Your First Time on the Mat and What to Expect

If you’ve never trained jiu jitsu or grappled before, your first time on the mat can be quite intimidating. At Bodhi Collaborative, we do our best to make everyone feel welcome and ease them into our program. While you’re more than welcome to come in and observe a class, we encourage you to participate with our one-week FREE trial. It’s really the only way you’ll get a true feel of our program and you have nothing to lose. Here’s what you can expect at Bodhi Collaborative if you’re new to jiu jitsu:

• Our warms-ups were designed to do just that: warm you up. Getting the blood flowing, building up a layer of sweat and stretching your muscles are important in the prevention of injuries. Our warms-ups aren’t designed to prove who is the fittest in class. In fact, we feel you shouldn’t be totally fatigued when doing technique. Your mind and body need to be fresh in order to understand, perform and retain proper technique. In addition, our warm-ups incorporate movements specific to jiu jitsu, so each serve an important purpose.

• There are often two very experienced black belts in each class. So even if our classes get quite large, you’ll have proper instructors watching over you.

• We will pair you with a more experienced student during technique and drilling. We’ve built a culture on learning and helping our teammates. All of our blue belts and above are more than willing to partner with a new white belt to show them the ropes.   

• Sparring for a brand new student is decided on a case-by-case bases. If you’ve never done any form of grappling before, we may ask you to observe for a few classes before we allow you to spar. During those classes, you may be partnered with a higher ranked student or the instructor during sparring to go over positions and introduce you to the concept of sparring. When we feel you are ready to spar, we will again usually pair you with other students who we feel can expedite your learning. If you’ve had grappling experience, or feel fit enough to spar, you may do so with the instructors approval. You’ll quickly find that sparring becomes the favorite part of class for most students. 


What to bring:

• Plenty of water to keep hydrated

• Mouthpiece, cup, and ear protection are optional. These are needed mainly for sparring.

• A good attitude!


The first step in your jiu jitsu journey is walking through our door. Everyone has had a "first time on the mat." It can easily be the hardest thing for some people to do, but often times it's the most memorable. 

Contact us to schedule your one-week FREE trial. We look forward to seeing you soon!

---