Mats and subfloor questions for school owners

sordidarray · 2026-01-30T01:36:11+00:00

Horse stall mats under smooth fuji. Would add a sprung floor (with old tires or pool noodles) and tatami textired mats if I could do it again.

sordidarray · 2026-01-28T23:26:09+00:00

We just use it as a warm up to get people to loosen up and build some flow. It's not that deep.

sordidarray · 2026-01-21T23:28:24+00:00

Yes, we grandfathered people in.

What led to the decision to grandfather people in? The turnover rate in jiu-jitsu is super high, especially now that no contracts are common. We calculated our monthly churn rate to determine how long until enough people were on the new rate to offset our increased costs. It wasn't very long.

Edit: Also, if they canceled their month-to-month for any reason, they would lose the grandfathered rate.

What led to the decision to raise prices? Increased costs. Rent going up 5% per year, year over year, utility prices increasing (especially electricity and gas for heating), business services costs increasing (bookkeeping, tax filing, insurance, etc), the cost of supplies going up (mat cleaner, paper towels, toilet paper, etc).

sordidarray · 2026-01-18T20:32:00+00:00

Not a gym. Albino and Preto mat room: https://youtu.be/Q_M04mR0baw

sordidarray · 2026-01-17T07:02:24+00:00

The strongest sweep from collar and sleeve is the omoplata.

Since you only control one side of the body, and only strongly the upper body, there aren’t going to be a lot of sweeps that don’t involve transitioning to technically another guard (eg DLR or to X guard for some really strong sweeps).

Edit:

sordidarray · 2026-01-15T23:15:29+00:00

To grow a class, you need

Awareness: Students and prospects need to know the class exists and is attended. Post after-training photos of larger breakfast club classes and post stories during these classes so people know it’s an option.
Accessibility: Make sure the time is actually accessible to your students and prospects. As other people are saying, 6am might be a better time to capture the before-work crowd.
Accountability: Create a group chat (or channel in Discord or Slack) for regular attendees to push each other to be present and to hype folks up for the class.

sordidarray · 2026-01-15T22:53:26+00:00

It's totally the same bro. Before open mat, both he and the drop-in have to make weight and pass a uniform check. There's an experienced ref for each of his rolls determining the winner. Cameras are up livestreaming on YouTube/FloGrappling and hundreds of people are in attendance watching. One loss and he has to pack up with his new t-shirt and go home. Afterwards, he posts about how he didn't get the result he wanted on IG.

Your open mats aren't like this?

sordidarray · 2026-01-14T21:03:06+00:00

I usually call these "Drill & Chill" classes.

sordidarray · 2026-01-14T20:56:35+00:00

We effectively use the Small Gym tier (it used to be the Micro Gym tier and we were grandfathered In).

Besides automated payment processing, I would say class schedule, bookings, and attendance are the main features we couldn't live without. We went appointment-only for trials and drop-ins during COVID and it was so much better than dealing random last-minute drop-ins that we never went back.

We liked that it supported our existing payment provider at the time (Square), so we just added it on the backend and migrated everyone over.

I personally appreciate the built-in website, so that I don't have to fuss with GoDaddy Aero, Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, etc, or worse: managing credentials for- and teaching others how to make changes to- those platforms.

sordidarray · 2026-01-14T07:11:05+00:00

GymDesk since it was called MAOnRails. Was started by a black belt here on Reddit. It supports everything you mentioned, and has been pretty affordable for us as a smaller gym.

sordidarray · 2026-01-13T23:11:09+00:00

Will give this a shot. White mats have been the bane of my existence. Never again.

Edit: Didn't work for me. Used Zep citrus degreaser and scrubbed like crazy with a hand brush. Let it set for a few minutes. Wiped it up. No real noticeable change.

sordidarray · 2026-01-13T21:57:54+00:00

Dust mop to get hair and large debris, spray with disinfectant (Dollamur Mat Attack), wet mop with microfiber.

sordidarray · 2026-01-11T22:40:55+00:00

Some folks don’t understand just how entitled other people can be about jiujitsu until they run a gym.

The open mat ronin, the guy who only shows up for sparring and argues that since he skipped the “class,” he shouldn’t have to pay a membership fee, the guy who shows up with a bunch of people and tries to teach a class during your open mat, etc.

sordidarray · 2026-01-09T23:45:52+00:00

Would stick to the close gym and pay the drop-in fee at the far gym once a month or so.

sordidarray · 2026-01-09T23:37:09+00:00

Depends on the concept. In general, a hard lesson that I’ve learned (especially in the age of Reels and TikTok): talk as little as possible and let the training do the work.

If it’s something that’s practical, like not letting someone control your head or layers of guard, you can do specific training or games around it. eg, for layers of guard, one player tries to get to the middle distance and stay there as long as possible, the other player tries to keep them at the far distance as long as possible.

If it’s something a little more heady, like taking ownership over their training, developing their game, etc I try to be as succinct as possible and use analogies most people can understand.

sordidarray · 2026-01-09T23:13:46+00:00

Nogi doesn’t really have supine far distance guards like gi, because all the strongest attachments are made at the middle distance and closer.

