5 Reasons Women Choose Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (In Their Words, Not Mine)

What seven of my students at our Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu academy in Tel Aviv told me when I asked them straight out what BJJ gave them

By: Professor Itay Leibovich | Black Belt | Gracie Jiu Jitsu | May 2026 | ~12 min read

Tuesday night at the Israeli Academy in Tel Aviv. Women's class. Ten students on the mat in their gis, half of them straight from a long day at work, half straight from a day of studying. I am sitting off to the side, watching. Sixteen years I have been teaching jiu jitsu in Tel Aviv and Netanya, I opened this academy, and hundreds of women have come through this group. And it took me a long time to understand something. Too long.

The reason a woman walks into an academy is not the reason she stays.

Ask a woman at her first class why she came, and the answer is almost always the same. Self defense. Being afraid to walk home at night. Wanting to feel safe in a place where she does not. Ask her the same question a year later and you get a completely different answer. Calm. Assertiveness. Family. The freedom to say no without fear. Things no woman is actively shopping for when she signs up for a class, and things she cannot stop talking about once she has found them.

There is something I need to stop and say before I go any further. I am a man. Most coaches in this sport are men, most of the content about "BJJ for women" online is written by men, and I can read every study I want and still not really know what a woman feels walking down a street at night. I coach my students, I watch them progress, I know exactly why the system works from a technical standpoint. But knowing from the inside how it feels, I do not know and never will. The last time I felt physically weaker than someone else I was 13 years old.

So instead of writing a blog where I explain to you what jiu jitsu does for women, I sat down with seven of my students and asked them one question. What did jiu jitsu give you? I have the recordings. I have the answers in front of me. This blog is the five reasons that came out of what they said. On the mat they are just training. Here, they are the voice. Their personal stories stay with me. Their words I am giving to you.

Reason 1: The confidence to walk home alone at night

This one is first because it is first chronologically, and because it is the obvious one. A woman walking into the academy for her first class is here for this reason in about 90% of cases. Before I explain what jiu jitsu does to that feeling, I want to talk about the place a woman is coming from.

A woman walking down a street in the evening is not moving through the world the way a man is. She does not need to read a police report to know it, because she lives it. Walking home from a cafe at eleven at night is not just a walk. It is a running risk assessment that most men have never had to run. Which street? Which side of it? Who is that behind me? Phone in the pocket or in the hand? Keys in the bag or between the fingers? Most of the men I know have no idea that this runs in a woman's head every single evening. A few years ago I read a post on Secret Tel Aviv saying that we men should not walk behind women on the street at night. That we should cross to the other side or speed up and pass them. I bristled at it, inwardly and out loud. Why should I, a man who would never hurt a woman, who has spent a decade actively supporting women, have to treat myself as a potential attacker? Why do I have to prove I have a sister? (I do.) Today, after MeToo and after everything that has come out since, I am still not comfortable with the idea held by some women that every man is a potential attacker until proven otherwise. It is an extreme position, but it is a necessary one to make the point land. Today I understand a little better what is happening in that situation, the one that goes over my head, or used to. For the woman walking in front, the one who has learned what harassment feels like, it can be genuinely frightening. And that fear usually comes from one place. Helplessness. Not being able to do anything. Not believing in yourself, and assuming that if something happens you will be a victim of the situation with no ability to respond. That is why self defense for women is not a two-day course where somebody teaches you three strikes to the eyes and one to the groin. It is a long process of building a body that knows what to do, a mind that knows the body knows, and a nervous system that actually feels safe. Without the second the first does not work, and without the third the whole thing is incomplete.

The reason Gracie Jiu Jitsu works for a woman specifically is purely technical. The system was developed in 1925 by Helio Gracie, a Brazilian who weighed 60 kilos and stood 1.65 metres tall. Helio was not big. Helio was not strong. He took the Japanese jiu jitsu of his teacher, Mitsuyo Maeda, and changed it until it worked for somebody built like him. Every lever in Gracie Jiu Jitsu, every angle, every technique, sits on one assumption. Assume your opponent is bigger, heavier, stronger and more aggressive than you. Rorion Gracie, Helio's eldest son, still puts it in the simplest possible terms: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is the great equalizer. That is not a marketing line. That is the DNA of the system.

