How to choose a BJJ gym: the questions to ask at your trial

In jiu-jitsu you are not choosing a membership: you are choosing the people you will spend hundreds of hours pressed up against. The coach decides how you learn, your training partners decide whether you get hurt, and the timetable decides whether you are still turning up in six months.

Almost everywhere the first class is free. Use it to gather information, not just to sweat.

Two things to check before you even go

• The timetable. Look at the weekly schedule and ask yourself honestly how many of those classes you can get to on an ordinary Wednesday, not in an ideal week. Schedules that do not fit your life are the number one reason people quit, long before motivation runs out.
• The real commute. Not the distance: the minutes, at the hour you will actually be travelling. Twenty minutes of traffic after work, three times a week, works for a month and then becomes an excuse. A good gym nearby beats an excellent gym far away.

The questions to ask the coach

These are normal questions and a serious instructor is happy to answer them. If someone gets irritated that you asked, you already have your answer.

1. 1Who teaches, and who promoted them? Rank on its own says little; the lineage says a great deal more. A coach is glad to tell you who they learned from.
2. 2Is there a separate beginners' course, or does everyone train in one group? Neither is wrong, but it changes your first three months considerably.
3. 3How many classes a week make sense for me right now? This tells you whether the gym is alive at the times you care about, or whether most of the activity happens when you cannot make it.
4. 4Is it gi, no-gi or both? Many academies alternate. If you have a preference, say so up front.
5. 5What do I need to buy, and when? The right answer is “nothing for now, we will talk about it later”.
6. 6What does a year cost, all in? Monthly fee, joining fee, membership registration and insurance, any summer months. It is the only number you can compare between two gyms.
7. 7Do I have to compete? In the vast majority of cases no, and it is completely fine not to want to.

What to watch while you are on the mat

What you see counts for more than what you are told.

• How the experienced people treat beginners in sparring. This is the single most important signal there is. At a healthy gym a blue belt rolling with a beginner controls and teaches; they do not crush them to prove a point.
• Whether the coach actually corrects people, or just demonstrates the technique and then looks at their phone.
• The belts in the room. A mat full of beginners with one senior belt tells you something: either the academy is new, or people do not stay. Ask how long the most experienced students have been training.
• How clean the mats are. This is not fussiness: skin infections are the classic health problem of ground-based contact sports.
• Whether what you need is there: a kids' class, a women's class, morning sessions. If you need it, it has to exist now, not “from September”.

The warning signs not to ignore

• They ask you to sign a long commitment before you have even trained.
• Nobody asks whether you have injuries or health problems before putting you on the mat.
• On your first class they have you do hard sparring with someone who does not control themselves.
• The head coach is almost never there and the classes are always taught by somebody else, with no clarity about who.
• Questions about rank and lineage get vague answers.

Do not decide after a single trial

If there is more than one academy you can reach, try them. Two classes at two different gyms tell you more than ten reviews, and nobody takes offence: switching gyms after you have signed up is far more awkward than trying three beforehand.

And if you are torn between two after the trial, go back to both a second time on a different day of the week. The Tuesday evening crowd and the Saturday morning crowd often have nothing in common.

Where to start

On BJJ Square you will find the academies listed in your city, each with its own page, and for every city a list of the nearest centres with distances: useful when there is nothing where you live and you need to work out where you would end up going.

Once you have booked your trial, here is what to bring and what happens in class: Your first BJJ class.