ANDEE MIHALKO
BRAZILIAN JIU JITSU INSTRUCTOR
"When AMA Fight Club opened in 2004, I had just had my second daughter. They were advertising adult karate. I had always wanted to learn karate, but it wasn't really a thing kids did where I grew up. As soon as I got clearance from my doctor, I joined the adult karate class. I was 35 years old. Our class was pretty small, but I loved it. I got all the way to brown belt in that class, but then AMA Fight Club started their professional fight team, and they brought in Jamie Cruz to teach Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
The BJJ and Muay Thai classes got too big, and the gym was filled with UFC fighters. Our tiny adult karate class got squeezed out of our mat time. I had to switch over to taking Muay Thai kickboxing and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes instead. It was a difficult transition for me. I don't know how many times I said "I hate this. I suck. I'm never coming back." I probably said that for six months. Eventually things started to click and all of a sudden, you can't wait for the next class!
Time constraints and several ankle injuries eventually led me to drop Muay Thai and focus solely on BJJ. I had three young children at home and it wasn't always easy to get to class but I kept coming. I never got into competing because weekends were busy for us and I had a huge fear of getting injured!
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I honestly never thought about promotion after blue belt. (I really wanted that one!) Jonathan Helwig took over as head instructor right after I got my purple belt. By then, I told myself I was just training for fitness and to be able to protect my family. I never really expected to make it to black belt and I never thought I'd be teaching.
​I got my black belt in August of 2021. It was a huge shock and honor for me. I didn't feel worthy of it. My biggest fear was that Professor Helwig would eventually ask me to teach. I didn't think I knew enough. I didn't think I'd be able to answer students' questions. I had never even competed. How could I teach? I started with covering a few afternoon classes and then we started our Women's Only class.
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Even though I struggled with my confidence in teaching, it was too important to me to let my fear get in the way. There weren't really any women in the program when I first started. It was hard to come up without any training partners my own size. I know this is a huge reason that more women don't come out and try jiu jitsu. I want to grow our women's program at AMA Fight Club and introduce more women to the sport that has changed my life in so many ways!"
