It's a shame that I have to write this review, but I suppose you must talk to business men in their language.
Team Randori had a few red flags to start, like "closed" open mats and fairly outrageous pricing (about $200/month if you want to do 3x a week including open mats -- you have to pay a premium for open mat allowance), but the owner, Al, was very direct in his sales pitch which was fine enough to get us on the mats.
As a background, I have been training jiu-jitsu (and other martial arts) since 2007 as a 15 year young kid, and have been to several countries and countless gyms around the world for martial arts (mostly under the BJJ Globetrotters Camps). I got my fiancée into the sport just over 6 years ago or so, and she has excelled in it! We were lucky to find a nice, small little crew of good people to train with so close to our home, after dealing with other problematic gyms in the area (namely pedos and creeps). It can be especially hard for a 120lb female to find partners she can safely and comfortably roll with, but we did manage to find a few of those folk within Randori.
That being said, I share some regrets getting past those red flags, as not even 5 months into training at Randori and spending a whopping $1500 between the two of us, we've already been excommunicated (I guess). One day at training, before class started, Al decided to use me to show somebody a ridiculous and unrealistic move that splayed my knees open, wrenching them both way beyond their ability. All I could do was tap, but he ripped it with seemingly no remorse. Afterwards he literally just turned and continued to his previous conversation. I still don't know if it was a genuine accident (again, to which no remorse has been given -- except maybe for my canceled membership aka less money coming in) or a case of the ol Napoleon Syndrome. One of his black belts saw it go down and immediately came up to me asking if I needed ice, also in a bit of shock at the situation. I responded something to the tune of, "if it were anyone else I think I would need to go to the hospital," as I'm quite flexible. The next day my knee buckled over and I knew my old LCL injury (which had long since recovered) was back with a vengeance -- so I messaged Al to cancel my membership. He did a brief dance of asking for a Doctor's note or whatever, to which I just said I am canceling because I know there's not much to do for knees that would allow me to come back quick, and I was now quite over the owner (though withholding all these feelings to avoid burning a bridge).
I was off it for two weeks, rehabbed for a month, and then got into strength training for another three months. Stronger than ever As soon as I was ready I reached out to friends at the gym -- because we got along with everyone else extremely well -- to come to an open mat. I knew their little "closed" open mat policy for non-paying folk, but figured maybe since I was a member, experienced and always a safe roll, then got injured -- maybe, just maybe, Al would make an exception; he wanted $40 for a "drop-in" fee. To those unaware, these are awful business practices touted as "safety" precautions, but that's what the waiver is for.. and many of the best gyms are always open to all for open mat.
So, I decided to send Al a message about it all directly -- still hoping I could maybe get to the open mat late and get some rolls in. Again, he's a business man so he saw my message pretty quickly -- but still to this day he has not responded. I have the message attached; I think I did a fairly good job at lightening up my emotions about it with emojis but it has been a few weeks and he has just left me on read. "No money no honey," as they say in Thailand
Edited and changed from 3-stars to 1-stars after learning things haven't changed in the last year and there has been a mass exodus from all the good people at the gym. Maybe their kids program is still worth something because Coach Carlos is great, but there are other gyms out there with less explosive little men running the school read more
