Reasons (random and not in preferential order):- No contract. We do expect you to set up an automatic payment but there is no contract.
- No sign up fee.
- We disclose our price on our website. It is 20 dollars per week. We do not make a secret about our fees.
- Do not think that good quality gyms must be expensive. Lot of more expansive gyms would argue that you pay more for quality by stating things like: "Things typically cost about what they’re worth..."
- No hidden fees. Lot of gyms are not telling you about extra costs that would occur through out your training. Some gyms charges extra for graduations. They actually hide the extra costs by offering some form of technical seminars.
- We do charge 50 dollars for grading which happens when you move up belt.We use the money to buy pizzas for the end of the semester. We spent over $300 for pizzas and soft drink during our last graduation.
- We have a flat fee for grading of $50. Some gym charges more for "higher" belts such as blue belt (100$), purple belt (200$), brown belt (300$), black belt (400$).
- We do not force you to buy our uniforms. You are free to buy any brand of uniforms. Be aware of the gyms that would force to buy over priced uniforms and patches.
-We do have a fundamental program set up for 6 months. With our program which can be seen on our website, we plan ahead and follow a 12 weeks program that repeats twice per semester. The program has been created to cover all the required fundamental techniques of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Be aware of gyms that cannot or will not disclose their program. You would not go to an University program without been given a clear program of what you will be learning.
- We promote our own students. Some gyms cannot promote their own students and must fly in some other instructors (which means extra costs for seminars).
-We do not run seminars. However, it means that our students can go to any seminars available in New Zealand. Beware of gyms that run 3 to 5 seminars per year (some of them can cost around $200 each). It would mean an extra 600 to 1000$ per year on top of your fees. It is great if you can afford it. But often, this is not disclose at time of enrollment. Did you ever had to pay more to learn when you went to school because they flew in a new teacher?
- We are not the best gym in Auckland but it means we try harder. We do not consider any other BJJ gyms as competitors. In fact, we are not competing with the BJJ gyms (that are often run by professionals and/or supported by volunteers instructors). There is lot of students and different target group for all the gyms in Auckland. s. While some gyms would try to entice you to sign up by showing medals and/or some form of authenticity, we just advertise our price and teaching program instead.
-We are not just competition or just self defense oriented. We do support our students compete if they chose to. We do not force students to compete and would never give a preferential treatment to our competitors over our hobbyist students. We look at self defense as a by product of BJJ training and not the main focus of our training. You improve your grappling skills against trained and resisting sparring partner. That would provide you with skills that you can use in case of self defense. We just do not only train for self defence.
- We will close our enrollment once we are full. In order to have a good ratio of students and instructor but also the safety of training on the mats, we stop taking new students once we have our quota.
- We do not offer privates classes. We only offer group classes and we do try to answer and help our any students on their personal requests. Some gyms offers private classes but at the same time they only cares about their private clients. This does not create a productive community of people sharing information as they are only interested into funneling customers into paying more more money for something they already paid for (so to speak). Instructors and other students do not want to help out unless there is extra financial benefits.
