
How to Navigate Jiu Jitsu Gyms
Hey, ya'll! Becky here, the founder of Mil Usos. This particular blog doesn't have to do with skincare. It has to do with navigating jiu jitsu gyms. I trained jiu jitsu for nine years, from 2014-2023, when I had to stop for health reasons. Fair warning: this is a long blog, so strap in!
I started jiu jitsu after a lifetime of dance, yoga, and pilates training. I taught dance and pilates classes at a boutique studio. When I began taking jiu jitsu classes, I brought a lot of unexamined assumptions with me regarding the professionalism owed to a paying customer. After spending nine years at four different jiu jitsu gyms, however, it pains me to say that only one single gym sorta met my expectations for customer service. And I do not think this is unique to the four gyms I attended. I think there is a lack of professionalism endemic to the jiu jitsu community, in general. In this blog, I want to explore the most problematic aspects of jiu jitsu gyms and how to navigate them successfully.
Sleeping with students
So, let's jump right TF into it! Bet you didn't know how common it is for professors to sleep with their students! Happens all the time. Now, before we start, please allow me to address the objections. I fully recognize how common it is to meet your romantic partner at work. And if you run a jiu jitsu gym, then your gym is also your work. Running a gym can be all-consuming, and it makes sense that your social life falls off a cliff in order to keep it going. I understand how thrilling it feels to discover romantic chemistry with a student. It's all very human.
However! In life, you aren't entitled to everything all the time. Running a business requires a certain level of professionalism toward all students. Professionalism is another word for boundaries. You put boundaries on your own moods, your own greed, and your own behavior. Distancing yourself with customers and treating them with the same level of resigned indifference avoids favoritism and it also avoids students feeling unnecessarily targeted. This is important from the students' perspective.
You might be able to make an exception for a unique romantic situation between an unmarried professor and an unmarried student. But extramarital affairs are common. Once an extramarital affair has begun, it's often an open secret at the gym. I have seen married instructors, whose own children train and work in their gym, knock up their female students. I have seen how an instructor's brazen sexual interest affects all of the other female students. I have seen these situations break apart gyms and families. And! I have watched plenty of male students stay silent as they bear witness to their professor's sexual appetite rip through other students' personal lives like a wrecking ball. Cute, guys - very cute!
When a professor chooses to sleep with his students, it is absolutely delusional to expect that it will not eventually become the school's collective problem. If a man is looking for unbridled sexual freedom to sleep with paying customers without it affecting business, then perhaps a career in accounting, civil law, or robotics engineering would be more accommodating. In fact, there are lots of careers that are compartmentalized enough to satisfy even the most ravishing sexual appetites. BUT JIU JITSU AIN'T ONE OF THEM. Sorry, fellas!
Jiu jitsu gyms are communities. Students often refer to their school as extended family or their second families. Children make new friends in the kid's classes. Students celebrate milestones together at each other's homes. All of this extracurricular friendship is not only normal, it's great for business! When your school has an active community, the community will refer family members, friends, and coworkers to come try a class. And when they do so, they are trusting the school to give their loved ones a positive experience. If I invite my sister-in-law to train and she gets knocked up by the professor, I now have a bunch of family drama AND gym drama to sort through! This is unacceptable.
The point of opening any jiu jitsu gym is to grow. And you get it to grow precisely by creating these types of close-knit communities. These are brick-and-mortar locations that serve their surrounding neighbors. Word of mouth and positive reviews are what bring in new students. The financial rewards of a growing jiu jitsu community necessarily excludes sexual impunity with students. Period! When the professor's behavior with a student results in favoritism, a secret affair coverup, or an unplanned pregnancy, it creates a ripple effect in the school. This is a disservice to the students who pay to train there. Remember, the students are paying their hard-earned dollars, and they are entitled to professionalism in return. No business is ever owed their customers' patronage. They must earn it every single day.
Dangerous training conditions
Professors must put boundaries on their own behavior with students, but the other side of this coin is to enforce boundaries with needy, invasive, and abusive students. There will be many students who demand additional services for free, students who won't comply with rules, and students who are disruptive to the class. At its absolute worst, there may be a very small percentage of students who will willfully disregard the safety of other students. I have even seen petty-minded instructors put their students in hospitals. I've known students who suffer from permanent injury - including recurring seizures - as a result of this sort of behavior.
Let me be clear: this is absolutely outrageous, unacceptable, and inexcusable. It is the professor's job to regulate this sort of physically abusive behavior. And if they aren't regulating, they aren't respecting their student's right to a safe training environment. That may mean putting an abusive student on notice or even asking them to leave. Is your gym willing to turn away a small number of genuinely bad students in order to keep the other students safe? Do all of the instructors enforce the same policies equally?
Even if you are training to compete, there are ways to do it without risking injury. Talk to your partners. Ask them not to rip their submissions. Although if you are going to ask your partner not to rip a submission, then you need to return the favor by tapping early. Be respectful of any injuries your partners may have. And if you want to roll harder than average, ask around and save those rolls for the other training partners who share your enthusiasm. With the regular working folks, RELAX and make those rounds your rest rounds. Use the easier rounds to practice new moves you're curious about and can't yet pull off on a higher ranked belt. Try something weird with a low likelihood of success. Train your weaknesses. There are lots of ways to switch strategies with different training partners to get the most out of a class.
If you attend a school in which students are regularly injured to the point of requiring a doctor's attention, then you are training at a bad school. End of story! Sure, accidents happen. I, too, have been injured from accidents on the mats (my ankle popped in a toe hold and I went to a hospital ONCE in nine years). But the line between accident and willful disregard gets blurred very easily at jiu jitsu gyms. If students are regularly seeking medical attention to treat their jiu jitsu injuries, or if a particular student is constantly hurting people, you should discuss your concerns with your professor. Injuries are not a sign of "hard-coreness." They are a sign of selfish, ego-driven, or disrespectful sparring practices. And if your instructors are the ones injuring students, get TF out of there, NOW!
A quick and final thought: It's perfectly acceptable to ask NOT to be paired with someone who is unnecessarily rough. I, personally, have walked off the mats rather than risk injury with a bad training partner. And guess what? I was never paired with that person again. This allowed me to train longer and better, and the other student (who was known for being unreasonably rough) course-corrected and tried to be a better training partner. Other students privately told me that they appreciated it. Advocate for yourself! You never know who else shares your opinions and will be glad you said something.
Weird hang-ups over men training with women
Should women only train with women? Should men and women train together? I hate this question because there are no clear and easy answers for everyone.
On the one hand, jiu jitsu is dominated by men, which means there aren't many female training partners to choose from. In the nine years I trained, I was usually the only female student in class. And just because another female student showed up didn't mean I automatically enjoyed training with her. Sometimes the other female student was the single most annoying/distracting training partner in the class. Knowing I was automatically going to be paired with her would definitely ruin the vibe for the day.
But an all-female space isn't a perfect solution, either. I spent three years training at a school run by a female professor. She had a large female following, and most of our classes were actually a 50/50 split between men and women. A 50/50 split is an amazing statistic for a jiu jitsu class! At this school, the practice was to divide the class in half, and women trained with women, and men trained with men. There was no cross-training allowed.
I absolutely hated this arrangement. For starters, I wasn't paying for access to only 50% of the total training partners available to me. There were so many amazing male training partners at that school who came from a variety of martial arts backgrounds, including extensive judo, greco-roman, and wrestling histories. They each approached jiu jitsu with movements I had never seen before. Men are more likely to have these prior experiences than women, and to bar my access to them frustrated me to no end.
Additionally, I began training jiu jitsu as a response to life-threatening domestic violence. I also worked in courtrooms with violent criminal offenders. When I came to jiu jitsu, I was specifically looking to learn how to respond to a man who was looking to harm me. By forcing me to train only with women, I was being denied the exact knowledge I was trying to learn. Even if I could still train the same movements with women only, I noticed that the women who never fought against any men were hesitant and even scared to do so. This was most certainly a mental block more than a physical one. But the mentality matters. If you're specifically looking to train with men, then training with women just isn't a useful substitute.
I solved this problem by simply crossing over to the men's side of the mats. I was the only woman who did this. And I was punished for it! Rather than ask me why I insisted on training with the men, our female professor told all the other women that I believed I was too good to train with them. I was targeted and ostracized because I wanted to train with men and women equally, which was fully within my rights as a paying customer.
So, what's the solution here? It depends on each woman. And honestly, taking things student-by-student is a solution to a lot of problems. I could easily see a victim of domestic violence feeling terrified to train with men. These things cut both ways. Communicate with your professors about your boundaries. And professors! If the student's boundaries aren't unreasonable or disruptive to the class, honor them! There won't be many who require special accommodations, but when they do, your willingness to help could be the one single thing that sets you apart from every other gym in the area. That's how you earn their business.
Forbidding cross-training
This is a little bit of an old-school problem, but it still persists in gyms today. I've trained at gyms that forbid cross-training at other gyms. And if you posted a picture of yourself training at another gym, you'd get a phone canceling your membership. Absolutely bonkers!
This sort of behavior reminds me of how cults isolate you and make you renounce all outside relationships. It usually indicates a weak and fragile ego in your head professor. It's a huge red flag. And it's a good enough reason to find a new gym, because the control overreach won't stop with forbidding other schools. These sorts of gyms are very cult-like, and they keep you on a weirdly short leash in truly bizarre ways.
