Elisabeth Clay: On Top of the World

The life of a professional Jiu-Jitsu athlete is challenging. From weight cutting to strict diets to rigorous training sessions to weird injuries, Elisabeth Clay knows first hand her life is not easy. None of these challenges compare to her newest adventure: motherhood.

Interview by Charlotte McKinley

Photos provided by Gnarly Sports Nutrition

On March 11, 2023, Clay announced her pregnancy via an Instagram post highlighting her baby bump. Before the world knew, Clay had told her professor and a couple of her female friends at the gym the week before.

“Everybody else found out on Instagram,” Clay said, mentioning that her professor almost spilled the secret when he yelled at one of her training partners not to knee-on-belly her.

Though the pregnancy was a surprise for most people in the Jiu-Jitsu community, Clay’s little boy had been a plan in the making.

“Most people knew we were trying for awhile,” Clay said.

Clay found out she was pregnant in December. Keeping the secret under wraps was difficult, yet doable.

“I still want to do seminars and I want to be able to have my normal training,” Clay said. “People get nervous when someone’s training and they’re pregnant…no one knew in the gym until maybe a week [before] I announced it on Instagram.”

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A post shared by Elisabeth Clay (Moreira) (@elisabethclaybjj)

TRAINING WHILE PREGNANT

Unexpectedly, there was no “hiccup” in training with her partners after she announced her pregnancy.

“It really wasn’t that big of a deal, which I was very thankful for because that was my biggest concern,” Clay said. “If I need to cut down on what I’m doing, I’ll cut down on what I’m doing. I don’t need someone else to be making that decision for me.”

Currently, Clay has not had to drastically limit her training due to her pregnancy. “The big thing for me was adjusting [to] not doing any takedowns because the impact isn’t great,” Clay said.

With takedowns, there is a risk the placenta can separate from the body. As the baby needs the placenta to grow, it is important to protect that. Though she primarily trained with black belts and other higher belts before, she now places a higher importance on having a colored belt as her partner as their movements are more predictable.

“That’s the biggest thing with lower belts,” Clay said. “They do stuff that doesn’t necessarily make sense.”

Though her training did not show noticeable changes, Clay has had some issues with nausea and food aversions. “I had nausea for a week, week-and-a-half, in the first trimester, so it didn’t last very long,” Clay said.

During the beginning of her first trimester, Clay wouldn’t have morning sickness so much as evening sickness which made it challenging to train and keep the baby a secret.

“They have little candies you can take [to help with nausea], and I would take them before training and go train and nobody knew,” Clay said, adding that despite the candies, she was still nauseous during training. “The worst thing was food aversion,” Clay said.

As a person who loves coffee, it was difficult for her to train in the morning with the competitors trying to cut weight and upping their coffee intake.

“They’d be like, ‘do you want to roll,’ and I’d be like, ‘yeah, okay,’ [and] hold my breath,” Clay said. “Half of me is rolling and half of me [wants to] throw up.”

ELISABETH CLAY’S PRO-TIP:
“Make sure you’re hydrated. It’s such a small thing, but it makes a huge difference. Something that helps me is using Gnarly’s Orange Pineapple Hydrate”

JIU JITSU: THE REASON FOR HIS LIFE

Whether the Jiu-Jitsu community will see another phenom hit the mats competitively in the next 10–15 years remains to be seen.

“[Our son will] be in the gym, [he’ll] grow up in the gym, but we’ll see whatever he decides when he’s older,” Clay said.

Regardless, Clay’s son will always have Jiu-Jitsu to thank for bringing his mother and father together.

During the pandemic, Clay met her now-husband Danilo Moreira on the mats. “He’d only been in the U.S. for four months,” Clay said. “He came over for Pans and then obviously Pans got canceled.”

Moreira hails from Piauí, Brazil, but his athletic travels brought him to the U.S. for competitions.

Moreira received his black belt under Luiz Majorzão in 2019 — one year before Clay received her black belt under Osvaldo Moizinho. The two met in Texas where many Jiu-Jitsu athletes gravitated to during the lockdowns. “That was the only place you could get fights,” Clay said. “There were no normal tournaments happening.”

Moreira knew hardly any English when he first met Clay.

“Neither of us liked each other when we met,” Clay said. “We got stuck together drilling.”

Fast forward to August 6, 2023, and the two found themselves vowing to live the rest of their lives together.

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A post shared by Elisabeth Clay (Moreira) (@elisabethclaybjj)

MOTHERHOOD: A NEW ADVENTURE

Through high-stakes tournaments, teaching seminars, athletic endeavors and now the new adventure of raising a son, Clay and Moreira have their work cut out for them.

Though Clay has put a hold on competing during her pregnancy, she still is working with brands such as Gnarly Sports Nutrition and teaching seminars.

“I still feel good teaching,” Clay said. “So as long as people want to book seminars, I’m going to teach them as long as everything stays good.”

ELISABETH CLAY Q&A

JM: Where do you see women’s Jiu-Jitsu growing to?
EC: Hopefully in the next little bit, it’ll finally catch up to two men. I would say [we’re] probably five to 10 years behind it, which I mean, that’s most women’s sports, honestly, just because they’re kind of behind when it started or we’re allowed to do stuff.

