chargining for open mats, opinions?

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I currently train, teach, and help run the school I currently train at. When we opened, out school was smaller and slowly grew. We offered open mat on the weekends, free of charge with no mat fee. We didn't advertise this online due to our space limitations.

slowly, the one mat grew and in addition to many of the monthly paying members, others from an MMA school we branched off started coming over. Mostly word of mouth and more people started coming, friends of friends. Its getting to the point the mats are pretty crowded and people have to sit out

Because of this huge increase of bodies, its making things more difficult for people training. I especially value the experiences for people who are paying the monthly fee over non-paying visitors. I was thinking of starting to charge a mat fee for non-monthly paying students to visitors of open mat. Something small like $10-$15. what are your guys experiences and opinions of this?
 
Good idea for the already paying members. It's only fair to the paying members. But at the same time, it's a guarantee the non-paying visitors won't come for sure. No gyms charges for open mat. You'll also risk those people talking shit about your gym on social media, saying shits like you guys are cheap fuckers, doesn't even wanna offer free open mat anymore and want to make a buck, blah blah blah. People are like that, it's a given.
 
Open mat by definition should be free. If it’s too big of a crowd, you’ll have to have someone control who rolls and who sits out.

Alternatively, don’t call it an open mat. Make it a “community class” or something and keep it free for your paying students and charge $10 for visitors.
 
I'm frankly surprised that open mats tend to be free. Everyone should be charging.
 
I currently train, teach, and help run the school I currently train at. When we opened, out school was smaller and slowly grew. We offered open mat on the weekends, free of charge with no mat fee. We didn't advertise this online due to our space limitations.

slowly, the one mat grew and in addition to many of the monthly paying members, others from an MMA school we branched off started coming over. Mostly word of mouth and more people started coming, friends of friends. Its getting to the point the mats are pretty crowded and people have to sit out

Because of this huge increase of bodies, its making things more difficult for people training. I especially value the experiences for people who are paying the monthly fee over non-paying visitors. I was thinking of starting to charge a mat fee for non-monthly paying students to visitors of open mat. Something small like $10-$15. what are your guys experiences and opinions of this?
Gotta look out for the paying members first. I'd say charge or only allow non members roll if there's space
 
I go to our schools open mat everyone in a while. The thing that bothers me is there is a small group of guys I have come across that do not pay monthly fees anywhere. They know where all the open mats are and that is how they train 2 to 4 times a week.
Maybe work out a deal with the most popular schools that show up. The for every one else charge 5 or 10 bucks. If there is enough guys order pizza with the money after
 
maybe an indirect way to help with this is to simply put out essentially a tip jar. people who want to contribute, people who dont dont.

it wont directly decrease the volume at open mat initially, but perhaps over time a natural social pressure to contribute once in a while will develop and eventually tighten up the classes (and getting the school some monetary compensation.)



ive known of instructors in honolulu that a while back had an issue essentially with guys who identified open mats around the island and managed to essentially train for free on a regular basis by hopping to different ones that ran on different days.
 
Personally, I come from a gym where open mats were NOT open to the public.
It was a time allocated to the paying members of the gym to use the mats and do what ever they want to do.
Hence, the paid instructor does NOT have to come and work.

I am actually surprise on how and why the BJJ community would frowning upon the above policy.

I think it is disrespectful to offer a free open mats which they technically paying for and letting some free loaders come and enjoy what their hard earned paid for. Would you like your private pool opening up for free to others on Saturday?

Now, I can understand that it is nice to training for others (no politics blah..blah..) but lot of the time, some of the open mats I went to just attracted some weirdos or people that just do want to be members because they do not want to pay anything or also they do not want to learn anything , they just want to roll and go home.
I think they do not have the intention to sign up so they can't learn more and therefore improve.

I do not think I would ever bother with the drama of hosting an open mats.

In fact, I teach a fundamental class on Saturday instead,
 
i think the culture of open mats is a bit strange as well, but i do very much enjoy training with people i dont see on a regular basis as well (especially since ive basically never encountered anyone unpleasant just yet.)

i think an ideal way to do it is to have a system between nearby dojo's where any active paying membership at any dojo gets you membership to any open mat within that system.
 
Open mat by definition should be free. If it’s too big of a crowd, you’ll have to have someone control who rolls and who sits out.

Alternatively, don’t call it an open mat. Make it a “community class” or something and keep it free for your paying students and charge $10 for visitors.

I've never associated open mat with free.

I associate open mat with unstructured.

Grab someone, roll, drill, pick their brain. Whatever.
 
I currently train, teach, and help run the school I currently train at. When we opened, out school was smaller and slowly grew. We offered open mat on the weekends, free of charge with no mat fee. We didn't advertise this online due to our space limitations.

slowly, the one mat grew and in addition to many of the monthly paying members, others from an MMA school we branched off started coming over. Mostly word of mouth and more people started coming, friends of friends. Its getting to the point the mats are pretty crowded and people have to sit out

Because of this huge increase of bodies, its making things more difficult for people training. I especially value the experiences for people who are paying the monthly fee over non-paying visitors. I was thinking of starting to charge a mat fee for non-monthly paying students to visitors of open mat. Something small like $10-$15. what are your guys experiences and opinions of this?