As a black belt I am completely fine with being schooled. What I am allergic to is mansplaining. So beyond what I know from decades in this field, I am not a woman. When I want to know what women think, I ask them. So I asked, and this is what I heard.

Gila said something short and exact:

"Jiu jitsu gave me the confidence to go on dates without being afraid."

Stop on that sentence for a second. Dates. The place where a woman is supposed to be open, relaxed, present in herself. Gila used to be on guard. Now she is not.

Maya took it a step further:

"The main thing jiu jitsu gave me is that when I walk down the street I am no longer worried that somebody could attack me. That I used to walk around with this feeling that someone would come at me, that someone would test me. And Itay's academy gave me the feeling that it does not matter that I am a woman."

And Shuli closed all three of them with one sentence that I think is the most precise wording for this whole reason:

"As a woman I feel that the techniques in jiu jitsu give me a sense of security, even against someone stronger and bigger than me." Even against someone stronger and bigger than me. That is the whole thing. That is the sentence every woman wants to be able to say about herself and cannot.

The first reason is physical confidence that comes from a thousand repetitions against somebody bigger than you, which over time turns into background software that switches on the moment someone gets too close. Not a declaration. Not a two-day course. A thousand repetitions. A lot of women looking for self defense start by asking about Krav Maga, which makes sense given that in Israel Krav Maga is the default word for anything self-defense related. But Krav Maga was born as a military system for getting soldiers out of trouble fast, and a civilian system for a 30-year-old woman on a Tel Aviv sidewalk needs something else, in my opinion. A system that still works when you have been taken to the ground, when you cannot generate explosive power, when you are in the worse position against the stronger person. That is the system the Gracie family built 100 years ago. And it is still, in my opinion, the most effective self defense there is. Especially for women. A week ago a woman called me from Rehovot. I told her that is a bit far from us and that it matters to train somewhere you can actually get to easily. She said she had heard about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and had googled BJJ near me, but after digging a little she realised she was specifically looking for Gracie Jiu Jitsu because of the self defense, and that she would rather drive all the way to me in Tel Aviv than go to something close by that does not give her what she is looking for.

There is one more thing I want to say to anyone who has not yet trained BJJ or any other jiu jitsu. A 60 kilo woman cannot beat a 90 kilo man in a contest of strength. Full stop. But a 60 kilo woman with a year on the mat can choke that same man in 12 seconds if she has gotten to the right position. In a proper choke you are not competing against your opponent's entire body weight. You are not trying to beat 90 kilos with 60 kilos. You are using an angle, a lever and two hands against a much smaller weak point. The carotid arteries. That is why technique can do what strength cannot. Not always. Not by magic. But often enough to change the way you move through the world. This is not an action-movie fantasy, it is science. And I see it every day in training. A 60 kilo veteran student rolling with a new 85 kilo guy. He thinks it is going to be easy, and 90 seconds later he is tapping to a choke. Actually, scratch that, it is magic. Magic made of biomechanics and physics. In other words, Gracie Jiu Jitsu.

Reason 2: A place with no judgment

It took me years to understand how much this reason matters to my students, and I am still a little embarrassed that it took me that long. When I asked Shai what jiu jitsu gave her, I was expecting the classic answer. Self defense, confidence, fitness. Instead she said something that is still stuck in my head.

"At the academy it does not matter how I look, how I am dressed, if I came in tired, if I came in sad. There is no judgment. All that matters is that I showed up, I worked, I put up a fight, and I got stronger."

I sat with that sentence for a while. Because when you say "there is no judgment", that is not something you say about a gym, which is possibly the most judgmental room there is. That is something you say about a home.