I would hope in the next five to 10 years it’ll be at the same level on par — the same amount of people in the same amount of talent in the divisions; like we have very good girls. But I feel like the amount per division is significantly less than the guys. The guys, you could look in almost every division you have, like 10 people that could possibly win the whole thing. And in the women’s, I feel like you could be like, ‘Hey, this is [girl] one, two, three’ and like it’s going to be one of those that is probably going to win it just because the talent pool is just not as as deep which is to be expected.

I think in the next five to 10 years, it should be at the same level, which is an exciting thing.

JM: How would you suggest getting the talent pool to grow deeper? Is that something where it’s needing more women to come in or needing more women to train more? Or is it neither of those?
EC: I think it’s just a time thing. I can’t remember exactly what year, but for a very long time even at IBJJF worlds, brown and black belt women still competed together…The guys had each individual [division] for the belt so I really think it’s just time for it to grow.

We have a lot of very talented lower belts and it’s just a matter of time until they hit Black Belt really nice.

JM: Where do you see the future of Jiu Jitsu in general going?
EC: Hopefully paying more money! It’s growing a lot. Just in passing, a lot of more normal people that don’t train actually know what it is whereas I would say even like two [or] three years ago, it wasn’t as common. You’d go explain it, they’d be like, ‘oh, so like wrestling or MMA?’ and I feel like that’s not as common now with more people knowing what it is. I think that’s good, just becoming a little bit more mainstream.

JM: With it becoming a bit more mainstream, have you seen a change in Jiu Jitsu’s dynamic since you first started?
EC: I would say, like 10–12 years ago, it was more of that, like, you beat the ever living daylights out of the white belts and the blue belts and if they stay, then they’re supposed to be in it. And that’s definitely not the mentality anymore, at least in most schools.

It was kind of the same idea of like if you had it because I was a kid in the adult class. So it was the same [for me]. I got treated worse, like beat up more than like anyone else, because the thought was if I was going to be there I had 110% be able to hang with everything else. I think that’s honestly part of what made me the athlete I am today but it’s definitely not that same mentality. It’s definitely a lot more like people get catered to. I think there’s a happy medium between both. But it’s definitely a lot more chill.

It was definitely a little too much back in the day. But it has gotten a lot more relaxed as far as that goes with it becoming more mainstream.

JM: Do you have any specific words of advice for girls just starting out in Jiu-Jitsu? Especially girls who were your age when you first started.
EC: Honestly, don’t sit back just because you’re a girl. If you want to partner up with the other girl, that’s fine, but you can get yourself acclimated and everything with everybody else that’s around it. It shouldn’t matter [if] it’s a boy. If you like training with that person or you think you’ll like training with that person, go ask that person to train.

Don’t necessarily separate yourself just because you’re like, ‘well, I’m a girl, so I need to be over here and they’re over there, so my training is like two people,’ versus if you just train with people because you like training with them. Regardless of you know, guy or girl. I feel like that’s better. You’ll get more like acclimated into everything and then you’re part of the whole thing instead of just being kind of off in your own little corner.

JM: Would you say that’s the same for teenagers, adults and older women who are just getting started with Jiu-Jitsu?
EC: I think that’s the biggest advice for everything: Don’t pigeonhole yourself. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to train with everybody. There’s plenty of people I don’t train with because I don’t like training with them. Or I don’t feel like it’s good training for me or stuff like that, but I don’t think you should pigeonhole yourself just because you’re a woman. I don’t think that’s beneficial.

You’ll find me you like training with and if it happens to be mostly girls Great. If that happens to be mostly guys, great. The gender itself shouldn’t really matter.

I think if you stick yourself in a corner, you kind of get stuck there because being a female, for the most part, the guys aren’t going to go out of their way to go and grab you unless they know you’re comfortable with it. So you have to be the first one to do it and assert yourself into it, because for the most part, they’re gonna hang back until you do something.

I feel like a lot of girls sit back on the side waiting for one of the guys to kind of pull them over. For the most part, one of the guys isn’t going to [do that.] You have to go out of your way to go and be like, ‘Hey, do you want to roll? Do you want to drill,’ like that type of thing.

JM: What advice do you have for women who are training while pregnant?
EC: Definitely get the okay from whoever you know your doctor, your midwife, whoever you’re going through, and if they’re not okay with it, and you’re very adamant on training if there’s not like a medical reason, you need to find someone that is comfortable with you doing it because you need to have someone that, if it hits a point that it’s no longer safe, they’re going to say something.

You need someone you know looking at it because they have an idea of everything that can go wrong in a pregnancy in general, whether you’re active or not. So you need somebody that you agree with, that you see eye to eye on with it, and then just take it you know, as it goes with your body and see how your body feels.

It’ll change every single week, like every week. This week, I have more mobility than I had last week, which is weird. I would think I would have less but I have more and it changes every week. And you just kind of have to make adjustments with it.

I think the biggest thing for me outside of the training itself, for like, everybody, but especially in pregnancy, you have to stay hydrated. That’s one thing I’m not great with unless I’m in a weight cut when it’s like affecting my weight. But that’s one of the big things that I’ve had to prioritize because that affects the amount of amniotic fluid that can affect, like some serious things happening if you’re dehydrated.

So make sure you’re hydrated. It’s such a small thing, but it makes a huge difference.

Follow @elisabethclaybjj

Charlotte McKinley

Charlotte McKinley is a purple belt affiliated under Jean Jacques Machado. She enjoys armbars, books, and people. Charlotte has a passion for blending her writing and love of Jiu-Jitsu. She is a full time student, works with the youth classes at Alpha Jiu Jitsu and Fitness and is a social media guru. @bjj_charlotte