Let's ignore the fact that you facilitate a service that you should be reimbursed for.

These open mats are run in your gym and offer no advantage to your students that it does not offer to strangers. I think that's kind of unfair to your guys.

But it depends on context. If you feel the extra practice your students get from strangers has higher value than cash AND mat space, then go ahead and keep things the same.
 
I've never associated open mat with free.

I associate open mat with unstructured.

Grab someone, roll, drill, pick their brain. Whatever.

All the open mats in my area are free and open to anyone. There are 6-7 schools in the area that do this and they all have different affiliations. The schools that have unstructured classes simply don’t list them on their schedule or call them something besides open mats.
 
I go to our schools open mat everyone in a while. The thing that bothers me is there is a small group of guys I have come across that do not pay monthly fees anywhere. They know where all the open mats are and that is how they train 2 to 4 times a week.
Maybe work out a deal with the most popular schools that show up. The for every one else charge 5 or 10 bucks. If there is enough guys order pizza with the money after
I think that shit bothers everyone. The cheap asshole freeloaders seems to know where all the open mats are and they're able to train at least 4 times a week. And they don't even represent any gyms at a tournament. They usually just register themselves as "independent gym", Hahaha. Fuck those cheap asshole losers.
 
Open Mat=Part of the price of a membership imo.

If you don't have a membership you should be paying to use the facility.
 
The gym where I train has an openmat once a month. At other times the same timeslot is reserved for normal bjj classes. By openmat i mean, everyone can come and train no matter where they are from. At other times the mat is usable 24/7 for those who pay gym fees
 
I don't know when 'open mat' evolved into training bjj for free. Open mat was a day when the instructor wasnt teaching, but the gym was open to members to come train and roll with one another.

Of course you could bring a friend along who may be interested in training but wasn't sure about it, with the intention of that person deciding to become a paying member or not at some point in the near future. It was never meant to be a free class forever, for a non-paying person. I never assumed it was a free class open to the general public or should be.
 
As a school owner, I see no advantage of offering free open mats. My students are welcomed to visit other schools and compete in tournaments, but if you do offer open mat, I would recommend charging.
 
I don't run a regularly scheduled open mat, but I have had about 5 of them so far since I've been open. 2 have been tied to grand opening/first classes. 1 has been a "charity" open mat where we donated proceeds to hurricane relief in Houston (we are in Dallas) and raised over $1k, and 2 have been "holiday's" (Labor/Thanksgiving).

I have not charged and do not plan to charge for open mats as it's not a consistent thing, and I enjoy other people/friends coming in to train/give my guys different looks. I do not charge drop in fee's for people IF they have another school they train at and it's a once a month or less thing as well. If it's a weekly thing/supplemental training, I do charge then. I'm part of BJJ Globetrotters so all out of towners do not get charged, if they try to pay a mat fee I ask them to buy a t-shirt instead. Those that say you should charge for open mat, that's your opinion. I prefer it to be open to people dropping in and rolling. If you are an "open mat surfer" and I know you don't have a school, then I'll ask for a mat fee. But as a professional courtesy to my friends with schools, their guys are welcome at anytime as most of them have let me or my students drop in for free as well (as long as it's not abused).
 
I like the idea of not charging for open mats, as a way to keep the community of different gyms near each other connected. By allowing each to visit each other as a show of good will.

But I can't blame anyone who charges outsiders to participate in open mats because there are guys who don't join schools and just go to bunches of open mats to get little bits of technique. If a guy comes to your open mat every week, but never joins your school then that's a little unfair.
 
Personally, I come from a gym where open mats were NOT open to the public.
It was a time allocated to the paying members of the gym to use the mats and do what ever they want to do.
Hence, the paid instructor does NOT have to come and work.


I am actually surprise on how and why the BJJ community would frowning upon the above policy.

I think it is disrespectful to offer a free open mats which they technically paying for and letting some free loaders come and enjoy what their hard earned paid for. Would you like your private pool opening up for free to others on Saturday?

Now, I can understand that it is nice to training for others (no politics blah..blah..) but lot of the time, some of the open mats I went to just attracted some weirdos or people that just do want to be members because they do not want to pay anything or also they do not want to learn anything , they just want to roll and go home.
I think they do not have the intention to sign up so they can't learn more and therefore improve.

I do not think I would ever bother with the drama of hosting an open mats.

In fact, I teach a fundamental class on Saturday instead,

This is the way it was 10 years ago. Open mats were for paying members to come roll with other paying members, no instruction. Drill if you wanted to, but most just chose to roll.

Seems like in recent years I've seen gyms advertising its open mat as "BJJ is one big family, no drama here, we train with everyone, etc." I assume with this change in ethos also came the idea that open mats should be free. If you want to roll with folks from the crosstown gym, you'll have to keep it free. Not many are going to pay $10-20 to roll on a Sunday afternoon at a different gym.

Charging a fee is a time-honored way of limiting scare resources (the scarce resource being the mat.)
 
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