I stopped at saying “garbage” gym owners as I don’t think they’re bad people (not all of them) but I can’t tell you the number of gyms I’ve gone to all up and down the east coast and the midwest where the gym owner clearly doesn’t care about teaching a quality class, has a gym that’s half filled with crap, spends too much time hitting on female students, is late, cancels classes, makes up lesson plans on the fly with no rhyme, reason or flow, doesn’t invest in the gym/equipment, and all other types of ills. The funny thing is, in quite a few of these gyms the owners/instructors are rather accomplished. You would think they’d care more considering this is their money maker. Anyone else run into owners like this? Why is this so common in martial arts? Or at least more common than in other businesses from what I can gather.
The absolute BEST gym I’ve been to was from a guy in Georgia that didn’t even compete. He’s sparred a shit ton, been part of fighter camps, still spars and what not, but his curriculum, attention to detail, and overall ability to run a tight ship is second to none.
You bring up a lot of stuff…and sadly I can see where you’re coming from with some of it…all I can say is, things aren’t exactly the way they used to be.
Idk what your background/experience level is, but I can say one thing for sure:
If you love the art and focus on that, you’ll find where you need to be…cuz there are still a lot of good, genuine instructors out there that care about the learning.
OP, you have to research gyms before you go. Ideally, with actual references. Talk to people who train there AND people who used to train there. The people who used to train there are often the best resource. And I wouldn’t necessarily trust online reviews. Plenty of dirty games with online reviews.
Are you fucking kidding me?!?!?
This place has NEVER made a dime! You motherfucking snot faced incels should be thanking me every day for running this outreach program.
“Ooohhhh, professor won’t roll”, well cry me a goddam river. Maybe if enough of you cry the mats will finally get cleaned!
This has pretty much always been a problem. I’ve trained all over the world since the mid-90s and it’s intriguing how the words “curriculum” and “plan” just cause raised eyebrows a lot of places. And, indeed, it’s not about the level of performance of the instructor him-/herself. Several more modest gyms I’ve visited have had half-year plans for technique at most levels, basic strength-training and endurance setups for anyone interested, as well as sensible input on nutrition etc for members.
And there should be proper ways of measuring progress as well, so that people know if they’re getting anywhere, but that’s usually not a thing either…
So yeah, MMA is still lagging a bit behind wrt some of the factors that are otherwise a matter of course in high-level sports
You always have to consider your references too. If it’s a cute chick talking about how friendly the instructors are, you should already know to avoid that one.
I can only speak to some of the gyms I’ve seen in my area, and the issue for many is that they have a hard time getting started. Even if the gym has been around a few years, if they’re not making real $ (meaning enough money for the gym owner to do that as their fulltime job) it’s hard to run it the way it needs to be run…and if you don’t run it the way it needs to be run, it’s hard to get to the point of making real $.
Also, many struggle with their identity. Meaning, they are former fighters who came up through the MMA scene when the gyms were grimy little rooms in the basement of “real” gyms, or TMA schools, and they weren’t really money makers, they were just tough places for tough guys to beat each other up. So these guys try to set their gym up for fighters…for people who want to spar hard and prepare for fights…and those people don’t often want to pay a ton to train, and there’s not a ton of people who want to train like that.
The schools that make money are for soccer moms, kids and weekend warriors. They keep the “fight team” separate from the rest of the group most of the time. In the unsuccessful schools, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve seen guys get choked unconscious on their first day, or dropped in sparring the first time they’ve ever sparred, and these people don’t come back because that’s not what they want.
I’m ranting, and off a weird tangent now, so bringing it back…the issue with most crappy gyms is that the owner can’t prioritize it because it’s his side gig…he works fulltime during the day and is late starting his class because the job that pays his bills ran a little long today, and he’s rushing into the school to start class. He can’t pay someone to teach his classes because he makes no money, but sometimes tries to trade free private lessons for teaching with one of his top students…so you end up getting classes taught by a top student, but he’s only getting free privates to teach, so he doesn’t have a good plan or structure to it…and when people are annoyed that the classes suck or start late, they leave…making it harder for the gym owner to make $, causing the cycle to repeat.
I agree with your whole post, and I agree with this quoted section - but I have seen some outliers that don’t follow this model.
A great example of the model your describing is Ricardo Almeida’s gym. The gym’s chief business is a highly structured, welcoming, family style BJJ program. His MMA program is completely separate and “closed” to regular joes.
I have seen a few gyms that successfully incorporate a different model. At high level jiujitsu schools like Marcelo’s, you’ve got world champion competitors training alongside weekend warriors. But 1) it’s BJJ and not MMA and 2) Marcelo foments such a positive, welcoming environment that it works.
I have seen a similar model employed in two MMA gyms. They both were quite small and had teachers who focused extensively on culture building. Regular joes spar alongside high level pros. But the gyms that can pull this off are almost always small, and they are very rare. The owner/teacher must be gifted at culture building.
