chargining for open mats, opinions?

BJJ Coffee Drinker said: ↑
Some of the guys coming in used to be paying members, always came to class late, only rolled and never di technique. They eventually stopped their membership, still come to our open mat (no mat fee) and I noticed they basically try and hit up all the other free open mats in town

That started to bother me
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To prevent this, my school requires you to have some kind of affiliation or endorsement before you can attend an open mat. We have people occasionally in town for work and they ask to drop in. My coach takes this seriously enough that if the only available day they can come is an open mat day, my coach always asks where they train and calls their instructor. Sometimes we have people show up from out of town without calling first and he has to make a judgement call (typically if they are brown belt or up he allows it), but this system seems to work well for us.
 
Revolve the free open mat around the area schools. The rest of the time members open mat.

You get to train with the community once a month or so....And clean up plus all the rest that comes with hosting a large group of sweat hogs.....And then have your guys ether train on the home mat or travel with the pack.

We use to do that in the Boston area but pay a mat fee, so home mat was free refining Nage No Kata, traveling was some clubs a paid class, then Randori tourny prep.

It made weekends super fun meeting and training with challenging people for the whole day.

Try the revolving thing or charge a $5 "cleaning fee" for non members.
 
j123 said:
Its a thing to consider, you have the crazies dropping by to call out the fighters to prove something. You have no idea who this guy is, and what if he's there to injure the competitors when they're in the middle of camp.
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Just curious if anyone has ever experienced something like this?

I think it's really awesome if a gym has a free open mat, but I've found this to be pretty rare. Open mats to me have always been "the gym, is open, no one is teaching, do what you want." It's absolutely the right of the gym to charge visitors. If you're not gonna charge, maybe an invitation or member sponsorship system would be best.
 
I have never associated open mat with free. I think most schools charge some form of mat fee and that is fine. Living in NYC you don't really associate anything with free.

The only school I know of that has free open mat time is Unity and they have three free sessions a week.

My school has an open drilling class and that is followed by open mat time. The open drilling is for members to come in and practice what techniques they want. Then following that it is open mat and people can start to roll or continue to drill. This is free for members but visitors pay a drop in fee.
 
I think it's wild people would call a gym cheap for charging for an open mat. You need an instructor there, rent, and insurance. If anything I would charge to keep out the weirdos like others have said.
If people talk shit, tell them to rent a space buy high grade mats, get insured, and have a black belt there to make sure people aren't doing dangerous shit.
 
I remember one instructor saying to me and my friend when we visited another gym that he wouldn't charge us for a drop in fee since we were paying member of another school as long our school welcome his sturns too.
 
Oshime2 said:
Just curious if anyone has ever experienced something like this?

I think it's really awesome if a gym has a free open mat, but I've found this to be pretty rare. Open mats to me have always been "the gym, is open, no one is teaching, do what you want." It's absolutely the right of the gym to charge visitors. If you're not gonna charge, maybe an invitation or member sponsorship system would be best.
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Yes, at a famous gym in San Diego, my friend was told that outsiders are not allowed at open mats because some just wants to bully white belts that just happened to train at a famous academy.


Another gym closer to home has a famous brand name.
A blue belt came to visit the open mats. After struggling to pass a white belt guard, he heelhooked him.
 
Crotalis said:
To prevent this, my school requires you to have some kind of affiliation or endorsement before you can attend an open mat. We have people occasionally in town for work and they ask to drop in. My coach takes this seriously enough that if the only available day they can come is an open mat day, my coach always asks where they train and calls their instructor. Sometimes we have people show up from out of town without calling first and he has to make a judgement call (typically if they are brown belt or up he allows it), but this system seems to work well for us.
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Our school is the same way. My coach doesn’t call around but he does ask where you train. If you are a student somewhere, then you can come to open mat for free.
 
One thing about strangers coming to your school is that some schools don't have high hygiene standards. Most of time there was a ringworm outbreak it was just after a visitor, when there are no visitors for a while... No new cases
 
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Calibur said:
I've never associated open mat with free.

I associate open mat with unstructured.

Grab someone, roll, drill, pick their brain. Whatever.
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same here.. never heard of a free open mat till now
 
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