Think about it for a second. How many places in the life of an adult woman have no judgment in them? Not work. Not family (especially not family). Not the friend group (they judge too, just more gently, and every woman who has read this far knows exactly what I mean). Not social media. Not the street. Almost every room a woman walks into has a look in it that says something about her body, her clothes, what she is doing with her life. That look is not always negative, but it is always there.

On the mat it is not there. A woman in a white, blue or black gi, no makeup, sweating like everybody else, getting armbarred by a senior student exactly like anybody else. There is no point in a class where somebody stops to survey her body. Because everyone is busy with something else, and because the room does not allow it. When a woman is choking you, you do not pause to consider the colour of her eyes. And if you do, you are focused on something irrelevant and you are about to go to sleep.

That atmosphere is something I have been building at the academy from day one. Everybody is equal. On the mat there is no politics. No class system. No socioeconomic gaps. The police officer rolls with the stoner. The lefty with the right-winger. The guy off the production line with the tech CEO. No judgment. That is the red line of this academy, and it is the one thing I genuinely control. Technique will come slowly and gradually, confidence will come with time, the body will get stronger over months, and I cannot promise any of that on day one. The atmosphere I can.

How do I build a room like that? It does not happen by accident. It happens through consistency, day after day, class after class, for sixteen years. When a new student arrives for her first session, I pair her with a senior student. I do not leave her standing alone at the side. When she does not get a technique on the third try, I show it a fourth time without making a thing of it. When she cannot do a standing drill, I adapt the drill. When somebody makes a comment that is out of line (it is rare, but it happens), I stop the class and explain. No comments about how anyone looks. No comments about what anyone is wearing. No laughing at a beginner who does not know yet. Everybody who has trained with me for a few years knows the rules. They are not written down anywhere, but they are the expected norm. Anybody who cannot live by them either leaves or is asked to leave. This is not a democracy, and it is a red line for me. Man or woman, the mat at this academy is meant to be your safe place.

Reason 3: Somewhere to unload the day

This reason surprised me, because it came up with several students without my asking about it. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is not only technique, and that is something I am still learning after two decades in it. Gila said it briefly, and then I noticed I had heard the same word from Hila and from Margo.

"It is a place to go to. To unload the whole day that just happened," Gila said.

"The place to unload," said Hila.

Two of them, the same word. Unload.

People who have never trained a contact sport sometimes struggle to understand why it works specifically in BJJ. The reason is that jiu jitsu demands one hundred percent mental presence. You cannot be in a training session and think about what your boss said to you this morning. You cannot be in a training session and plan dinner in your head. One moment of drifting and somebody has your arm, somebody has your head, and the choke is already on your neck. There is no room for other thoughts. You are here. Now. Only here. Actual zen. Being genuinely 100% present. Or else.

Scientifically, what is happening is a shift of attention away from the prefrontal cortex (the part that plans, worries, overcomplicates) toward the older, reactive brain. Ninety minutes of rolling is ninety minutes in which the brain stops chewing on the day and gets a forced break from its usual worries, and all the tension it has accumulated disperses. That is biology. And that is why a woman leaves training physically tired but mentally light, a feeling you cannot get from running (the head stays free to worry) or from yoga (the intensity is different).

Margo took the idea somewhere else. She did not talk about unloading. She talked about something she calls "hers".

"Jiu jitsu for me is a source of calm, of quiet, a source of strength. Something that is always with me, something that comes with me, whether at work or on the street. Something that gives me energy and confidence. Something that is mine."

"Calm." "Quiet." "Something that is mine." That is not how people usually describe a martial art or any other sport. And yet that is what Margo says, and that is what I hear from other students at the academy in Tel Aviv and in Netanya all the time.

A woman in the 21st century lives inside an endless list of roles. Employee. Professional. Partner. Mother. Daughter. Friend. Every role comes with demands, expectations, obligations. And inside all of that there is an hour and a half, three times a week, of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Tel Aviv where nobody needs anything from her except herself. Ninety minutes where she is not somebody's daughter, not somebody's mother, not somebody's employee, not somebody's boss. She is just herself, on the mat, trying to choke a training partner who happens to be her friend. That is not much. That is everything. Some would say that is the whole point.