Well, I can see that perspective, but it seems a bit odd to me still. Maybe there’s a cultural difference playing a part here, but we managed to run a gym of 100 paying members with a pro team for 10 years (until I had to move) and everyone rolled, sparred properly and had a blast. And we had curriculums for all levels, follow-up on physical training, mental training etc. And we had a proper space, our own cage, proper equipment and all that.
And this was in a city of about 150.000 people around early 2000s when people in that part of Norway hardly even knew what the heck MMA was. At the time I (and my co-instructors) were also doing full-time work or University studies.
So perhaps there’s a difference in approach to physical training in the US? We weren’t getting any soccer moms etc and didn’t really struggle much with recruiting members. In fact, we had to turn away quite a few because the company we rented space from capped it at a 100.
In this day and age with the popularity of the sport, it seems just plain lazy not to deliver a proper product.
OP gave me ‘Nam flashbacks to my BJJ gym when I lived in Texas. Guy was dating students, I rolled with him personally less than 10 times in 2 years (I was already a purple belt when I joined, there was 0 good training in that city), high every class, checks every single box mentioned. So much shit was talked on former students that nobody wanted to leave and in hindsight it was kindof a cult. He was the only black belt there and the saving grace was that there was some good purple belts who carried the weight and had good classes, they of course weren’t paid but that gym would have sunk without them.
Cant help but push my book. Even if you aren’t a gym owner, you can take this guidebook and make the most of your training, with or without the owner. I have retired but with the rise of so many new schools hoping to cash in, the coaching level is pretty bad. I went thru this on the first end of it, the first generation of MMA.
I wrote a book in Norwegian on the same topic about 10 years ago - I felt it was sorely needed. Hope people wake up and take advice from those who’ve been in the biz since the beginning
I have trained since 98 and been very lucky to train at some great places and a couple of jack off gyms. By jack off I mean fight gyms pretty much. If the business model relies
On fighters it is a jack off gym. By the way some of these are very famous gyms that have guys on the UFC. Gyms that cater to families and people just wanting to learn the sport don’t have the scum bags that fight gyms do or the scumbags trying to squeeze out money from fighters. They also have customers that learn, listen and participate by being on time and helping others. Fighters by our nature are selfish pricks and when ever they get to call the shots it’s a problem for everyone.
One thing that’s unique to my area (North east united states) is that when I was actively training, there were 15-20 MMA gyms within an hour of Boston, and in the actual city of Boston, there were 4 gyms about 10 minutes from each other. So the number of fighters, and people who wanted to train hard and spar wasn’t enough to support all the gyms. There were also smaller BJJ schools in/around Boston too, so I’m only talking about the ones with fighters who were fighting locally.
I remember when a friend was out here from AZ he commented that it was crazy that we had so many gyms, because there were like 3-4 gyms total in all of AZ that had fight teams. I might be messing up these numbers, but his point was that almost all the good people trained together in AZ, and there weren’t 10-20 small schools all competing for business. It sounded like out there they had “big” gyms with multiple rings/cages, tons of mat space…where the places I was used to seeing in Mass were often one room with enough mat space to have maybe 25 or so people there at once, and a very small ring, or custom made cage that was super small.
There simply aren’t enough people who want to train hard and spar to get you to 100 paying members at 15-20 schools all within an hour of each other, so you needed gi BJJ classes, or women’s classes, kids classes etc.
Possibly one of the truest things ever said here. I definitely always felt way more comfortable in those rooms than the big shiny clean ones with moms taking kickboxing.
yeah, and those grimy gyms you trained in likely didn’t make any money, and eventually turned into open mat 50-75% of the time where guys just did their own thing and sparred hard. The way Chael described team Quest on a recent podcast is how many of those places are…a small group of tough guys working out together…not a ton of instruction, no firm schedule. I’m over-simplifying obviously, no two gyms are the same…but the ones that don’t run like a well oiled machine often struggle from an identity issue. They want to make $ as a gym, but don’t want to “sell out” and cater to soccer moms and people who don’t want to fight.
I saw it at a gym I was training at briefly that was being started by a friend, and the first time he had them spar, he lost like 4 students out of the 20 or so he had. Dudes weren’t ready for it, and they were all new and had no clue how to spar and not hurt each other, so it was basically two untrained guys fighting with the coach yelling “stop!” or “slow down guys” every now and then. After losing the students, he said something about how they probably weren’t cut out for it anyway…and it’s like WTF does that mean? They’re paying you for a service, they want to train and learn…you shouldn’t be worrying about whether or not you’re “cut out for MMA training” during your first week ever of fight training.
Yes and no. The gym I claim as my former home wasn’t exactly open to the public. Anyone could just show up. Once. Then you had to be invited back. After that money was discussed. It was beyond reasonable and on the honor system, just a coffee can that got emptied once a month.
I understand the “disorganized mess” that you refer to, but not everyone wants showers and a purple belt running class “one and only one way”.
Some guys just want bodies to bounce off of.
I very much believe in separation between fight team and gym members and more places should do it. It should be aspirational in those gyms, something to work towards and find out what actually goes down at pro only sessions.
