You’ve probably heard time and time again that men are stronger than women inherently. While that may be the case, there is a whole community of amazing women who practice martial arts, who have shown that they’re stronger than some men. These women prove to the world that they are strong warriors, and their gender and sex have nothing to do with it.

While women don’t need a specific reason to start martial arts lessons, many women pick up the sport after becoming interested in learning self-defense skills. It’s no surprise that in a world where some men think that women are weaker, those men think they can attack and abuse “helpless” women. And because these embedded stereotypes don’t seem to be changing any time soon, women have taken it upon themselves to learn how to use self-defense in case they come across an attacker.

Early on when women were learning self-defense, classes typically were taught by mimicking real-life situations, teaching women how to stop an attack or fight back without getting injured. However, just like the U.S. servicemen who were introduced to Karate while stationed in Japan during WWII, people realized that martial arts are an amazing form of combat training.