Heavyweight wrecking machine Lee Beane spoke to me recently about his interest in doing school reviews, and we are asking for a little help from the readers. Before I get into the help, I want to mention how excited I am to have a guy like Lee on board, and interested in doing reviews. School reviews have been some of the most popular articles we’ve done in the past, as they seem to get read over and over, no matter how old they are. People are always looking for places to train, and reviews have been a big help to some people.
The plan is to do one new school a month, and Lee will reach out to the school owner to let him know when he’s coming, and he’ll train a few days at the school. After that, he’ll write about what he thought of the school.
Here’s where the help from readers comes in…we need to come up with a list of questions we want answered every time that will paint an accurate picture of the school. The goal is to not only view the school from Lee’s eyes, but through everyone’s eyes…and what I mean by that is Lee is a professional MMA fighter in the HWT division, and he has a serious wrestling background…so someone like Lee may not personally choose a school like Lauzon MMA to train at, because they don’t have a ton of heavyweights. However, they have one of the very best gyms in New England for professional 135-155 pound pro fighters…and other gyms may not have a big fight team, but may be the perfect gym for people who want a structured class schedule that allows them to learn some basic MMA skills, but doesn’t involve a ton of sparring.
Lee and I talked for quite a while the other night, and it was obvious that this was going to be a huge undertaking. Every question we ask leads to another question, and we want to come up with a list that accurately depicts the school, but where do we draw the line? How many questions are too many?
Here is what I have so far. I’m thinking we answer each question twice, once for “fighters” and once for everyone else.
General Gym Questions:
What does the gym have for ammenities? Shower, sauna, juice bar, lockers etc..
How much equipment? Mat space, ring, cage, heavybags, weights etc..
Private training offered?
Gi classes offered?
Class Schedule:
How many beginner classes, how many advanced classes?
How many women train at the gym? Seperate women’s classes? Children’s classes?
How many instructors? How easy is it to get an instructor to work with you? (If I’m a 40 year old man looking for exercise, will I be ignored by instructors? Will an instructor do pad work with me during nowmal gym hours, or would I have to pay for private instruction to get things like that etc)
Are the classes mixed ability levels, meaning if I’m looking to fight as a pro, will I have to grapple with new guys? If I’m a new guy, will I be expected to grapple with crazy pro fighters with head tats?
For Fighters:
How much sparring can I get in?
Are there top level guys I can spar or grapple with?
Are there guys my weight?
How good are the BJJ, wrestling, boxing and kickboxing instructors?
Conditioning program, or conditioning classes offered?
I have a few more questions to add, but this is a good start. What else would you guys like to see answered? Is there a breakdown that would make more sense?
Should we come up with some type of rating system for each? Like, should we have a “score” for each school in different categories? I mean, it would be easy to comment on how Lauzon MMA and Renzo Gracie NH are both great schools if you’re a 155 pound pro fighter, but would you guys want to know which one we feel is better, and have us tell you which we think is better in the form of a “grade?”
Give us your ideas, and we’re going to work on a format that will make everyone happy.
ALSO – Anyone who has any suggestions or input for Fighter of the Month, please send me an EMail to make your case. There’s not always a glaring obvious choice (see August ’10) so sometimes interesting side stories can help. Someone may have won there first Pro fight which may not seem like a big deal to everyone but if they did it after a two year battle with cancer, while living in a car, after serving in Afghanistan, etc. – anything that will make for an interesting selection.
Email me @ MFHoxie @ yahoo
Thanks!
PS – I’ll have to stop this immediately if people email me and then whine about it when someone else wins.
nice , good job lee for stepping up .
first i would like to know what experience the teachers have in mma . are or were they fighters ? at what level did they fight .
next is there room to grow in the school ? can a child train then move on to higher classes ?
were did the school come from ? was it a guy that took classes for a year or is there a serious conection to other schools with greater experience .
as a fighter are you going to get the support needed and conections to climb the latter ?
are there experienced cornermen at the school ?
i could go on but thats it for now . thanks , michael
I think the reviews are a great idea, but ranking the schools will probably give you more headaches than you are probably looking for. The best way to offer a grade would be to do it rottentomatoes style and have a composite grade of many reviewers, that way you can eliminate some of the individual bias of a single bad review or a single great review.
Easier said than done, of course.
My suggestion would be to let Lee offer his opinions, get the question lists answered and let people make up their minds without starting the ratings war.
Rankings would be a bad idea but a school review would be cool as hell. A small interview with the owner of the school would be cool too. I always wonder how other schools train and it would give an insight to that type of training. Rankings would involved too much loyalty and too much bullshit by anonymous posters.
Rick,
Have you ever thought about making a thread topic which would allow school owners or fighters a chance to list their contact information in order to get fights. I know as a match maker, it would be beneficial. Maybe you could start one in order to allow newer school and fighters a chance to be contacted.
Rankings are the wrong word…I meant something like a grade.
The reason I think this is important is because Lee may have similar things to say about two schools…like, both schools may have nice locker rooms, but one might be an A+ and another might be a B…either way, both nice locker rooms.
More than welcome to come check out Pro Fitness & MMA in Fall River, MA….Don Banville teachs all bjj and mma classes. Muay Thai coachs are Ben Pittsley and Wade Therrien. 10,000 sq ft with full gym, cardio equipment, large locker rooms and MMA cage…for more info check out http://www.profitnessmma.com
Questions:
How many active pro fighters train there? (active = fought in last X weeks/months/years)
Do they have any women fighters?
Do they have any women only classes?
The other thing is that some gyms might focus more on one particular art than another. Like BJJ (Gi), submission wrestling (no-gi), Muay Thai, boxing, etc etc. Some people might be interested in knowing that.