Any talk of opening a 10P Utah?

Just curious if there is anyone talking or thinking about opening an affiliate in Utah. If not let me be the first :-)
I still have a grip to learn from Derek Stewart and Eddie, but so far I think those are my long term goals, to spread the 10P gospel to the Utahn's. If someone is thinking about it, let's talk. I'm a few years away from moving back at a minimum, but I know from experience Utah is in desperate need of some good no gi JJ.

Salt Lake Grappling Club are 10P ronins for years now

Nothing planned for Utah, they've been silent, waiting in the wings maybe? :)

It's definitely a jiu jitsu hot spot, if I don't see one pop up in the next couple years I'm planning a hostile take over. Lol, 10P is definitely the future of jiu jitsu even with a gi.

Where would you open it? Salt lakr county is already pretty saturated, and Layton/Ogden has gyms opening and then dying quick

Yeah, I would probably aim for downtown Ogden or Layton, maybe Sandy so I could get people from Utah County and Salt Lake County etc. There would definitely be a lot of foundation/footwork and advertising work involved, but I think I could use some connections since I lived there most of my life, as far as a building I would probably use some inheritance money to buy the spot and keep overhead low, but I'd have to work that one out. That's just a quick blueprint, give me some time and I'll come up with a legit business plan.

This is something we talk about at the Salt Lake Grappling Club on at least a weekly basis.

Like Gray said, we have been Ronin (and competing) since Jiu-Jitsu Unleashed came out in 2005. Actually, I remember visiting Eddie's site even before that when the only technique he had up was a triangle off meathook (if I recall correctly).

Are you from North Davis County or Ogden area, BJ?

Man, I don't know how many people are going to travel from Salt Lake to Layton or Ogden to train these days. There is a decent amount of car traffic going that way now.

You really should visit SLGC next time you're in town BJ, Pat and Jack are just beasts. Pat makes me regularly regret life decisions on the mat.

Sandy isn't probably the best spot. You have a choke hold with Unified and Absolute on the sport market and then Horn has the MMA market. As of now, the only BJJ in Logan is under Rulon (lol). Layton/Cherry Hills area is probably ripe for the picking, its basically only One Hit right there.

+1 on what Gray said about Sandy. Jeremy Horn/Unified/Absolute is a lot of competition for one suburban area of SLC.

I'm from Ogden, I don't really feel like Horn has all that much business, both unified and absolute are awesome clubs, but I feel like if we got a few ronins together and went and tore up the Champion Grappler submission tourney right before a soft open or something and spread the word the power of 10P and Eddie's rep could corner thr market from horn etc. Maybe do a couple seminars with Eddie, Einstein, Denny etc to get the ball rolling and at least get people to come through the door. Like I said I'm just snowballing right now. Glad to see some Utah lovr on the forums though!!

Champion Grappler went under awhile ago.

Horn's is pretty busy, not as big as Unified or Absolute when I've gone there but not dead either.

Really? So no more sub only in Utah or did someone rise up?

No more tournaments really. There's one through USAW, but I heard it isn't that great

Full disclosure: I trained at Horn's off and on from like 2005-2010.

Yeah, Horn's may not be as commercially oriented as some of the other gyms (less focus on fitness type classes to draw in the lucrative housewife and kid demographics), but his gym has a pretty significant draw on all the no-gi guys in SLC more oriented toward MMA. As you probably know,the local MMA scene in Salt Lake has a long and prolific history (UCE, Steelfist, Showdown, and etc). But, comparatively, the no-gi competition scene has historically been VERY weak. This has been compounded by the fact that Champions Challenge seems to have died in the last 9 months. With all of that, a pretty significant percentage of the 100% no-gi guys are aiming towards MMA and a decent amount of those guys gravitate towards Horn's (along with Mushin, Kingdom, Blackout, Pit Elevated, and the others). Then, the gi guys all go to Unified, Absolute, MTI, Fusion, and etc.

