How to choose between two martial arts gyms

The short version: check the timetable first, because it is the only thing that can rule a gym out without leaving your house. Then visit two of them at the hour you would really be training, ask who teaches the beginners class, and count how many people are at your level. Pick one and start. A third visit is usually procrastination in a nicer coat.

It helps to split the decision in two, because almost everything written about choosing a gym mixes the halves together. There is exactly one thing you can judge from a website, and that is whether the classes you could attend exist on the nights you are free. Everything else that actually matters, who teaches, who trains there, what the room feels like at 7pm on a Tuesday, cannot be read off a page at all. So do the paper filtering quickly and spend your effort on the part that needs you to be in the building.

Rule gyms out on paper first

The timetable is the whole of the desk research, and it is worth being strict about it.

You are not looking at how many classes a gym runs. You are looking for how many classes you could get to, which is a much smaller number once you have taken out the children's classes, the ones during your working day, and the ones on nights you are not free. We went through that arithmetic in what gym timetables actually contain, and the related point that a weeknight session costs an evening rather than an hour.

Expect to have to ask for it. Of the gyms whose own websites we read while building our directory, fewer than half published a full weekly timetable. Plenty of good gyms have a thin website, so a missing schedule is not a mark against the gym, it just means the answer comes by email instead. Ask for the adult timetable specifically, and ask which classes are beginner-friendly rather than which classes exist.

The other paper criterion is distance, and it deserves more weight than people give it. Over a year the closer gym wins, because it is the one you still go to when the day was long. Twenty minutes closer beats a better coach forty minutes away more often than anyone wants to admit.

Visit at the hour you would actually train

This is the single most useful thing in this post and it costs nothing.

If you would be training Tuesday and Thursday at 7pm, visit on a Tuesday at 7pm. Not the Saturday open mat, not the quiet lunchtime session, not an evening that happened to suit your week. Gyms are not one thing. The Tuesday 7pm class and the Saturday morning one can have different coaches, a different number of people, a different average age and an almost unrecognisable atmosphere, and the one you are choosing is the one you would be in fifty times a year.

While you are there, notice how full the mat is. Too empty and you will run out of suitable partners; too full and you will spend the class waiting for space. Neither is disqualifying, but both are things you can only see at the right hour.

Find out who teaches the beginners class

Gyms are marketed on their head coach and you will often be taught by someone else.

That is not a criticism. At a larger academy it is completely normal for the named black belt to take the advanced sessions and competition team while an assistant or a senior student runs fundamentals. Often the assistant is the better teacher of beginners, because that is what they do all week. But it does mean the person on the website may not be the person you learn from, so ask directly: who teaches the beginners class, and will they be teaching it on the night I come?

Then watch that person. Do they correct people individually or just demonstrate and walk away? Do they notice the person struggling at the back? That is the thing you are actually buying, far more than any lineage or medal count, and fifteen minutes of watching tells you most of it.

Count the people at your level, and the people like you

This is the easiest check to make and the one almost nobody makes.

Look around the room and count how many people are obviously new. In the gi arts the belts make it trivial; elsewhere you can usually tell within a couple of minutes. Being the only beginner in a room of experienced people is a genuinely harder start: you are the odd one out every time the class pairs up, every round is against someone far better, and progress is harder to see because you have nobody to measure against. Being one of four beginners is a completely different experience of the same sport.

If the gym runs a dedicated beginners course with an intake, that solves this outright and is worth a lot. If it does not, ask how many people have started in the last couple of months.

Then look at who else is on the mat, because for a lot of people this matters more than anything above. If you are a woman, are there other women training in the class you would be in, and does the gym run a women's class or a women's open mat? Some gyms have a third of the mat female and some have nobody, and that difference changes the experience of every partner drill. It is a completely reasonable thing to ask about before you visit, and a gym that answers it well is telling you something. The same goes for age and size. If you are 45, a room of nineteen-year-old competitors is a harder place to start than one with a spread of ages, and if you are small, it helps to know somebody else is too.

The composition of the room also tells you what the gym is for. Medals on the wall, a young athletic mat and a competition team is a different proposition from a mixed-age room of people training twice a week. Neither is better, but joining a competition gym when you want a hobby, or the reverse, is one of the commonest mismatches there is. Ask whether most members compete.

Watch the last five minutes

Stay until the class ends, and watch what happens next.

Do people pack up and leave immediately, or do they sit on the mat and talk? Does anyone introduce themselves to you, the stranger standing at the side? Do people arrange to train together, or mention going for food? Five minutes at the end of a session tells you whether you are joining a group of people or buying a service, and for most adults who stick with a martial art, the group of people is the reason they stayed.

Neither answer is wrong. Some people want a class, not a club. But it is worth knowing which one you are signing up for.

Look at the changing rooms

Unglamorous, and it decides more than people expect.

Are there showers, and do they work? If you would train before work, at lunchtime, or anywhere you have to be presentable afterwards, a gym without a decent shower is not a gym you can use, however good the coaching is. Are there lockers, or does everyone pile their bag at the edge of the mat? Is there somewhere to change that is not a corridor?

Look at the mats too. In the grappling arts you spend the hour with your face on them, so whether they are cleaned properly is a genuine health question rather than fussiness, and the state of the toilets is usually a fair proxy for how the whole place is run. You are not looking for a health club. You are looking for evidence that somebody takes care of it.

Price, trials and the small print

Ask first whether you can try a class before paying for anything. Many gyms run a free trial session or a paid drop-in, and where one exists it settles most of this post for you in an hour. If the answer is no, ask whether you can come and watch instead.

On price, compare the annual total rather than the monthly fee, because that is where gyms differ most. Two gyms advertising similar monthly prices can be a long way apart once you add an association licence, grading fees, required kit and whether the mat fee covers every class or only some of them. A more expensive gym can be entirely worth it, and the question is not which is cheaper but what you get for the gap: more classes you can actually attend, better facilities, a beginners programme. If you cannot name what the extra buys, it is probably not buying anything.

Then the small print, which varies a lot and compounds over a year. Is there a minimum term, and what is the notice period to stop? What happens if you are injured or travelling for a month, and can membership be frozen? Does the price include gradings, an association licence and any required kit, or are those separate? And what does a typical year come to in total?

A gym that answers all of that plainly and in one message is telling you something useful about how it is run. So is one that will not put it in writing.

Two is enough

Visit two. Pick the one you would find it easier to reach on a bad week, which is usually the closer one with the beginners class on the right nights.

Then start, and give it six weeks before you decide anything. Almost nobody enjoys their first two sessions at any gym, so a judgement made on night one is mostly a judgement about being a beginner rather than about the gym. Six weeks in, you will know.

If you have not built the shortlist yet, our directory lists gyms with their published timetables where they have one, which is the fastest way to get from a map to two names. And if you want to know what the first session will actually be like before you go, we have written that up for jiu-jitsu and for karate.