Women's Self-Defense in Tel Aviv: The Guide I Wish Every Woman Would Read

Not another one-off workshop with tips you forget within a week. What actually works when strength is not equal, why Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu of all things, and what the first step looks like.

By: Professor Itay Leibovich | 3rd Degree Black Belt | Gracie Jiu Jitsu | August 2026 | \~12 minute read

"Hi Itay, I got your number from a friend who trains with you. I'm 29 and live alone in Tel Aviv. Two weeks ago someone followed me from the bus stop to my building, and since then I can't stop thinking about it. I have no athletic background and I don't want to learn 'to beat people up'. I just want to stop planning my walking routes around where the people are. Is this something you do?"

I got that message on WhatsApp on a Sunday evening, from a woman I'll call Noa here. I sat with it for a few minutes before answering - not because I didn't know what to say, but because I've answered versions of it so many times in my sixteen years of teaching that I wanted to finally write the answer out in full. The result is this post.

So if you're out there too, searching for women's self defense classes in Tel Aviv, or just turning over the question "what am I supposed to do with this fear" - let's go through it together. Slowly, honestly, and without slogans. We'll talk about what really happens in a physical confrontation, why most of the solutions sold to women don't hold up, what Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu does differently, and what the moment you first walk into a class actually looks like. At the end, you decide.

First, something I need you to hear

Before the techniques, before the comparisons, before everything: the fear Noa described is not paranoia and it is not weakness. It is the realistic calculation of a woman living in a city. Most men I know have never once planned a walking route around street lighting, and most of the women I teach have done it in the past week. That gap is the starting point, and whoever ignores it simply isn't talking to you - he's talking about himself.

And one more thing, because I know the thought is sitting there: "I'm not a violent person, this isn't for me." Excellent. I'm not into violence either, and I've been doing martial arts for 36 years. The goal of self-defense is not to win a street fight. The goal is to have a body that knows what to do when someone else decides for you that there is a confrontation - and peace of mind on all the other days, which are, let's hope, all the days. Those are two completely different goals, and whoever mixes them up is selling you the wrong product.

Ryron Gracie, Helio's grandson and one of the most senior Gracie Jiu-Jitsu instructors in the world, put it in a sentence I keep coming back to:

"Self Defense is not just a set of techniques, it's a state of mind, and it begins with the belief that you are worth defending."

(Ryron Gracie)

Read that again. Not "be tough". Not "don't be afraid". Believe that you are worth defending. Everything starts from that point, and all the rest, chokes included, is technical detail.

Self-defense starts long before anyone touches you

One more truth I need to state before we talk technique, because a coach who only talks to you about the fight itself is doing you a disservice: real self-defense is a pyramid, and the physical-fight floor is the last one - the one you hope never to reach.

The first floor is awareness. Noticing your surroundings, recognizing a situation developing in a bad direction, and leaving it early. That is not fear - it is the exact opposite: fear is fog, awareness is sharp vision. The second floor is boundaries and voice. Standing stable, saying "stay away from me" in a voice that doesn't apologize, not stepping closer "just to avoid making a scene". Most attackers are looking for an easy target, not a challenge, and a woman who signals that she is not an easy target ends a lot of confrontations before they begin. And the third floor, only when there is no other choice, is the body.

So why am I, a Jiu-Jitsu coach, bothering to tell you about the first two floors? Because they are not learned by reading a post - not even this one. They are a direct by-product of the training. A woman who spends every week grappling against real resistance stops panicking at contact, and a woman who doesn't panic sees her surroundings, thinks clearly, and projects exactly the signal that keeps trouble away. That confidence leaks everywhere: into the meeting at work where you finally say your piece, into standing in front of people who are used to being given way. Ask any veteran student what her biggest gain from the mat is - few will say a choke. Most will say something about life off it.

What really happens in a confrontation, and why most advice is worthless

Let's break down the scenario everyone fears but nobody describes accurately. A physical assault on a woman almost never looks like an action-movie scene, two people standing at range trading punches. It looks like the opposite: close, sudden, cramped. A hand that grabs, a pull, a shove against a wall, a bear hug from behind. The attacker is not interested in a fair contest - he is interested in control, so he picks the moment when there is no distance. Many confrontations reach a clinch, a wall or the ground within seconds, simply because that is how human beings fight when there are no rules.

Now look at most of the advice women are given: scream, hold your keys between your fingers, go for the eyes. Some of it is not bad as prevention. But all of it is built on one quiet assumption: that there is distance, and that it will stay. And when that assumption collapses - the moment there is contact - whoever built her entire arsenal on distance is left with nothing. I wrote about this principle at length in the post on boxing versus Jiu-Jitsu, and it is doubly true here: a strike needs mass and distance, and both are exactly what you don't have in the real scenario.

