Hi Sinity

In my gym the smallest guys are around 165 lbs - 75 kg. I'm 54 kg so I definitely feel an inability to show them the same power they face from each other. Where I'm from we often get people from other clubs to visit for sparring and then occasionally I'll get paired up with a guy my own weight which I really enjoy because he actually moves when I hit his body with my full body weight - rather than me bouncing off.

Sometimes I'll inflict a blood nose or a black eye on the guys my height but most of the time I'm struggling to get in against the taller ones. I also think it's a bit cheeky of me to unload too many hard ones knowing that if they gave me 100 % back I'd get KOed.

One thing I have noticed about some gyms which don't like women sparring is that they are less safety conscious. They are less able to teach defence tactics as well as say someone like Scrap - and as a consequence they think it's all about being a tough guy with a hard noggin.

If that is what your past gym was like then you are better off changing gyms anyway. I once trained at a kickboxing gym like this and when I was eventually allowed to spar I always went home with headaches. I didn't think much of it at the time because I was so thrilled to be sparring. Now I rarely get headaches from sparring even though we hit just as hard because the standard to which my current coaches teach defence is much higher.

Perhaps being a girl can be a sort of screening system for dodgy coaches in some cases