Gender Balance

Today it was weird at Jiu-Jitsu. Not crazy weird; just a little different.

There were four White Belts guys there. There were also four White Belt girls. The class was exactly gender balanced.

This is unusual. It required every one of the ladies to attend, and for a lot of the guys to be away. Regardless, we were gender balanced.

I am being a little selective in my count. The instructor is male as are both of the Blue Belts who were there to help out, but it's really the White Belt's class.

Martial arts classes almost always have significantly more men than women, and I suspect this is even more true in grappling classes.

My Karate club is pretty balanced. There are ten of us, and four are female.

Neither Jiu-Jitsu nor Karate is better for either gender physically.

In Karate you strive to do the best strikes, kicks, and blocks possible with the body that you have. A big, strong person hitting hard, but with only 75% of their potential is doing less well than a smaller person who hits with less force, but who is performing at 95%.

Jiu-Jitsu is similar. The biggest and strongest people have the hardest time. They are used to generating force through muscle power. In grappling this is a big disadvantage. They are the ones who push too hard when we are rolling around. It just doesn't work. A person with better technique can avoid what the big guy is attempting. The big person then pushes harder, and it still won't work. In no time at all they are exhausted and become easy prey. They have to unlearn their lifelong habits.

In both these martial arts the idea is not to be able to defeat a larger attacker. The way to do this is to work at maximum efficiency.

Efficiency is not a gender determined trait.