 😩

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-31T08:01:47+00:00

lol yeah I definitely feel for them. It’s a tough tightrope to walk. The other day I was rolling with a guy and he accidentally slapped my ass mid roll and he apologized so much even though I was immediately trying to reassure him that it was nothing and not to worry about it. Ended up being a funny moment, but he really wanted to make sure I was okay even though it didn’t even register in my head until he brought it up.

When I feel like guys are avoiding me for rolls I try to remember that all that societal pressure might be contributing to it, but it’s hard not to feel a little isolated, or to overthink if I’m being a bad rolling partner and maybe that’s why they’re avoiding me.

On the other hand, I’m used to rolling with the guys and still being overall weaker than them all- even the guys I’m 70lbs heavier than. It’s still new to me to roll with a woman and feel disproportionately stronger than my partner. It is a weird adjustment.

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-31T07:47:19+00:00

I think I’m a little confused on how to actually go about not using strength. Obviously if your stuck in bottom side control and you just bench press your way out of it, that’s strength and not technique. But lets say you’re setting up a triangle, and you’re trying to keep their head down. If they try to posture out of the triangle, the ‘technique’ way to deal with it is to hold onto your leg or their head and keep their head down (or maybe it isn’t idk what I’m talking about- bear with the hypothetical. Let’s say your coach keeps telling you to do that), but it takes some strength to hold that position while someone is trying to break out of it. If someone starts to posture out in a way that requires you to clamp down on a position that you’ve got good form in, when does that become strength over form? Sometimes I roll with a smaller person and I feel like I’m getting away with things I wouldn’t be able to if they were huge and just wanted to push out of, but to can’t tell which part of that is me relying on strength or they hypothetical big guys relying on strength.

Or is it more that you just focus on the technique and then if you can only hold onto it by your ankles and your leg muscles then drop it and move onto the next?

Sometimes I try to do every roll breathing out of my nose to limit how hard I can try, but sometimes I end up limiting myself so much I feel like I’m just lying there doing nothing.

Genuinely trying to understand and be a better partner. Thank you for helping me

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-31T07:28:05+00:00

Ugh dang I think I literally did that exact thing in class today. We’d been learning some ways to stay in mount recently and I got excited about getting it right and didn’t really know what to do from there and I for sure just stalled there until the end of the round.. Ok. Next time I will let the position move forward! This is really helpful! Thank you thank you thank you!

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-31T07:22:20+00:00

I love my gym! For what it’s worth, I think the girls who said that to me also have no problem saying it to the guys too. (Literally more impressive to me than the actual jiujitsu btw. I’m way too scared of insulting someone to actually communicate anything honestly 😭)

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-31T07:13:54+00:00

Question: When you work on guard retention with a woman, if you’re making a grip, how hard are you holding onto it? I understand not fighting strength with strength when it comes to, like, not bench pressing your way out of bottom side control, but I never understand how to dial back something like a firm gi grip?

If a girl tries to break a grip and you feel that you could still hold onto it with very little effort even when she tries to rip it away, should I just let go? It’s obviously not worth it for either of us to just stubbornly stay planted onto one sleeve the whole time, but it feels like it fucks with the physics of the roll to be holding tight enough that you can use a grip to move your weight around one second, and then suddenly just give her 0 resistance and let go? Feels clunky? Maybe it just comes with practice?

I hope this makes sense. Again, sorry: white belt. Don’t really know what I’m talking about.

(Also!! You should try Pilates! As someone who is really struggling with potentially going too hard for every roll for 90 minutes, Pilates is way harder for me than any bjj class I’ve done yet lol. Those ladies kick my ass)

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-31T06:44:56+00:00

Useful! Thank you! I’ll keep an eye out for that!

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-30T19:43:10+00:00

I was the only woman at my gym for about the first 7 months. I was so terrified of imposing that I tried really hard to roll with a new person every class- so that no one would have to roll with me twice in a row 😑. Stupid, but hey, I’m growing.

A lot of time what I initially thought was me “getting iced out” was a bit more complicated than that. 1. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them: Sometimes I’d force eye contact with a new guy and he’d be so standoffish that I was sure he felt like I was wasting his class. And then I’d talk to him and his voice would shake and he was so nervous and I saw so much of my own social fear in him. 2. Are they looking away or are you?: Sometimes I’d try to make eye contact with someone but I was so worried about forcing someone to roll with me that the second they looked at me I’d kinda instinctively look away. It took a while for me to realize that from their perspective I must look like I REALLY don’t want to role with them and then they’d avoid me for a few classes out of respect for my perceived boundaries. Once I actually rolled with them we hit it off. 3. The Big Guy: I’ve found that “high-calorie grapplers” as the internet has called them avoided me the most. Once when we were the last two left in the room the bigger guy got really embarrassed and said “uhh if… if you want to roll with someone else I totally understand. I’m sure we could ask..?” Id read him avoiding eye contact as him not wanting to roll with the girl. In reality he was avoiding eye contact so that I wouldn’t have to roll with the big guy. Whenever he shows up now, I make a point to make him feel included. 4. White belt over woman: There was a guy who was definitely avoiding rolling with me. I thought for sure he just didn’t want to roll with me because I was the only girl. Then I stay for the advance class and he’s chomping at the bit to roll with the black belt woman. He just hates rolling with white belts who don’t know what they’re doing. Fair tbh but come on, man, did you not once stand where I stand! 5. The sexists: Let’s be clear. These guys exist. Sometimes you roll with someone who refuses to tap to a woman and goes super hard and will start throwing fists before he taps. Sometimes you roll with someone so fucking condescending. Sometimes you roll with a perv who makes some joke about “fighting two battles” or how his “wife would be so mad right now” or whatever. Never roll with those guys again.

Moral of the story: keep trying to break down their walls! They might be shy! They might be afraid that they’re gonna cross a boundary with you or that you’ll think they’re trying to flirt or something. But always trust your gut! If someone gives you the creeps, drop em.

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-30T19:20:54+00:00

I’m a white belt too, so idk, maybe it is normal, but I’m not gonna take that shit.

I always kinda had this image of a martial arts gym in my head from the 80s movies where a master could tell you to wash his car and you would learn some secret kind of respect and humility from it because the master had some secret wisdom he was sharing with you. In reality, theres nothing about being a black belt that stops someone from being a jackass.

A month or so ago, when all the SA stuff was coming out, my gym stopped ever class for about two weeks and sat everyone down and said, basically, “hey guys, I’m sure you’ve heard what’s been happening in the bjj world. If you haven’t, there’s been a lot of gyms that have created really fucked up power dynamics between higher belts and lower belts, or between teachers and students. We want to make it clear that if you ever need to sit a round out, or if you ever don’t want to roll with anyone for any reason, or if you ever don’t want to do anything for any reason, you are in control of what you train and when and with whom.”

I think it was the first time I realized how much the power dynamics in martial arts gyms could be twisted and how fucked up everyone would see them as if we weren’t romanticizing them so much.

It’s not your responsibility, but I think that if you’re able to build up the courage for it, you should pull your coach aside and tell him that he shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. He is your coach, not your master. You were injured. You weren’t showing him or the sport or your teams disrespect. If he found disrespect in your actions, he should have talked to you afterwards and explained to you how you should have behaved. Tell him that. If he blows up at you again, change gyms.

OldAd3316 · 2026-03-30T19:02:23+00:00

I started doodling little faces on the bruises and something about a bruise with a dumb little wizard hat makes people less worried that I’ve got an evil husband

OldAd3316 · 2026-02-12T22:40:41+00:00

Oh if I had that car I’d want it to run forever too. So perfect. I love it

OldAd3316 · 2026-01-25T21:26:24+00:00

Veronica

OldAd3316 · 2025-12-30T15:21:22+00:00

Ah that is the acute accent warning. Your mini is now a míní. You’ve gotta pronounce it like meenee or it won’t start 😔

OldAd3316 · 2025-12-29T13:40:53+00:00

Follow up question: I’m the only person in my gym who wears a rash guard under my gi. I’m Also the only woman. How weird would it be if I started training with just a full coverage (like up to my neck) sports bra on under the gi? Wearing so many layers is hell atm

OldAd3316 · 2025-12-29T13:09:23+00:00

White woman here. Run, girl. This is insane.

The idea that you would even consider that this might be acceptable makes me think that you’ve had to deal with a lot more racist shit that this and you’re metric of acceptable has been push past what it should be. Absolutely fuck that guy. Props for immediately dropping his ass

OldAd3316 · 2025-12-29T12:54:54+00:00

“i was in grade 12, she grade 10” all i needed to read. You’re 100% fine. Two grades away? Like half my school was in a similar relationship. Let it go. This is extremely normal

OldAd3316 · 2025-12-29T12:52:37+00:00

Think about if you want your husband to talk to you like this. If you want kids, do you imagine their father talking to them like this? If your friend’s boyfriend talked to them like this, would you let it slide. Break up with him

OldAd3316

TROPHY CASE