About Chick Jitsu

Chick Jitsu began as a girls only 2-hour class in 2013 which was hosted by myself,  Jepha Mooi.  I structured the class to welcome all ages of women interested in self-defense, fitness, and also, to build a strong community of empowered women.  My mission was to build awareness in women's martial arts in the form of Jiu Jitsu & Muay Thai.  I did this by reaching out to businesses and also organized groups and seminars. I'm also a licensed certified personal trainer studying the relationship between physical & mental wellness with dietary lifestyles. Learning martial arts was an ingredient to research that ended up consuming the mission.  Here is how we began:

I met Lou Zarour in 2018 at a Bjj gym where I was coaching Jiu Jitsu.  Lou brought his daughter to learn Jiu Jitsu. Lexie was 9 years old at the time and a natural athlete. She quickly entered the world of competing. Lexie was winning competition after competition against boys and girls.  

 When Lexie turned 12 years-old she started to enter brackets that were mainly filled with teen boys.  Boys in pre-teen and teen years have a significant biological hormonal advantage in strength over girls. This is unfair and was the main reason that there weren't a lot of girls in the upper divisions. Lexie had much more skill than most of her competitors however, couldn't deal with the brute strength some of the boys had.  Lou hated how unfair this was to his daughter and then presented the idea of a girls only grappling tournament.  

I told him that it would be really tough to pull off because many large, well-known competitions have already tried and failed to successfully run a Girls only event.  We decided to give it a shot our way!

 It started as a dream and a vision and with lots of hard work and dedication we have created Chick jitsu, the first ever female only tournament!