As far as I know, we are the only gym in SLC that is 100% no-gi and focused 100% on no-gi competition instead of MMA. Everybody else is either mainly about MMA or mainly about the gi/IBJJF.

Yeah, we would love to get Denny or Eddie out here for a seminar when it is economically feasible. As soon as we opened our club in September 2012 (we ran the grappling club at the Univ. of Utah for like 8 years before that), we emailed Eddie about seminars and affiliation and gave him our bios, competition history, and the information on the club we were opening. He gave us some good feedback on steps for affiliation and etc.

But, were basically pioneering the concept of a 100% no-gi gym aimed totally at no-gi comps (not MMA) in Salt Lake. On top of that, our gym (by design) is very small in terms of square footage and has very low overhead. You will not find weights, kettlebells, tractor tires, or crossfit classes at SLGC. We don't even allow children (obviously a big revenue center at many gyms). It is a small gym with mats where grappling happens five nights per week and the members and instructors actually compete.

We were not at all sure if this new type of gym (at least for the area) would work. We definitely did not want to attempt affiliation and then embarrass the 10th Planet family if it turned out that the gym failed. So, we held off on attempting to affiliate and just tried to grow the gym to a healthy level (in terms of both membership and competition participation) first.

Now, 1.5 years later, the gym is finally hitting certain initial benchmarks we laid out when we opened. We are still a small gym that does nothing but grappling. But, we are WAY busier than we were 12 months ago. We still have a LONG way to go before we will be happy, but maybe now is a good time to revisit some of the long term plans we discussed when we opened.

BJ, feel free to hit me up via PM and I will give you my contact info. I'm sure the other two owner/instructors of SLGC would agree that we are open to talk to anybody in 10th Planet about what role we might be able to play in the future of 10th Planet in Utah since we love 10thPJJ and are long time ronin.

We also have a podcast at www.whiskeyandchokes.blogspot.com if you want to get an idea of where we are coming from ideologically in relation to grappling. We have tried REALLY hard to use the podcast to raise awareness of 10th Planet and 100% no-gi training in Utah.

Yeah, Blackout is who I trained with for the last 3 years. I'll be sure to PM though and we can see what the future holds

I have had many a match with Derek from Blackout, all going to OT lol

Wilkerson? Lol that was my best friend and training partner, he's a brown now. He'll be at NAGA Vegas in march

Yeah thats where we usually matched up. White through Purple.

I just realized you guys are talking about this "Team Blackout" (http://ubcima.com/team.php ) and not "Blackout Jiu-Jitsu" (https://www.facebook.com/blackoutjiujitsu).

So, did you live in Vernal for a while, BJ?

Yeah, for the last 6 years before I moved to Omaha. I'm a bit of a Utah gypsy lol. I've lived from St. George to Logan and everywhere in between

I think a 10th planet in Ogden would be cool. I train at Westside Jiu Jitsu, but use a lot of lock down stuff that I learned from here and Eddie's rubber guard book. I would love to actually drill these techniques with knowledgeable instructors.

Did we roll the last time I was down there in May? I came through to see professor Johnson (He was also my English teacher in high school) I hit open mat and had a lot of fun with a few of you guys. I even taught a few techniques including the electric chair.

I have lots of family in Utah. I am usually in the Orem area a couple times a year. Last time I was there I rolled at the Pit Elevated. I'll be back out this year sometime.

Really? That's where Im originally from. Maybe if I get back there you can sponsor a hotbox for me :)

I trained with the guys at Salt Lake Grappling Club a few times and they were a friendly bunch. It's rare to find a no-gi only club and, being ronin, finding places where dudes don't want to take your head off for being unknown and 10th Planet.

No, we did not roll. I started at the end of June.

Thank you, Singer. We appreciate that. It was a pleasure having you visit us. Come back any time!

We are basically a whole school of Ronin, so of course, 10th Planet is always welcome here.