All levels · Gi & No-Gi
Seventeen classes a week across mornings, middays and evenings — Gi and No-Gi, beginner to black belt. Your first class is free, any class on the timetable.
The program
Almost everybody who walks in here as an adult has never done a combat sport. They are thirty-four, they have a desk job and a bad shoulder, and they have been meaning to do this for two years. That is the normal case, not the exception, and the classes are built around it.
Jiu-jitsu suits adults starting late better than almost any other martial art, for a reason that is not obvious until you have done it: it is the one where being calm, patient and technical beats being young and explosive. A forty-five-year-old who understands position will control a twenty-two-year-old athlete who does not. That happens on our mats most weeks.
We run Gi and No-Gi — the traditional uniform, and the shorts-and-rashguard version — and we run more No-Gi than most academies in the Katy and Fulshear area. You can do one, or both, on the same membership.
Who trains
Three slots a day on most days, so training does not have to be negotiated with the rest of your life.
6:30 AM
Monday to Thursday, before work. Gi on Monday and Wednesday, No-Gi on Tuesday and Thursday. It is the class people are most sceptical about and the one they end up building the week around.
11:00 AM
Monday, Wednesday, Friday. For shift workers, people who work from home, and anybody whose evenings belong to their kids' schedules.
6:30 PM
Monday to Friday, the busiest classes of the day and the best ones for finding training partners your size. Friday evening is the competition class, which anybody is welcome to attend.
Timetable
Trials for adults can be booked into any class on this timetable — there is no beginners-only slot you have to wait for, because there is no class here where a first-timer is a problem. Sunday open mat is free rolling: all levels, all affiliations, including visitors from other academies.
Detail
You will be given a loaner gi if it is a Gi day, shown where to change, and introduced to whoever is nearest. The class starts with a warm-up you can scale down, moves to a technique broken into pieces, and then drilling — you and one partner, taking turns, no resistance. That part is not intimidating and it is most of the class.
At the end there is live training. On a first day you will usually be paired with an experienced person who has been asked to look after you, which means you will lose comfortably and safely for five minutes and learn more in those five minutes than in the previous forty. You can also sit it out. Nobody will mention it.
You will be worse at this than you expect for about three months, and then something clicks. Everybody goes through it. The people who quit almost always quit in week three, which is exactly when it is about to start making sense.
Coaching
Three black belts and two brown belts teaching across the week.
Head Instructor & Owner
Founder of Labyrinth BJJ. Built the academy from the ground up into the #1 ranked team in Texas.
Professor
Deep competition experience and technical precision. Develops athletes at every level from beginner to elite competitor.
Head Coach — Katy
Over 14 years of training, bringing world-class technique and leadership to both academies.
Instructor
Over a decade of training forged into sharp no-gi technique.
Instructor
Nearly a decade on the mat. Leads the Wednesday early morning gi class, bringing technical depth and consistency.
Membership
Eight classes a month. Gi, No-Gi and competition classes, plus open mat.
Twelve a month — the middle option most people settle on.
Every class on the timetable, competition training and open mat.
Punch cards for adults are $160 for five classes or $100 for three, and they never expire. Private lessons run $60–$120 an hour. Everything is month to month with 30 days notice to cancel.
Questions
No, and waiting until you are is the single most common reason people never start. Jiu-jitsu will get you in shape — you build the specific conditioning it needs by doing it, and there is no fitness test at the door. Scale the warm-up, sit out a round when you need to, and let the fitness arrive on its own.
No. A meaningful share of our adult students started after forty, and jiu-jitsu is the martial art most forgiving of a late start because leverage and patience beat athleticism in it more often than in anything else. Train at your pace, tap early, and you will still be doing this in fifteen years.
Gi is the traditional uniform, and the jacket and trousers become part of the game — grips, collar chokes, sweeps off the sleeve. No-Gi is a rashguard and shorts: faster, more wrestling-like, nothing to hold on to. Most people here do both, and the two make each other better. If you have no instinct either way, come to whichever class fits your schedule first.
For a first class, athletic clothes with no zippers or pockets, and a water bottle. We will lend you a gi if it is a Gi class. Trim your nails. That is the entire list.
Two is enough to improve steadily. Three is where most people find progress becomes obvious. The 8-class membership is built for the first case and unlimited for the second — and you can move between them month to month, because nothing here is on a contract.
Yes, any time. Come and sit at the side of a class. But a free trial costs you the same as watching and tells you far more, so most people who mean to watch end up on the mats within about ten minutes.
Any class on the timetable, no commitment, borrowed gi if you need one. Book it online or call the academy and we will find you a slot that works.