Being the best girl at your gym comes with its advantages but also its disadvantages. It wasn’t until I was on TUF 20 that I really came to appreciate the value of training with women. If you fail against male training partners or have a bad spar you can chalk it up to a size or strength disparity. Having someone your size and skill level helps you push daily and makes you better.
I didn’t appreciate how easy it was to underestimate a female opponent’s skill and strength until I fought Tecia Torres. I had no good barometer of my own abilities as I wasn’t working consistently with women my own size trying 100% in training. But f*** that. I got next.
I moved to San Diego to train at Alliance in 2015 as they had a strong female team and that’s what I needed to be around to improve faster (shoutout to the first girls I got to train with: Bec Rawlings, Jessica Penne, Christine Stanley and Paulina Granados).