Reason 4: Knowing how to say no

This one came from Hadar, and I think she gave me the strongest answer I have heard in my career as a coach.

"Jiu jitsu gave me the freedom to be. It filled me with confidence and a sense of capability, that I am more than what society tells me I am. That I have a feminine strength and that I am capable. That I can say no assertively and without fear. And the best part is that you can learn all that in a place that feels like family."

There are three things in that quote I want to break down.

"The freedom to be." Not "the freedom to defend myself". The freedom to be. Hadar is talking about something deeper than technique. She is talking about what happens to a woman when she discovers that she has a body that works, muscles that function, the ability to take down somebody bigger than her and hold them there for thirty seconds and more. Or to get out from underneath a man who outweighs her by 30 kilos. That changes something about how she understands her own place in the world.

"Say no assertively and without fear." Not hold an opponent in mount. Not finish an armbar. Say no. Assertively. Without fear. Hadar is talking about something that happens to a woman after she learns BJJ that is not necessarily about jiu jitsu at all. It is about what jiu jitsu does to her sense of capability.

And Maya phrased the same idea differently:

"Itay's academy gave me the feeling that it does not matter that I am a woman. You can use the tools you have, and you can use who you are, to deal with anybody in the room."

"Use who you are." Not "despite being a woman". Because you are a woman. With your body, your size, your flexibility, your intelligence. The system is not asking you to become a man. It is asking you to use who you are, exactly as you are.

I have a theory about what is going on here. Once a woman has discovered she can hold down somebody bigger than her for a full minute while he is actively trying to move, she starts asking herself a new question. If I can do that, what else can I do? If I can do that, why exactly am I not telling my boss that my salary is a joke? Why am I not getting up and leaving a first date when the guy is behaving like an idiot? Why am I not telling my parents to stop running my life? Physical confidence is not the destination. It is the foundation for verbal confidence, emotional confidence, and confidence in making decisions. The moment the body knows it is capable, the head starts looking for other places to use that.

And I will tell you exactly where those other places are, and they are not on a training mat. It is the negotiation with your boss. It is the conversation with your partner. It is the decision whether to stay in this job or leave it. Physical confidence is the horse. How you carry yourself in the world is the cart. The order matters, and it is not an accident that it runs that way.

Reason 5: A real family

This one came up with almost every single one of them, and it is the thing I am proudest of as the owner of the Israeli Academy for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Hila said it as directly as it can be said.

"For me the academy is family. It is my fun, it is the place to unload and to be with friends who support me and lift me up whatever state I walk in with."

Hadar used exactly the same word.

"You can learn all that in a place that feels like family."

And Shuli added the explanation.

"The atmosphere at the academy is really, really good. People come to see each other and roll together on the mat, and it comes with a feeling of safety, that we look after one another."

"We look after one another." That is the secret.

Think about it for a second. A woman starting BJJ meets another woman on the mat under conditions that do not exist anywhere else in the modern world. Both in training gis, both without makeup, both under the same physical effort, both in a position of mutual vulnerability, because they are about to get on top of each other and try to choke one another (at a controlled pace, without hurting each other, but genuinely choke). There are no social layers. No question of who pays more tax. No question of who lives in the bigger apartment. There are just two women on a mat, both of whom want to get better, and both of whom know the only route there is through the other one. With the other one. Not against her. Both of them know that for one of them to improve, the other has to be there, working with her, giving real resistance so she can learn what works and what does not.

The friendships that grow out of that kind of interaction are different. They are deep. They are fast. They are real. A woman who has rolled with you dozens of times, who has watched you win and watched you lose, knows things about you that your friends from work will never know after ten years of shared lunches or pilates classes. It is not an accident that a martial arts class becomes the main social world for a lot of women. They are getting something here that you cannot get in a regular gym or in a solo sport.

Hila said something I share. She said she has a dream that one day Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu will be taught in every primary school in Israel. She was not talking about the technique. She was talking about the atmosphere. About the community. About the place with no judgment. If that were the only thing a child took out of primary school, Hila says, it would already be worth everything.

I do not know whether that dream will happen. I do know that in one academy in Tel Aviv, that community exists today. A women's class, plus many more women training alongside the men in the mixed classes. Sixteen years of work, and an atmosphere I protect like the most valuable thing in the building. Because it is. I have not yet reached my goal of a 50/50 ratio at the academy, but the number of women training here is the thing I am proudest of.

In the end, most of them do not stay for the reason they came

Five reasons. Seven women. And at the end of all of it, if I had to sum up what I learned from those conversations, it goes like this:

They do not know it on day one, but most women arrive at a jiu jitsu academy for one reason, usually a search for a women's self defense class in Tel Aviv, or a search for Krav Maga for women, and then stay for five other reasons (at least). I hope this blog helps one or two women who have not walked in yet understand that what is waiting for them on the mat is a great deal more than they expect. And I hope it helps me, as a coach and as an academy owner, to respect the complexity of what my students are getting here. Because they are getting a lot. Far more than I know how to give on my own. Part of it is the system. Part of it is the community. And the most important part they bring to each other, and I am only the one protecting the atmosphere that makes it possible.

If you were looking for a self defense class. If you were looking for BJJ Tel Aviv. Or if you were looking for Krav Maga and ended up here, something in this probably landed. Send a WhatsApp message. No pressure. We will work out together whether the women's class at the academy is right for you. A quick note for anyone reading this in English: our regular classes are taught in Hebrew, but the instructors speak fluent English, a large part of our members are English speakers, and on Saturday nights we run a class taught in English by Philip Paul. Worst case, you go home knowing it is not for you. Best case, you are one of the women who shows up in a blog like this one in two years. And the very best case? Your life is about to change. Just ask Hadar, Hila, Shuli, Gila, Maya, Shai and Margo.

For questions, advice, details and to book a trial class, get in touch on WhatsApp

Tel Aviv: Yitzhak Sadeh 29 | Netanya: HaTzoran 4

www.bjj.org.il

Further reading: Self Defense in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: The Complete Guide for Women | Injury Prevention in Jiu Jitsu | From White Belt to Blue Belt: The BJJ Journey

For details on the women's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and self defense class in Tel Aviv, visit the group page.

Frequently asked questions about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for women

Is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu suitable for women with no previous experience?

Yes, completely. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is one of the most accessible martial arts for beginners, and it requires no fitness base, no flexibility and no previous experience. The system was originally developed by Helio Gracie for people who are not natural athletes, which makes it especially well suited to women. Most of the women at the academy arrive with no martial arts background at all and start from zero at their own pace.

Is there a separate women's class?

The Israeli Academy in Tel Aviv has a dedicated women's class that trains separately. Women are also welcome to join the mixed classes. Every woman chooses the pace that suits her. The women's class makes it easy to start in a comfortable, supportive environment and move gradually into the mixed classes when she feels ready.

Is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu effective for women's self defense?

Yes. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and Gracie Jiu Jitsu in particular, was built from the start on the assumption that the attacker is bigger and stronger than the defender. That makes it especially effective for women. The techniques are based on leverage rather than strength, which allows a woman to deal with an attacker larger than she is. The Gracie Jiu Jitsu self defense curriculum covers real situations such as a standing attack, being grabbed from behind, and ground scenarios.

How long does it take to see results?

Results are noticeable within the first few months. Increased confidence, better physical condition and a sense of belonging to a community come quickly. Basic technique that is genuinely useful for self defense is acquired within 3 to 6 months of regular training. In jiu jitsu the road matters as much as the destination. Every session adds another layer of capability, confidence and assertiveness that extends beyond the mat into everyday life.