A GYM OF HER OWN

Posted on | May 22, 2007 | 4 Comments

MARINE WIFE GETS GOING WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH
MONICA SANFORD’S CAMP LEJEUNE CLUB JIU JITSU EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS

By: Rich Bergeron

 

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Monica Sanford is just one of a growing number of women getting involved in mixed martial arts, but instead of being content with taking a few classes, she started her own gym. The wife of a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marines deployed now in Iraq, she has spent her time away from her husband establishing two local North Carolina jiu jitsu gyms with one based at Camp Lejeune and the other in nearby Jacksonville.

While stationed in Hawaii, Sanford and her husband met Relson Gracie and took lessons from him. “From the first lesson, I was hooked,” said Sanford. “He taught me what was called the rape guard position, and it’s perfect for self defense.”

The encounter with one of the famed Gracie clan led Monica to continue practicing the art of jiu jitsu over the following years as she and her husband moved from base to base. “It’s the first thing I do when I move somewhere, find a place to train,” she said. “That’s why I opened my own gym here, because there was no place where the main focus was Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. When I first moved here we had a black belt instructor here, and I took lessons from him, but he left.”

Shortly after moving to Camp Lejeune, the club’s concept grew from a dream to reality, and today there are two thriving locations in the community that is home to 30 to 50,000 Marines. “They all love it,” said Sanford. “BJJ and ground fighting is good to learn as a combat technique and good for them physically. The club is now affiliated with a sixth-degree black belt under Rickson Gracie, Luiz Palhares. We’re affiliated with his school now, and we even have one of his black belts coming to teach tonight.”

MONICA AND LUIZ PALHARES
Not long after her husband deployed for active duty in Fallujah, Iraq for a year, she opened up her business and kept on driving with it until she earned a contract to have a club on base. She now happily reports that both the on and off-base locations are packed every night with students. Needing to keep her mind off her husband’s absence, she explained she figured, “It was either do this or plant a garden.” Rather than produce fresh vegetables, she chose to mold disciplined fighters.

Her aptly named Club Jiu Jitsu now caters to Marines and citizens alike, at all the different levels. Though usually blue and purple belted instructors teach the class, she occasionally has black belts come in to teach when she can find them. There are also guest instructors from the Mixed Martial Arts circuit who lead class every so often. She will have a guest come in soon who is an Olympic hopeful and another to follow who is the head of the Marine Corps boxing team. The Marine Corps wrestling coach already came out to the club to do takedown defense and takedown drills with her students. One of the club’s wrestling coaches is a professional cage fighter, and other local fighters come in to share their knowledge, too. As if all that weren’t enough, there’s even a Muay Thai instructor who comes in every other weekend. “We pretty much run the gamut,” she said. “Though, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is the primary focus.”

At her all-inclusive establishments, she prides herself on attracting people who come to learn all kinds of techniques and shed their egos at the door. She maintains that most of her students come to “share something or learn something” at her gyms.

“The guys love it, and they all think it’s super cool. We try to get good training people in to train them, and even though we’ve all seen it on the UFC shows, and we all know it works, when you actually do it it’s very humbling for some people,” she said. “A lot of people come in and think they can just fight.”

Being a lady in a sport with mostly male participants has never been a real problem for Sanford, who explains she can be girly and glamorous off the mat and then go right back to being a fierce, competitive fighter when playing the role of instructor. “As afar as being a woman, it’s the best workout, and it’s the best for self-defense, because it relies on your positioning on the ground. Women in a fight usually have to fight from the ground, and it’s all about technique,” she said. “But, I can be the biggest girly girl on the side with my silver earrings and pink high heels.”

It helps that Sanford has always been active before embarking on a mission to master martial arts. “I’ve been learning martial arts for about five years now, and before that I did 15 triathlons, I ran marathons, and I was definitely active, but nothing like this at all,” she said. “My husband had been doing it for over eight years, and he got me hooked on Ultimate Fighting and cage fighting, and that was it. Once you’re immersed in it, you get addicted. It’s very addicting, that whole lifestyle, and I’m seeing lots of women get into it. I’m actually trying to bring a fight card to the base, and I want a woman’s fight on the card. It would be the first one on a Marine base.”

She does encounter the occasional sneering male chauvinist while teaching her classes, but she usually sets them straight when she shows them what she can do. “It takes them as long as it takes for me to get down on the mat, show them the technique, and show that it works,” she explained. “I know I have to prove myself, and sometimes I have to go above and beyond to prove myself. When I get on mat and show the techniques, they know it works. You can’t just talk the game, you have to do the game. When I get them in a guillotine in two seconds flat, or in an arm bar in two seconds flat, they know it works.”

