WAREHAM — For years, Wareham’s Autumn Wood was afraid to travel alone.  

After she started taking a Brazilian jiu jitsu class at Straight Blast Gym East Coast, located in Dartmouth, that fear disappeared.  

Jiu-jitsu is a martial art form that teaches the fundamentals of self-defense. Learning how to protect herself has given her full awareness and autonomy over herself, Wood said.  

Straight Blast Gym East Coast is one of the many world-renowned Straight Blast Gym martial arts training centers around the world, which have produced top professional fighters, such as Conor McGregor. 

In addition to martial arts training, the gym offers women-specific self-defense classes led by fitness instructor Kasey Botelho of Middleboro.  

Botelho also operates her own yoga and personal training business, K Botelho Yoga and Fitness, out of the facility.  

Straight Blast Gym East Coast recently moved from its former Wareham location to a new facility located at 125 Faunce Corner Road in North Dartmouth.  

Whether it is through martial arts or specific self-defense training, women learn skills like how to recognize a potentially dangerous situation, how to protect themselves if someone has pinned them down and the safest way to flee a dangerous situation.  

The classes teach people to decide whether it's best to flee a situation or stay and fight, and give you “the skills to do both,” said jiu-jitsu student Kathy Clark of Marion. 

For Wood, the skills she has learned from jiu-jitsu have made her feel much safer out in the real world, she said. “I can see situations and feel comfortable and I know that I can make choices in a moment. If it's fight or flight, I feel comfortable making a decision.” 

Botelho’s objective is to make Straight Blast Gym East Coast an environment where women can “thrive,” she said.  

She turned to martial arts after being a victim to trauma herself. “I felt the need to overprotect myself, so I delved into the martial arts headfirst,” she stated.  

After being rejected from several martial arts centers where it was made clear to her that she didn’t belong because she was a woman, she started working at Straight Blast Gym East Coast, she said.  

There, she set out to create a program where “women could train as women,” she said.  

“Women are not small men. Women have different needs, different bodies,” said Botehlo.  

Through her self-defense classes, Botelho said, “I’m trying to tell women: ‘Hey, you can come here. It’s safe. You can learn the skills you need and together we can build these bonds. We’re all stronger together.”  

The biggest obstacle for women to overcome is “their self-consciousness,” she noted. But once they can overcome that, they’re hooked.  

On that mat, students are put in all sorts of positions that require them to get up close and personal with each other.  

“There’s a little bit to get over when you’re on top of each other, but it all goes away,” said Clark.  

Self-defense is a skill one can learn at any age, and Kasey Botelho’s mother, Mimi, is a perfect example. She is a student in her daughter’s self-defense class. A seventy-nine-year-old mother of four girls, Mimi has always made a priority of being active “to set an example for my daughters,” she said.    

As to whether she believes self-defense is something more women should learn, she had a simple answer: “absolutely.”

What her female students take away from class has a huge impact on their lives off the mat, Botelho shared. “They definitely walk taller, [they’re] more confident. They’re more vocal. They go out into the world and they want to share what it is here and bring people in.”  

“They’re happier at home. They eat better, they sleep better.” Acquiring these abilities makes them want to improve on all facets of their life, she noted.