TLDR: This place isn't professional at all.
I went here for less than a year, and it was quite the journey...
This gym was my introduction to combat sports. My son wanted to learn Ju-jitsu and so we signed up here due to its proximity to our house, without really searching around. That's the first mistake I made.
The second mistake I made was the parent coaching. When my son started here, I wanted my son to excel at the sport, and I wanted to help in anyway I could. I reached out to private coaches, watched some YouTube videos, took notes in class for my son to review later, etc. The coach took issue with this because during classes my son would look at me, not him. This is understandable. The fault on the coach was whenever he decided to not sit me aside and explain what I was doing was wrong and why. Instead, there was passive aggressiveness, hushed gossip, and a lot of weird looks from the more senior members at the gym. This is when the problems started here. Eventually I stopped doing this after a friend explained the issues with parent coaching, but I think the damage was done at that point... more on this later.
Eventually my schedule opened so that I could train with the guys. This just escalated the issues. The first roll I had here was with Jason. I believe Jason and Joe took the parent coaching personal, and he used this as an opportunity to lash out. Jason approached me and asked me to roll with him, he wouldn't let me tap during this session and kept working me into deep waters, he also made comments like "what would you tell your son right now". I took it on the chin and saw this as a challenge and kept training. I didn't take this personal at all. But sadly, this behavior never really went away with him. During subsequent rolls with him, he would evade actually answering my questions and simply responded with comments like, "I'm waiting for the clock to run out so we can stop rolling". My 3rd mistake was not leaving the gym at this point. My hope was that we would eventually get past the whole parent coaching thing and be a big happy family. Sadly, this behavior never went away, it only got worse and eventually extended to my son as well.
The passive aggressive drama eventually escalated to blatant aggression, and everything came to a boiling point. I was rolling with Joe one evening. I jumped over his back while he was on his knees to perform a maneuver to take his back. He immediately got into a position to choke me. He choked me hard enough to leave bruises, that looked like hickeys, on my neck for the next 2 weeks. After I tapped, he humiliated me by cussing me out in front of the entire class. He was under the impression that I could not see where I jumped, and I absolutely could. I believe this aggression was simply the manifestation of whatever frustration he had built up with me. After this, I could no longer attend classes here. There's a level of trust that you have to have with the guys you roll with, and this emotional outburst violated that trust. 5th mistake was not pulling my son out of the classes after this point. I was hesitant to do this because of the friends he made here, but there was a tipping point there too. I do not have time to explain his side of this story, but it's very similar to my own.
I tried my best to make the situation work, I stayed polite with the guys, calling Joe sir all the way until the last days of me going there. I really hoped things would turn around because my son and I had both developed bonds with the people here... but they never allowed that to happen. I am not the only person that has experienced issues like this with the gym. I attend two other MMA gyms now, and I have heard similar stories from students at both gyms. They simply don't want to deal with the drama and retaliation that comes from sharing these stories. Moral of the story is that this gym is very tribalistic and unprofessional. If you want proof of this, simply google how the owner Joe Solis judged his friend's officially sanctioned UFC match. This tells you everything you need to know about the place. Oh, and I posted this review on google too, but the owner had it removed. Makes you wonder how many other reviews are missing... read more
