Step 4: Once your legs have cleared the shoulder line of your opponent, re-establish your guard by crossing your ankles behind your opponent’s neck keeping strong inward knee pressure compressing your opponent’s upper arms and shoulders together. Step 3: Continuing to trap your opponent’s forearms, uncross your legs clearing your opponent’s shoulder line with your legs. Step 2: While maintaining inward pressure with your legs keeping your feet crossed on your opponent’s back, you will establish cross grips moving your hands from your opponent’s wrist to the opposite forearm while using downward pressure to simultaneously brake your opponent’s choke attempt while securing control of both of their arms. Step 1: Establish double wrist control helping relieve the pressure of opponent’s open hand choke while simultaneously crossing your legs across the back of your opponent establishing pressure with your knees focused on the ribs of your opponent. To begin the set-up for the Double Arm Bar from your back. That’s just not how it works.” Study the below in detail, where Lila and Dawna walk us through the best escape moves to know in a high-stakes situation.

So even if you are the top-trained kickboxer in the world, I doubt that if anybody were to attack you they would square-up with you. The unfortunate fact is that don’t box, they wrestle. One of the many gifts Jiu-Jitsu gives you is the ability to stay calm and think through the process that you need to go through in a high stress, high intensity, adrenaline fight-or-flight situation. If you’re in the street and a situation arises where someone tries to kidnap or attack your child, what are you going do? Jiu-Jitsu is good for moms who do not want to feel powerless.”ĭawna: “Jiu-Jitsu is the only combat sport you can spar at 100% with people of different sizes and apply the skills you are learning 100% without severely damaging your opponent. …I also want to say that Jiu-Jitsu is good for women who have children. It’s technique, it’s skill, and yeah strength helps for sure, but it’s really about the technique of Jiu-Jitsu and developing body awareness. I am only 5’3”, so I did not imagine this is something I could be good at because I could never be strong enough.

Lila: “All sports and martial arts are great, but Jiu-Jitsu really empowers women. When asked why Jiu-Jitsu can be such a beneficial practice for women, here’s what Lila and Dawna had to say: In our first Guarded post, we’re sharing a few of the most powerful submission techniques to aid you in a worst-case scenario as demonstrated by Brown Belt Lila Smadja and Purple Belt Dawna Gonzales of 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu. We’d love to hear from you about any resources or feedback that you have.īrazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a form of martial arts centered on the idea that a smaller, weaker opponent can successfully defend themselves against a larger, stronger attacker. With the Guarded series we’re going to approach various ways we can put up appropriate boundaries in our mental, emotional and physical lives, culminating with a special article in our summer print issue.ĭarling Media isn’t just about talking to you but it’s our goal to equip you as we talk about real, relevant issues that we each face every day. But we don’t have to stop there or freeze in fear. The truth is, whatever we do, none of us can be sure that we will never be hurt, but in starting this series we want to say that we hear you being a woman today has a lot of difficulties and we can feel vulnerable. That’s why we wanted to start a discussion on some of the ways in which we can (and should) guard ourselves. Any level of fear in these arenas, however - whether we feel just uncertain about our safety or fully and utterly compromised - affects our capacity to function as whole, thriving people. When we feel safe - emotionally, physically and mentally - we can function at our best and step into our lives with full engagement.

Jiu jitsu moves from mount