{"id":2485,"date":"2013-06-06T15:14:50","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T22:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/?p=2485"},"modified":"2013-06-02T20:54:15","modified_gmt":"2013-06-03T03:54:15","slug":"a-student-perspective-girls-in-martial-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/?p=2485","title":{"rendered":"A Student Perspective: Girls in Martial Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Students are as part of maelstr\u00f8m as the instructors.\u00a0 <\/em>A Student’s Perspective allows the people who make up classes to write about their experience, and give a glimpse into what it’s like to be a practitioner of Filipino Martial Arts – straight from those who are muddling their way through techniques and concepts just like the rest of us!\u00a0 Here, one of our longtime students, Tiffany, write about being a girl in the arts:<\/em><\/p>\n

Starting in a new hobby with a group full of more experienced people is always daunting.\u00a0 Being the minority gender walking into a new situation also has its own unique set of challenges.\u00a0 Imagine, gentlemen, if you will – walking into a dance class (or any kind of class, say knitting) full of women.\u00a0 You’ll always stand<\/em> out for not being the same gender. For the longest time, heading to kali class was like that for me.\u00a0 It’s no secret that men dominate the martial arts scene; after all, societal archetypes dictate that females are calm, peace-loving and nurturing.\u00a0 This lack of women is doubly true for the bladed arts, where the numbers of females are even less.\u00a0\u00a0 I’d jump in happiness and invariably loudly proclaim “you’re a girl!” every time one of my gender showed up.\u00a0\u00a0 At our high point, there was four or five girls in one class.\u00a0 There was almost a couple classes when the gender ratio was fifty fifty.\u00a0 And what a thrill they were – I’d revel in the estrogen levels in the room until some guy slid open those doors and the room became male-dominated once again.<\/p>\n

Once after class, a fellow girl and I listened in silence as the guys talked about Dog Brothers.\u00a0 They talked about fights with other “huge dudes” who outweighed them by fifty pounds, and\u00a0 this macho-ness went on for a while.\u00a0\u00a0 They talked about how much they bench, and the feat of fighting outside their weight class.\u00a0 When we walked out, I said to my friend: “you realize that that’s us every day in class right?”<\/p>\n

Luckily, with our classes in new our new location at Tactix gym, the gender ratio was reversed simply because there were more girls at the club from which to draw students.\u00a0 The main location drew students from word-of-mouth and the googling public.\u00a0 Which turned somehow to be always male.\u00a0 It was strange, at first anyway, to go from one location to the other each week and experience drilling with primarily girls.\u00a0 There was more giggling and more excited girly camaraderie at Tactix – none of that stoic “hey how’s it going” and chin nod that form male relations.\u00a0\u00a0 It was strange, but I realized that I didn’t necessarily like one setting more than the other.\u00a0 The material was the same, and the material was what I was there to learn.<\/p>\n

When you spend any amount of time training each week, the club becomes a home away from home, and the guys I knew there were some of my dearest guy friends.\u00a0 They’re like brothers to me; and would jokingly ask if they needed to beat anybody up for me when I looked upset.\u00a0 Girls would probably comfort and hug, but at the end of the day we all got on with it and hit each other with sticks.<\/p>\n

The gender thing is always there, and remains a largely undiscussed component of my training experience.\u00a0 But the truth is being a girl doesn’t really matter while training.\u00a0 It’s like being short, or having a bum knee.\u00a0 There’s disadvantages and advantages to it.\u00a0 I mean after years of training, I can barely make a stick whistle or do 15 regular push-ups in a row.\u00a0 Don’t mistake me, there are girls with actual upper body strength but it definitely doesn’t come as easily to us.\u00a0 But as our instructors will intone, strategy wins over strength every time.\u00a0 Besides, don’t they said that the weapon is a great equalizer?\u00a0 Sure, being small works for a lot of techniques, and not so well for some others.\u00a0 But it’s like that for every body type, and hardly unique to the female experience.\u00a0 Plus, one instructor has told me that females tend to be less stiff in their movements when picking up new techniques.\u00a0 So while there’s always that awkward moment during training when movements lead to some otherwise-inappropriate body contact, being a girl in martial arts is absolutely a non-issue.<\/p>\n

Once in a while, a guy unused to hitting girls will cringe or pull their shots.\u00a0 But hey, in a real situation, that works for me.<\/p>\n

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Students are as part of maelstr\u00f8m as the instructors.\u00a0 A Student’s Perspective allows the people who make up classes to write about their experience, and give a glimpse into what it’s like to be a practitioner of Filipino Martial Arts – straight from those who are muddling their way through techniques and concepts just like the rest of us!\u00a0 Here, one of our longtime students, Tiffany, write about being a girl in the arts: Starting in a new hobby with a group full of more experienced people is always daunting.\u00a0 Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2486,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2485"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2495,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485\/revisions\/2495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maelstromcore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}