Elicia Ybarra, a DV survivor and women’s self-defense instructor, shared pointed criticism of mixed martial arts during her appearance on A Little Bit Culty podcast. The Taekwondo black belt explained how MMA amplifies problematic aspects of martial arts culture while discussing her journey from abuse survivor to advocate.
When host Sarah Edmonson asked about choosing martial arts programs for children, Ybarra offered clear guidance: “First, don’t put your kids in MMA. Like, that’s just my opinion as a martial artist, but I do think MMA just kind of brings all of the negative of martial arts and mixes.”
Instead, Ybarra recommends traditional disciplines. “Taekwondo. Jiu-jitsu I love. We’re actually putting my son in jiu-jitsu,” she explained. Her concerns stem from deeper cultural issues within martial arts environments that she experienced firsthand.
Ybarra described how martial arts training can create vulnerability to manipulation. “One of the things about the martial arts industry is that we take these instructors who we don’t really know what their credentials actually are because there’s no real verification for credentials,” she said.
She continued, “And so you take these usually men because the men are the ones who own them and you put them on pedestals where everyone is calling them master and everyone is calling them sir and everyone is bowing to them.”
This power dynamic becomes dangerous when instructors “let the ego get to their head,” according to Ybarra. She identifies warning signs as “the ones that won’t take any type of criticism. The ones that walk with an air of arrogance and not confidence.”
The conditioning begins early. “A lot of times these martial arts instructors are taught that, you know, everyone is going to do what they say. Like if I’m a master and I tell my student to do 25 push-ups, it doesn’t matter why I’m telling him to do 25 push-ups, he will do them,” Ybarra explained.
She connected this dynamic to toxic masculinity, noting that secure men support her work while insecure ones dismiss it. “Men that are really comfortable with themselves and their masculinity tend to really like what I’m doing. They think I’m helping women,” she said. “It’s usually the insecure, you know, toxic masculinity type of feelings that I or type of people that come and are like, ‘Oh, yeah, right. That won’t work.'”
Ybarra deliberately built her brand around pink aesthetics as reclamation. “My whole spiel is all pink, right? My brand is pink and I used to get in trouble for wearing pink all the time. So, like it’s very empowering every time I put on one of my blazers or I wear my pink uniform because I’m able to finally after so many years combine strength and beauty in a way that I feel powerful in and I don’t care what you know the men in the martial arts industry scoff at anymore.”
Her curriculum now emphasizes boundaries and awareness over purely physical techniques, addressing what she sees as fundamental problems in traditional martial arts training that can leave students vulnerable to manipulation both inside and outside the dojo.