She does admit that, like any school, guys come in with the attitude that no girl can teach them anything they don’t already know. Sometimes they even come in and think nobody has any new skills to teach them. Sanford said she often sometimes sees these students with “the ego from Helll” and gets to watch them find out they don’t know all the tricks in the book. “Either I go and show ‘em or one of my guys show ‘em and humble them, and either they exit the building mad and never come back, or they say, ‘I need to learn this stuff,’ and put their egos aside. And it’s mainly people who come in with egos that are the problem,” said Sanford. “I’ve only had a couple in three months, for the most part, and we’ve had over 100 guys come through the doors, out of about fifty thousand type-A Marine type personalities. For them to come in with no egos is awesome, and they’re all great kids.”

MONICA, SOME GUEST FIGHTERS, AND HER TRAINING STAFF
Sanford is happy to see the sport gaining popularity and more women able to gain a foothold as competitors now. “I think it’s gaining credibility that it is effective and it’s safe. It’s great self defense for women, and you can do it and can be girly at the same time,” she said. “There’s a black belt in jiu jitsu I’ve seen named Gazzy Parman, and she’s a total knockout. She’s definitely an inspiration, and she’s both tough and beautiful. As far as the sport gaining recognition, that makes it just awesome, and it’s really taking off and being accepted. I think on the last Showtime card for the Pro-Elite fights, the women were the best fighters on the whole card. They kicked butt, and it was an awesome fight. Afterwards they hugged, made up, and they totally respect each other. Out in the real world girls catfight, but in here it’s a real fight. It’s all about who can you tap out, who can tap you out, then you shake hands and learn something from the other one.”

Still, Sanford warns that those without thick skin need not apply. “If you’re afraid to break a nail or mess up your hair, it’s not for you,” she said. “But, you can still be pretty when you step outside, and most of the guys don’t even recognize me outside the gym when I’m in town.”

Monica sometimes even gets the chance to use the fact that she’s a woman to motivate students to try harder. “When I’m on the mat doing it, I totally enjoy when I am teaching brand new guys who’ve never done it, and their light goes on and they see that it works. If I can tap ‘em out, hold them from submitting me, or put them in positions they’re not used to being in, they see my strength and technique, the light goes on, and they smile and get all humble. They say, ‘I need to learn this,’ and it’s that whole male ego thing. If a guy comes in and gets tapped out by someone smaller, or by a girl, they can’t have their ego get smaller, and they want to learn it,” she explained. “It’s very rewarding, and I’ve had one young marine with me about a year, and he’s grown leaps and bounds in personality and on the mat. I’m also a nurse, so that helps when I’m out with a bunch of 20-30 years olds banging each other around.”

In addition to being a martial arts instructor, Sanford holds a business degree from Hawaii Pacific University and a nursing degree from Johns Hopkins University, maintains a nursing job at a local hospital, and raises two children. “It’s not just a sport for knuckleheads or thugs,” she asserted. “I have a brain in my head, and it’s not like I go out and try to beat up people.” She enjoys being able to both train and run the business, and she’s glad to have the opportunity “to see fighting everyday.” She insists, “It’s a great job.”

As far as competition, she doesn’t see it in the cards, but she still enjoys the practice and won’t completely rule it out. “My signature move, I always try to get, is the arm bar. It takes my entire body to get an arm bar on a big huge guy, but if I’m fighting somebody in my guard, I have to go straight to trying to break their arm,” she said. “I have not competed, but I think I would have if I started a lot sooner. I just don’t think I would heal as fast as some of these young kids, and now that I’m doing this five days a week, I feel old. I may do it. I don’t think I look old or act old, but I feel old. I can’t really say I will never, but I have not to this point.”

Although she does see plenty of older students coming in, she reports that the average age of her classes is about 25 years old. “I have some younger students, and I have doctors and lawyers and privates all the way up to colonels. It’s just a good mix of everybody,” she said. “I took my club to a competition, about eight of my guys, and six won. We’re getting into a little bit of everything, taking road trips with the guys, and going to tournaments and fights.”

MONICA AT ONE OF HER CLASSES
Looking forward, Sanford hopes to be able to expand her Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym empire to the panhandle of Florida where she’d like to retire when her husband does. “My ultimate goal is to open up an MMA gym there with BJJ for kids, adults, and anybody that can come and just really hardcore train,” she said.

She said she does her best to keep some of the older people in her classes up to speed and allow them the glory of tapping out the teenagers and twenty-something “big strapping Marines.” She’s happy to see the sport spanning generations so smoothly. “It’s just awesome to be in the sport and to be part of it like I am. It was a great opportunity when I first came here, and I’m just proud of all my guys, and I do it for those guys. I give them respect, and they give me respect. It goes both ways, and I treat ‘em all like my babies,” she said. “My husband’s been in the Marines for 23 years now, and I respect every single one of ‘em.”

She will always be a serious fan of MMA and can’t wait for what the future of the sport holds. “It’s so damn cool that you can have just total domination and then get up and shake hands,” she said. “Any fight you ever see, it’s about who wants it more, and then each person stands up with total respect for the other person, and that’s just beautiful.”

To find out more about Sanford and Club Jiu Jitsu go to:

CLUB JIU JITSU’S MYSPACE

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