And there is another factor we have to talk about, because it is the most important and the least discussed: adrenaline. In a real confrontation your body is flooded with it within a second, and it does strange things to anyone meeting it for the first time. Hands shake, vision narrows, fine motor skills disappear, and a large share of people simply freeze. That is not a character flaw - it is biology. And the only way the world knows to deal with it is graded exposure: experiencing pressure and contact again and again in a safe environment, until your system stops treating it as the end of the world. Hold on to that point, we'll come back to it shortly, because it is exactly the difference between systems that teach you movements and a system that also trains your nervous system.

And there is one more problem, a subtler one, with one-off workshops. You leave a four-hour self-defense workshop with a wonderful feeling of confidence and three techniques in your head. The problem: a physical skill you haven't drilled hundreds of times, against a real person who is really resisting, does not exist in the moment of truth. It exists in the slideshow. That is not a failure of the workshops - some are excellent as an introduction. It is simply the nature of skill: nobody learns to swim in a one-evening swimming workshop. The body learns from repetition, and from repetition under pressure. Again and again and again.

A system built from the ground up for the smaller, weaker person

And this is where Jiu-Jitsu, or BJJ for short, enters the picture - and why I claim, after 36 years on the mat, that it is the most serious tool a woman has in this field.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was developed by the Gracie family in Brazil around one central problem: what does a person with no strength, size or speed do against someone who has all three. Helio Gracie, one of the central figures in the system's development, was exactly that man - thin and physically weak - and he took the Japanese art his brother Carlos had learned and re-engineered it around three things: leverage, timing and position. Not "be stronger". Be smarter with what you have.

Think about what that means in practice. A joint lock doesn't have to beat the attacker's whole body - it has to beat one joint, and bending a joint against its range of motion works just as well on a 60-kilo person as on a 110-kilo one. A proper choke doesn't depend on how strong your hands are, but on angle and placement. And the entire game of Jiu-Jitsu takes place exactly in the range where the real scenario happens: close, in grips, against the wall, on the ground. The range every other system tries to avoid is our home.

Helio's famous line sums it up better than I can:

"Jiu Jitsu is for the protection of the individual, the older man, the weak, the child, the lady and the young woman from being dominated and hurt by some bum because they don't have the physical attributes to defend themselves."

(Helio Gracie)

Notice who is on that list. Not "the fighter". Not "the athlete". This system was not built for the strong - it was built for everyone the strong assumed was an easy target. That is not a marketing story glued on afterwards; it is the engineering foundation of Jiu-Jitsu itself, and it is why its fit for women is not a gimmick but the default.

And there is one advantage I have to stress, because it is the big difference from anything else you'll find in the martial arts market in Tel Aviv, Netanya or anywhere else: in Jiu-Jitsu we train against full resistance. At the end of every class there is sparring, where your partner genuinely tries to beat you and you genuinely try to beat her, in a safe and controlled environment. It means you don't hope the technique works - you know, because you tested it yesterday on someone resisting with all her strength. Real self-confidence doesn't come from a workshop certificate. It comes from the accumulated evidence of your own body.

And remember the adrenaline from earlier? This is where the circle closes. A woman who has been through hundreds of sparring rounds has already met every sensation of a confrontation - the pressure, someone's weight on top of her, the need to think when it is hard to breathe - in a safe, controlled version. The first time it is overwhelming; the hundredth time it is a regular Tuesday. That is how you train a nervous system: not with a lecture on staying calm, but with a thousand small repetitions of actually staying calm. That is what consistent Jiu-Jitsu training does and no workshop can, simply because it doesn't have the time.

Wait - what about Krav Maga?

A fair question, and you can't write a guide to self-defense in Israel without answering it. Krav Maga is a legitimate and well-regarded Israeli system, built around fast neutralization of a threat, and it includes strikes and attacks on vulnerable points. There are excellent instructors teaching it.

The core difference is not "which one is more real", but how you train and what happens at close range. A strike to a vulnerable point cannot truly be drilled on a partner - it is too dangerous, or, some would say, not effective at all - so a large part of the practice stays simulated. In Jiu-Jitsu, because our tools are control, chokes and joint locks rather than strikes, we can drill them at full intensity on a resisting person, every single class, without anyone getting hurt. On top of that, control gives you something a strike does not: a ladder. You can hold and de-escalate, you can disengage and run, and you can, if there is truly no other choice, escalate. Real life, including its legal side, is very kind to the woman who has options in the middle.

So no, I won't say a bad word about Krav Maga. I will say that if you want a skill that builds in your body over time, gets tested every week against real resistance, and gives you control without turning every confrontation into a bomb - your address is our mat.

What the women's group in Tel Aviv actually looks like, no filters

Now let's bring this down from theory to the floor, because I know what really scares you, and it is not the hypothetical attacker. It is the moment you walk into a room full of strangers and don't know what to do with your hands.

So here is what a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu session looks like in our women's group in Tel Aviv - the largest women's BJJ group in Israel, with women making up 30% of the academy's students. A mat full of training partners, and an age range that will calm you down instantly: students in their early twenties next to managers in their mid-forties and 65-year-old retirees, and even the ones who are certain they're "too old" discover they're really not. Warm-up, technique taught in pairs, drilling, and sparring for whoever is ready - and only when she is ready. The atmosphere is the hardest thing to describe in words and the easiest to feel in one serious visit to the mat. I once asked seven of my students why they stayed, and their answers surprised me too: the confidence was only the beginning - the friendships and the peace of mind were why they stayed.

