Adele Fornarino is one of the most successful female grapplers in the sport right now, and she recently shared 3 key pieces of advice for men when they are rolling with women. Fornarino was already one of the top competitors in Australia with several titles to her name, but this was the biggest year of her career so far. Not only did she win her weight class at ADCC 2024 but she also won the absolute division, becoming the first female double champion in 17 years. It was a remarkable feat and there really aren’t many people better suited to be giving advice like this than Fornarino.
Her first piece of advice is something that many men and women can relate to, although she’s not wrong that it doesn’t tend to happen more to women unfortunately:
“They shouldn’t stop the roll every 3 seconds to explain something, Just roll! Just do the roll… It’s especially if the girl’s getting something on the guy…”
It’s actually a pretty common cliche in the sport, where people will try to ‘coach’ someone else through a submission that they would likely have gotten anyway. It comes about because they don’t want to ‘lose’ to someone that they might not see as their equal and by reasoning that they helped them get it, they can tell themselves that they didn’t really ‘lose’ at all. The second piece of advice that Adele Fornarino has for men rolling with women is something that’s much more specific to women, although some smaller men will likely resonate with this as well:
“Be aware of the strength discrepancy. Try and be technical, don’t just try and be bigger and stronger. Especially if the girl is better technically than you, try and meet technique with technique.”
There’s a similar thought-process behind this as well, because using the full strength advantage that you might have over someone smaller than you is a relatively easy to way to prevent what they’re doing. Obviously in competition everyone should be using every advantage they can possibly have, but the training room is a place for skill development and the only way that happens is if everyone is attempting to use proper technique. Fornarino’s final piece of advice is more about the outlook on sparring itself:
“Don’t assume that a female’s gonna be a rest round. Don’t go into the round assuming that it’s going to be a rest round.”
Adele Fornarino shared her 3 pieces of advice for men rolling with women in a recent post to the official Instagram account of ATOS BJJ on demand:
