FOR GIRLS, BY GIRLS, ONLY GIRLS...

Girls Club at St. Croix Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is the most fun you will have learning self-defense, getting fit, improving your mental and emotional well-being, and socializing with like-minded women. Jiu-jitsu is a lifetime journey that strengthens confidence, mental fortitude, and physical capabilities. It will simultaneously humble you while also instilling a sense of pride and accomplishment.

This class is for women only. No exceptions. We kick the men out and run the place in private.

The class is led by Coach Felecia “Rooster” Bowers, an incredibly talented instructor and martial artist. She is a federal law enforcement officer, a law enforcement physical tactics instructor, and a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ). She has taught women’s only self-defense seminars for several years and created one of the strongest, and longest running, women’s BJJ classes in the country. Why is she so successful with women’s classes? Because she understands that women learn best when they share the experience with a closely bonded community.

And science agrees.

Studies of women’s self-defense classes find that the group itself is part of the training. Women who learn hard physical skills together tend to learn and perform better because of that shared work (Brecklin & Middendorf, 2014). Research on women’s social ties finds that women often handle stress by connecting with other women, and that those bonds are linked to better physical and psychological health (Bedrov & Gable, 2022). Wellness benefits aside and speaking purely on training, women’s self-defense and martial-arts classes have also been associated with higher confidence and self-efficacy, less self-silencing, and fewer reported assaults at follow-up (Hollander & Cunningham, 2020; Johnson & Cole, 2025).

Wellness. Survival. Harder to harm.

That is Girls Club.

For girls. By girls. Only girls.

Sources

Brecklin, L. R., & Middendorf, R. K. (2014). The group dynamics of women’s self-defense training. Violence Against Women.

Bedrov, A., & Gable, S. L. (2022). Thriving together: The benefits of women’s social ties for physical, psychological and relationship health. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 378(1868), 20210441.

Hollander, J. A., & Cunningham, J. (2020). Empowerment self-defense training in a community population. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 44(2), 187–202.

Johnson, A. M., & Cole, B. S. (2025). Self-defense training to reduce violence against women and girls: An integrative review. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association.