I have recently taught a couple of seminars and I noticed an interesting thing.

I am fortunate in that I almost always have female students in my courses. The majority of the time, it is more than one woman. The largest number in a single class was five. Keep in my mind that I cap my courses at a max of fourteen, to ensure safety and that everyone gets sufficient attention so that I know that are learning and growing, so three to five is a significant amount.

Two classes ago I had one woman attend, and the most recent I had three. None of them had any time in doing any real kind of empty hand combatives training, and certainly none had any grappling experience.

One thing they all had in common (and I find this to be true across the board for almost any female willing to do the kind of training I teach) is that they had an amazing work ethic, and listened intently during the instructional moments. There was no screwing around, no thinking that they already knew what was going on and had an attitude of just “let’s get on with it”, and a concentrated focus on getting better.

One other thing they had in common was a tendency to put their efforts and performance down. “I just can’t get this” was an often repeated phrase, right after I just watched them perform perfectly and usually against heavy resistance and pressure from their usually larger training partners. All of them would keep insisting that they just were not any good, when the truth was that I needed to spend much more time correcting the male students who actually were getting it wrong rather than any of the women.

I thought about this as I was flying home afterwards. My conclusion as to why this kept happening was not a particular happy one. I think why this is endemic is because on the whole, those of us who formally and regularly teach self-defense, whether it be firearms or H2H have caused it. We have either directly or indirectly, through specific action or lack of appropriate action, have made women in general feel that they are inferior to men’s performances when it comes to combat. And that sucks.

The fact is that everyone, male or female, will have unique aspects to their performance, and the only judge of whether it is good or bad is if they are better than they were from the day before. That is it. Nothing else matters. It does not matter if they get to be the best person in the class, or the best person that has ever stepped in a self-defense course – the only metric that matters is if they as individuals are better than they were before they came to the class. Anything else is just fantasy camp. Implying that after two days of training anyone will suddenly become John Wick regardless of their starting point is ethically bankrupt. The focus should be on start training, and be better incrementally better each day.

So we as instructors need to emphasize that, and make sure that each student is focused on getting better and becoming more capable. And as an exclamation to that, I will say this to anyone reading this who contemplates taking any training course anywhere. If you are in the class, and you feel the instructor is just denigrating you and your performance and not giving you reasonable, workable input into how to correct any deficiencies, than leave, immediately and with as much speed as you can muster. It is not any teacher’s job to criticize any student. It is our job to make them better. Sometimes we need to speak about negatives or failures, but never, ever should those negatives or failures be tied to an individual’s worth as a person. If an instructor has such a hard time getting someone better, than they have zero business being an instructor. It is irrelevant if the student is male, female, young, old, physically fit, or physically broken in some way; a truly diligent instructor will get them better than they were.

Being a teacher is hard. If you are not willing to undertake the calling knowing that, and you think it is about your own ego stroking, or about getting rich, or famous, then you are not, and never will be a teacher. Find something else to get rich and famous at, because helping other people become more than they are is not in the cards for you.

When people look at me now, they tend to see essentially a finished product (not that I am done working on myself mind you – just that there is a level of performance I have achieved) especially when it comes to Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. What they don’t see is the blood, sweat, tears, energy, time, and money I put in to get here.Whenever I talk about people trying to start training in any kind of H2H fighting methodology, there is immediate pushback along the lines of “that’s easy for you because you do this for a living and have natural gifts and don’t have to deal with physical limitations that make it hard for me”. I chuckle, usually out loud, because that is so patently ridiculous that it can only be met with laughter.

First of all, I DO NOT do this for a living. Teaching and training is an avocation, not a vocation. I have a Monday through Friday, 8:30AM to 5:30PM job, and have done this since the day I left college some 35 years ago. I have also been happily married or in a relationship with my wife for more than 31 of those years, and have two children that I have raised for the last 30. I don’t have copious free time, nor have I ever had such. I have had to find the time to train, and have had to give up other things to do so. I watch little TV (most of the shows that get the office water cooler talk I have never seen like the Sopranos, Breaking Bad, True Detective, etc), and stopped doing similar minor amusements. I do things with my family, I read, or I teach and train. To do something important means to sacrifice things that stand in the way. And TV, ANY TV, is something that won’t be missed.

And the most laughable aspect of someone insisting this is easy for me is the fact that not one part of my martial journey has been easy. I have no physical gifts at all. I was the kid picked last for dodgeball in PE in school. There has not been a day in my life that I have not suffered from severe asthma. In fact, I have been hospitalized for major attacks multiple times, and have come very close to death twice, once as a toddler and another time only about 6 years ago.In short, nothing has come easy to me. When I started with my BJJ instructor around ’93 or ’94, if you had polled everyone training there, including him, and asked of everyone there who was the least likely to end up a black belt, I would have received all the votes. And yet, 26 years later, not only am I a black belt, but a third degree one, and one that was given by someone who is well known in the jujitsu community to be one of the stingiest of all with promotions. And to top that off, I help run his academy, teach the Fundamental classes, am responsible for making blue belts there, and fill in for him when he is travelling. I also have done okay in competition including being an American National and Pan-Am champion, as well as medaling in major tournaments all over the world, including Brazil and Europe.

So why and how did I get here? As the great Stoic philosophers say, it is good that it does not come easy. Seneca said that “Success comes to the lowly and to the poorly talented, but the special characteristic of a great person is to triumph over the disasters and panics of human life”. In short, you may get lucky, or have some genetic gift and can succeed, but the true victory is the success when the word conspires to stop you. I had everything stacked against me in my jiu-jitsu path, and yet I overcame them. And in doing so, not only do I have the satisfaction of that success; I also can take pride in that I earned it every step of the way.

And here is something I truly believe in my heart of hearts. That triumph, gained through adversity, sticks with you forever. I have it with me, and I can always know that I can succeed, even if it means lots of hard work and time. Most of the best jiujistsu players I have met are the ones who have stuck with it, and that marks them permanently, and enables them to always get better and to keep working, and to not get discouraged or to give up when things get a bit rocky. Persevere, and you will succeed. I know it is hard to see when you are on the road, especially in the early stages. That is why so many people quit BJJ those first two years. The challenge to even understand the art, let alone master it, seems so daunting and vast that it will not be achieved. But believe me, it can be. If I can do it, so can you. Every single one of you reading this, I guarantee it.