How to Choose a Jiu-Jitsu Gym in Longmont
Eight things to check before you sign anything, including the three that most people only think to ask about after they have already paid for six months.
Longmont has more than one good option for grappling, and I am not going to pretend otherwise or name anybody. What I can do is tell you what I would check if I were moving to a new town tomorrow and had to pick a room to spend four nights a week in.
Go take a free class at every place you are considering. Any gym that will not give you one has already answered a question for you.
1. Look at the floor before you look at anything else
Push down on the mat with your heel near the middle of the room. If it feels like a yoga mat on a sidewalk, that is mats laid straight onto a concrete slab, which is what most gyms do because it is cheap and invisible.
A sprung or foam-block subfloor absorbs the throw so your joints do not. You will not notice the difference in week one. You will notice it in year three, and by then the decision has been made for you.
2. Find out who is on the mat, not who is on the website
Plenty of gyms are fronted by a name that appears twice a month. Ask who runs the class you would actually attend, on the night you would actually attend it, and then go watch that class.
Related, and more important than rank: watch how the senior people treat the newest person in the room. That tells you more about your next two years than any lineage chart on the wall.
3. Ask what happens in your first ten minutes
A good answer sounds like a plan: somebody meets you, you get walked through where to change and how to bow in, you get paired with somebody who has done this before. A bad answer is a shrug and a point toward the mat.
The first ten minutes predict the whole experience. Gyms that have not thought about them have usually not thought about month two either.
4. Read the cancellation terms before the price
- Is it month to month, or a twelve month agreement with an early termination fee?
- What happens if you get injured, travel for work, or have a baby?
- Is there a freeze option, and does it cost anything?
- Who do you have to talk to in order to leave, and does it have to be in person?
None of these are rude questions. A gym that is comfortable with its own contract will answer them in thirty seconds.
5. Watch a beginner class, not the competition class
The advanced class always looks impressive and it is not the class you are buying. Go watch the fundamentals class. Count how many people are in it, see whether the newest person is getting corrected or getting ignored, and notice whether anyone is going too hard on somebody who clearly started last week.
6. If it is for your kid, ask what the belt actually requires
Kids programs vary wildly. Some promote on attendance and a check, some on demonstrated skill. Ask what a stripe requires, how long a belt typically takes, and what the gym does when a kid is struggling. Then ask what they do about a kid who is dominating everyone, which is the question that separates a real youth program from a daycare with mats.
7. Be honest about the drive
This is the one people skip, and it is the one that ends most memberships. Almost nobody quits training because they lost interest. They quit because the round trip was an hour, four nights a week, and eventually the math won.
Put the address in your phone and drive it once at the exact time you would actually be going, in traffic. If the answer makes you wince, believe the wince.
8. Ask what they are not good at yet
This is my favorite question and it is unfair in a useful way. Every room has a weak spot. A gym that names theirs honestly is a gym that knows what it is building.
Ours, since it is only fair to answer my own question: we opened in September and we are still a young room. If you want a forty person open mat tonight, we are not that yet. What you get instead is a small room where nobody is anonymous and Mike is on the mat for every intro class, which is a real trade either way you look at it.
Where we land
Pick the room you will actually drive to, with a floor that will not wear your joints out, run by people who correct the newest person in the building. If that is us, the first class is free. If it is somewhere else in Longmont, go train there.