Look, you don't have to train anywhere else if you never want to. But at some point, you'll probably want to. Training at other schools not only balances your jiu jitsu skills, but it also expands your social circles. It integrates you into the local jiu jitsu scene. And it's fun! Other schools have cool seminars or interesting open mats. And yes - if there are indeed shenanigans going on at your gym, then visiting another school may feel like a breath of fresh air. Pay heed!
Asshole professors
There's quite a difference between tough love and being an asshole. Something about a black belt changes a person. I imagine it's sort of like the way having lots of money changes a person. It takes years of intense training to earn a black belt in jiu jitsu. It's a big deal. A black belt is a symbol of very real physical power. It's a symbol of status and authority. And people respect it. They will fall in line. They will comply. They will even drool with awe and envy. I can see why this may go to a person's head.
So, jiu jitsu students, know this! The first time you show up at a gym, everyone will be super nice and welcoming. They want you to sign up. And it's totally cool if you do. But the truth is that it takes 6-12 months to really understand your school's personality. And the school's personality reflects your head professor's personality. Full stop. The students who don't vibe with it will leave. The students who dig it will stay. Jiu jitsu gyms are a cult of personality. If the head professor is an unethical person, the ethical ones will feel repulsed by it and run. Those who don't mind will silently fall in line and enable it. That's how it works.
Finding a good school, however, isn't exactly a given. It may take some trial and error. If going to class is starting to stress you out because you don't know what sort of behavior you are going to encounter that day, then that's a huge red flag. If you feel like your professor singles you out and embarrasses you in front of the class, then run! If your professor is constantly hot and cold with you, and you find yourself walking on eggshells to make them happy, maybe think twice! And if your professor is engaging in unethical behavior that you cannot morally defend, THEN WHY ARE YOU GIVING THEM YOUR MONEY?!
How to Leave
Some people have told me that before leaving a school, I should have asked for feedback from my professors, as if their bad behavior was somehow my fault. I was also told it was unfair not to give my professors a chance by first voicing my concerns before quitting a school. Meh! I've seen this situation go sideways too many times - both for myself and for other students. Let's be honest, here: most people are going to feel insulted when you criticize the way they run their business.
The jiu jitsu community is a very small one. Everyone knows everyone. The way you leave your school can come back and haunt you in completely unexpected ways. I left each of my schools differently. The first time, I tried to chat about my concerns with the head professor. Dumpster fire. The second time, I walked off the mats ANGRY and wrote a scathing review online. Not great. The third time, I just quietly left and made up a fake excuse to save face. Somewhat better. The final time, I was just firm about my health issues without any reservation or malice, and that was definitely the best experience.
At the end of the day, you do not need any black belt professor's approval. You need your approval. If you are a conscientious, respectful training partner, and you are getting weird vibes in return, then maybe that school's just not your people. And if your money is going to support harmful or unethical behavior, I would argue that you are seriously missing the point. Talk with your dollars, people!
Yes, you should ABSOLUTELY still try jiu jitsu
Listen, if you're curious about jiu jitsu, you should absolutely try it! Despite all of the weird personalities that run these establishments, there's so much benefit to this particular martial art. It dramatically improves your quality of life by so many metrics. You'll get into the best shape of your life, you'll meet a community of some pretty cool people, and you'll walk around the planet with a helluva lot more confidence. I even met my husband at my first gym!
I believe it was Jocko Willink who said learning jiu jitsu is as close as you'll ever get to having superpowers. He's 1,000% right, and everyone who trains will confirm the same. I'm talking about real confidence. Not hollow bravado. About five years after I started training, for the first time in my life as a woman walking this earth, I was able to walk through a dark parking lot with little to no fear. It's not that I was under the delusion I would win every fight. But I knew I wouldn't panic. Or maybe, I knew I could handle the panic. I knew my mind would race with options. I could create opportunities to escape successfully. As a woman with a history of rape and domestic violence, that sort of paradigm shift has no price tag. Jiu jitsu absolutely changed my life for the better.
If there is any point I am trying to drive home, it is this: YOU ARE THE PAYING CUSTOMER. You are absolutely owed a level of professionalism and a net positive experience. So, go get em, tiger! Go try that class! Buy too many gis! Raar!
But also! Don't let your school's politics intimidate you. And don't take it personally if the school ends up not being a good fit. Jiu jitsu is so trendy now, it's easier than ever to just hop over to another school. I recommend that you regularly drop into open mats at other local gyms. In addition to the many benefits to open mats, if there comes a day when you do decide to change schools, you'll already be familiar with other schools in the area. And they will also be familiar with you. You'll be more likely to land at a school that works best for you, and the transition will be as painless as possible. Now, get out there and train!
Author: Rebecca Williams, Founder