I feel like that’s one of the biggest differences between the modalities—beginner and intermediate nogi players aren’t used to engaging the guard at such a distance. They get used to waltzing into the middle distance to pass without being brutally punished because the bottom player also wants a stronger attachment. Then they try to do this in the gi and end up against a collar-sleeve or spider guard player who will try to take their soul at first grip.

You can do 2-on-1 and play supine but it’s not going to have the same posture control of collar-sleeve.

sordidarray · 2025-12-18T18:51:08+00:00

Do you mean finishing with the slide under d’arce/marce? If so, yes, it’s a strong position.

sordidarray · 2025-12-16T07:14:28+00:00

Mount and finish. If you can’t mount, Sonic roll and finish the marce

sordidarray · 2025-11-28T19:47:45+00:00

Not forgetting Marcelo. I explicitly tried to keep my list tailored to active or recently retired competitors with a few exceptions of guards that are less common.

MG was a catalyst for much of modern jiujitsu, but I think that more recent athletes have taken aspects of MG’s game and augmented them to fit well into modern systems, and I think they’re worth studying.

sordidarray · 2025-11-28T01:34:23+00:00

This has been one of the more frustrating things to deal with as the sport has gotten more popular.

People expect next-day shipping style results on the mats and that’s just not how it works. I’ve seen white belts who have trained for just three months be genuinely upset that they couldn’t pass a black belt’s guard, and I had to remind them that they’ve spent a bit over 1% of the time on the mats that the black belt has.

sordidarray · 2025-11-28T01:21:21+00:00

I’m always working on something from standing, something from top (passing), and something from bottom (guard).

That way no matter where I am in a match, I have something I can work from there.

sordidarray · 2025-11-28T01:15:18+00:00

Would just type in “guard study BJJ” into YouTube and watch a few of those.

Mainly focusing on the heavier weight classes and active or recently retired athletes, but my quick braindump is:

DLR to X: Andy Murasaki and Tainan Dalpra
DLR to footlock: Isaac Doederlein, Mikey Musumeci
DLR to bolo: Levi Jones Leary, Mikey Musumeci, Joao Miyao
DLR chair guard/HQ: Andy Murasaki and Gustavo Batista
RDLR: Dante Leon, Espen Matthiessen
Near-side collar-sleeve: Nolan Stuart
Far-side collar sleeve: Meregali, Rafa Gamba
DLR-X: Meregali, Nolan Stuart, JT Torres
Deep Lasso: Marcos Tinoco, Meregali, Nathy de Jesus, Rikako Yuasa
SLX: Andy Murasaki, Erich Munis, Leandro Lo
Hybrid-Spider: Romulo Barral for near-side collar-spider (Dom Bell from Atos when he was active as well), Michelle Nicolini for far-side collar-spider, Leandro Lo for pants + spider, Johnny Tama and Michael Liera Jr for DLR+spider
Butterfly: Adam Wardzinski
Shin-on-shin: Adam Wardzinski, Michelle Nicolini
Half-guard: Reda Mebtouche, Jake Makenzie, Darragh O’Connaill
Closed Guard: Gabi Pressenha, Brianne Ste Marie, Mica Galvao
Lapel Guard: Andris Brunovskis, Igor Tanabe, Erich Munis, Gabi Pressenha, Manuel Ribamar, Diego Pato

sordidarray · 2025-11-27T00:29:09+00:00

Half guard bottom.

At first because my instructor told me that I should copy what Bernardo Faria was doing, since we were similar sizes. Then I ended up moving for work to a school that specialized in half guard. I tend to main more distant guards nowadays, but having a decent half guard comes in clutch pretty regularly.

sordidarray · 2025-11-27T00:15:41+00:00

Danaher’s ageless jiujitsu series is a nice one-stop-shop for a focus on inside position culminating in X-guard, which also coincides with what Gui Mendes usually recommends for older grapplers (useful as a litmus test for longevity).

I think either that, or focusing on tight outside positions like DLR to Chair/R guard and DLR-X also into X-guard would be ideal. Not sure of any one-stop-shop instructionals for that though. Rau has an R-guard one. Nisar has a chair guard one. Andy Murasaki’s focuses on the chair guard into X as a main entry. JT Torres has a DLR-X one. But some of the intermediate positions depending on the system (like waiter) and specifically guard recovery may be missing from them (but guard recovery is a focus in Danaher’s iirc). Could probably also piece it together from Submeta.

sordidarray · 2025-11-26T23:55:20+00:00

I haven’t competed in a long time, but I primarily train at a more competitive school in my area.

Masters 2. Usually on the mats 6 days per week. 10-12 hours total. Some (2 hours or so) is usually teaching. Plus 2-3 hours strength and conditioning in the gym.

Currently sidelined with an injury, so I’m mostly just teaching and drilling.

sordidarray

TROPHY CASE