And allow me to smash a few more worries while we're here. No, you don't need to be in shape before you start - the training builds the fitness, not the other way around, exactly like you don't need perfect Hebrew to start ulpan. No, nobody will throw you into sparring on day one. And yes, there is the clothing question: we train in a Gi, the traditional uniform with the belt, and that is actually an advantage for self-defense, because grips on clothing are exactly what happens when someone grabs you on the street by your jacket or shirt.

On safety, without sugarcoating: Jiu-Jitsu is a contact sport, and like any contact sport it carries a risk of injury. Whoever promises you zero injuries is lying. What I can tell you is that controlled training, responsible partners and tapping in time bring the risk down dramatically, and I wrote a full guide on staying healthy on the mat. In beginners' classes we keep the intensity low and the supervision high.

And if you're wondering why a women's group and not a mixed one, the answer is: both, whichever feels right for you. Some women start in the women's group and after a few months add the mixed classes too, because in the end - and this is part of the point - your self-defense has to work against someone bigger than you as well. Your pace, your choice.

From the couch to the mat: how to take the first step

The first step is a message. Not a commitment, not a membership, not a life decision. One WhatsApp message, we schedule a trial class for you, and you come to see it with your own eyes and feel it with your own body. Bring comfortable workout clothes, water, and your healthy skepticism - it is invited too.

What happens in the first class? I wrote a detailed, minute-by-minute guide about it, but the short version: arrive fifteen minutes early, get to know the place, warm up with everyone, learn your first technique in a pair, and walk out an hour and a half later with two discoveries. The first, that it was fun. Genuine, funny, sweaty fun. The second, that your body is capable of far more than you have been telling yourself.

We are in Tel Aviv at 29 Yitzhak Sadeh St and in Netanya at 4 HaTzoran St, with BJJ groups in Tivon, Haifa, Hadera, Tirat Carmel and Modi'in as well. Classes are taught in Hebrew, but our instructors speak fluent English and a large part of our members are English speakers. On Saturday nights we run a class taught in English by Philip Paul.

Want to check if it's for you? Send me a WhatsApp message and we'll set up a trial class for you. No pressure. My word.

Questions I get from every new student

Do I need to be in shape before I start?

No. It is the most common question and the most clear-cut answer I have. Jiu-Jitsu training builds your fitness gradually, and every drill is scaled to the student's level. Some of my best students arrived with no athletic background at all, and their surprising advantage was that they had no bad habits to dismantle.

How long until I can actually defend myself?

Honest answer: it is not a switch, it is a spectrum. Within a few weeks you will feel a change in your confidence and in how you read situations. A physical skill that holds up under real pressure is built over months of consistent practice. Whoever promises you "self-defense in one workshop" is selling an illusion, and I would rather tell you the truth and watch you genuinely progress.

Is it dangerous? Will I get hit?

In Jiu-Jitsu you don't take punches - there is no striking in training. There is contact, there is grappling, and there is an injury risk like in any contact sport; we won't hide that. Controlled training, responsible partners and tapping in time bring the risk down significantly, and in beginners' classes the intensity is low and the supervision close.

What age can I start at, and what if I'm "too old"?

Our classes are for teens and up, and we have students who started well after 40. Jiu-Jitsu is built on technique rather than athleticism, which makes it unusually forgiving of age. If that thought is stopping you, I wrote a whole post about exactly this myth.

What do I bring and wear to the first class?

Long, comfortable workout clothes you can move in, a bottle of water, and that's it. No jewelry and with trimmed nails - a basic safety rule in contact sports. Don't think about a Gi (training uniform) at this stage; for the first sessions regular workout clothes are perfectly fine, and we'll sort out the rest after you've decided you're staying. Long hair gets tied up, and makeup is best left at home because you are going to sweat - that I promise wholeheartedly.

Do I train only with women, or with men too?

Whatever feels right for you. The women's group is an excellent place to start, and most students later add mixed classes as well, because drilling against someone bigger and heavier than you is exactly the test of the system. There is no stage where anyone forces you - there is a pace that you set.

Bottom line, and what happened with Noa

Let's go back to the message from the top of this post. I answered Noa more or less what you have just read, in a short version. She came to a trial class on a Tuesday, stayed half an hour after training to talk with the other women, and has barely missed a session since. A month ago she told me something worth more than any belt: "I still notice who is walking behind me. But it no longer runs my evening."

That, exactly that, is what I wish for you. Not to become a fighter, but to take back ownership of your own space. This city is yours just as much as anyone else's, and you deserve to walk it with a quiet mind.

The mat is waiting. The message is up to you.

By: Professor Itay Leibovich | 3rd Degree Black Belt | Gracie Jiu Jitsu