Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Heinz.
Hi Michael, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I own a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school in new Braunfels Texas and I have done so for the last 5 1/2 years. Before that I lived in East Asia for 15 years I lived in Japan for two years before moving to South Korea and living there for 13 1/2 years. In Korea, I was a professor of rhetoric and that is where I met my wife Kaylee who is Korean we got married we had children. My wife was a freelance interpreter so we stayed in Korea for her career. After a decade of that, we decided to relocate to the United States and I decided to open a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school.
We came to Texas, which is not where I’m from because when I open the gym, I got an offer of assistance from Rob Wolf, a prominent diet guru who ran some of the first commercially successful CrossFit gyms and he helped us open our gym in 2020. Despite the Covid lockdown by the end of the first year, we had over 100 members. Now we have over 300 members. We offer Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai kickboxing for kids and adults.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
One of the biggest challenges, we faced right away was the lockdown which happened within two weeks of our opening our gym. Also, during 2020, we had to have strict protocols of who could train with whom because of all of the Covid concerns of that. Despite all of that, we still were able to create a very successful gym and a very successful gym culture.
We’ve been impressed with SBG New Braunfels Brazilian Jiu Jitsu School, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Our school specializes in making good people dangerous to bad people. What sets us apart from other schools that offer training in the combat arts is our dedication to safety despite the need to provide authentic combat skills. Our safety protocols are applied rigidly and vigorously, which is not easy because we train a lot of our arts with what we call aliveness. Aliveness means that we are training with partners who are resisting intelligently and without a lot of restriction.
We are also unique in terms of the level of cleaning that we do in our facility we keep things spotless and shiny.
Another unique component of what we do is that we are able to balance out the self-defense and sport interest in the art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai kickboxing. Often schools do either pure self-defense or pure sport and we strike a balance in providing both.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
If you plan to open martial arts studio, I think it is important to decide whether you are doing this fundamentally as an expanded hobby or as a commercial venture. Once you have decided which one you are doing, then you should judge yourself accordingly and create metrics that will measure the type of success that you’re trying to achieve.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sbgnewbraunfels.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sbg_texas?igsh=ZXZiMTQ1ZHZwYjNi&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1EzdmtADDq/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sbg-new-braunfels-brazilian-jiu-jitsu-school-8bb83a225?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@sbgnewbraunfelstexasbjj3784?si=rfxNO8nKHdkllUA7
