When the Aloha Roll Academy opened up in Lahaina at the beginning of 2018 I was asked if I would like to become the Women’s Jiu Jitsu coach for the academy.
I was honored to be asked of course, but as the only non black belt in the room at the time I felt woefully inexperienced as a potential instructor. Luckily, my coaches had the faith in me that I didn’t have in myself and so they came up with the plan to have one of my main coaches be in each class with me and essentially teach me to teach.
From that day onwards a fire was lit inside of me. I have always been passionate about Women’s Jiu jitsu and self defense and the need to have both co-ed and women’s classes available. I set my mind to turning my nerves and self-doubts into determination to be a good coach and accepting this new challenge in my journey.
The first thing I did was ask my own instructors for advice. Coach Rome’s is a professional teacher and has coached soccer as well as Hawaiian canoe paddling. He had been instrumental in encouraging me to teach the occasional technique up until this point so his words of advice were worth their wight in gold! I also reached out to my previous Women’s Jiu Jitsu coach, Lori. If you are familiar with Sweaty Betties then Lori needs no introduction. To say that she is passionate about women’s jiu jitsu would be putting it mildly. Not only does she organize Brazilian Jiu Jitsu camps with the likes of Penny Tomas, Leticia Ribeiro and Bia Mesquita but she’s also a jiu jitsu badass herself! She is no more than 120lb but when you feel her pressure she feels like she’s 300lb. She had great advice and encouragement and was ultimately the reason for my current teaching style 12 months later.
Secondly, I now study like crazy. I kept my own notebook from the techniques I was learning in my own classes and had a few apps and BJJ books that I would look at occasionally. Now that I teach I want to make sure that if I am showing a technique then I had better know every detail of the technique that I am going to show! I study it, practice it with my own coaches to iron out and creases and only then can I insure that I am teaching it not only correctly but also efficiently too. I felt that it was important to have a cohesive balance of the self defense and the sport jiu jitsu so its been a fun challenge to put those classes together. I feel that my own jiu jitsu has improved vastly by paying attention to the small details as well as overall concepts of techniques. Teaching others certainly teaches me a lot too!
Over the year I have organically started to develop a teaching style. Because I am only 5ft3” and about 120lbs when I usually have to use a different variation of a technique when going against a bigger opponant than someone twice my size and strength may have to. Most of the girls in my class also do the co-ed classes so I started to show techniques the traditional way and then follow it up with a variation of how someone with shorter legs/arms/body may do it. I found that a combo of Lori’s style, techniques that I relay on and the advice of my other training partners really helped.
I’m now a year in and I couldn’t be more proud of my girls! Seeing them get better and better just inspires me to improve also. I try to add more classes to my own training just so that I can learn techniques more efficiently as well as learn how to be a better coach from all of the great coaches that I have at the academy.
I am extremely thankful to my coaches and head coach who encouraged me to do this last year and even more thankful to the women who show up day after day keeping me on my toes and inspiring me to push harder and learn more. Cheers.