Finding a match: One of the challenges in jiu jitsu is finding training partners with whom you have a good physical match and feel that you can move well together to learn and perfect the movement skills that will create progress in the sport. Imagine you entered a dojo where every single person was a massively muscular and strong three hundred and fifty pounds of athletic power . You are an average sized man. Learning would be a very difficult thing. In live sparring everyone would crush you and you would have a hard time practicing and perfecting the moves in such an environment- even avoiding injury would be a challenge. This is more or less the situation that most females and young pre-teens and teenagers often find themselves in. Their partners are so much bigger and stronger that they either don't apply strength at all out of politeness and concern (which makes for rather hollow training) or they go too rough and overwhelm the smaller student and crush their confidence, learning curve or body. One of the best matches to get around this problem which is particularly useful in a training room with low numbers of females, is to match young male pre-teens and teenagers with adult woman. This cuts the size and strength discrepancy considerably and makes for much more dynamic, realistic and challenging sparring for both parties. This method has often been used in Japan, where the female Olympic women's team often trains against a local boys high school team as preparation. Of course there are times when this is not necessary- some women have no problem whatsoever going with adult men in regular class and get their best results this way. Nonetheless, this matching of young, smaller males with adult females is often a useful training match to create good progress in many female athletes and young aspiring male athletes. It cures the common problem of size discrepancies creating sparring conditions that are either artificially soft or too rough and suppressive. Here, ten year old Mikey Wilson gets a great workout with Katya at RGA – both athletes get a good sense of unrestrained movement as they practice their strangling skills through a range of positions.
