I want to be honest with you upfront: if you're running a BJJ gym, you are probably already doing too much.

You're teaching classes, managing memberships, dealing with equipment repairs, responding to DMs at midnight, posting to Instagram, handling competition registrations, maybe coaching at tournaments on weekends — and somewhere in there, trying to actually train yourself. The administrative weight of running a martial arts academy is real, and most of the tools that exist to help you were built for gyms that look nothing like yours.

That's the problem NEWAZA Network is trying to solve. Not all of it — but the part that matters most when it comes to growing your gym's reach and revenue inside the BJJ community.

Why I Built This for Gym Owners

I teach BJJ full-time out of Tokyo. I'm not a gym owner — but I've trained at enough gyms across enough cities to understand what the experience looks like from both sides of the mat. Bangkok, Perth, Hawaii, Hong Kong, and across Japan — Tokyo, Okinawa, Hokkaido — and every time I landed somewhere new, I had the same problem. How do I find a good gym to train at? Who do I contact? Is there mat space available? What's the drop-in fee? Most of the answers lived in Facebook groups, WhatsApp threads, someone's outdated website, or a tip from a guy at the airport.

The community has incredible infrastructure in terms of talent and knowledge. What it's never had is infrastructure in terms of doing business.

NEWAZA Network started from that frustration — but when I got deeper into building it, I realised the gap wasn't just a traveler's problem. It was a gym owner's problem too. You've built something real. You have a mat, an academy, instructors, knowledge worth paying for. And yet the tools available to package and sell that to the right audience — specifically, the global BJJ community — either don't exist or aren't built for martial arts.

"The community has incredible infrastructure in terms of talent and knowledge. What it's never had is infrastructure in terms of doing business."

What NEWAZA Network Actually Does

The platform has four modules. Here's what each one means for you as a gym owner or instructor.

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Services Marketplace
List your coaching, private lessons, seminars, online programming, competition prep, or anything else you offer as a professional. Set your own rates. Reach students and athletes worldwide who are specifically looking for what you do.
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Space & Equipment Rentals
List your mat space for drop-ins, open mats, seminar hire, or short-term use. Set pricing, availability, and house rules. Turn downtime into income without any of the usual headache.
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Classifieds
Sell used gear, old mats, equipment, competition slots, or anything else that lives in your gym's back room. Buy what you need from other gyms in the community. Circular economy, BJJ-style.
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Deals & Member Pricing
Offer exclusive rates to the NEWAZA community — discounts on gear, memberships, drop-ins, or whatever you want. Build loyalty and visibility with the people most likely to actually show up.

You don't have to use all four from day one. Most gym owners will start with Space & Equipment Rentals and Services Marketplace — those tend to have the most immediate payoff. The Classifieds and Deals modules are there when you're ready.

The Drop-In Problem

Let me talk about mat rentals specifically, because I think this is where a lot of gyms are leaving money on the table.

If your academy has a 10 AM to 5 PM window where the mat is mostly empty — whether it's Tuesday morning or Saturday afternoon — that mat is a depreciating asset sitting unused. A traveling grappler landing in your city for a conference, a tournament, or a holiday wants to train. They are actively searching for somewhere to roll. Right now, that search is almost entirely word-of-mouth. There's no reliable platform where a purple belt from London can find your gym, see your rates, understand your vibe, and book a spot before they even land at the airport.

That's the gap NEWAZA Network fills. And when that traveling grappler has a great experience at your gym, there's a good chance they post about it, tell their training partners, maybe come back next time they're in town.

A note on open mats: You can list your regular open mat sessions as recurring events in the rentals module — not just one-off mat hires. So if you run a Saturday open mat that's technically free but you want to promote it to visiting grapplers, you can do that too. Visibility matters even when money isn't changing hands.

Addressing the Real Concerns

I've talked to enough gym owners to know what the hesitations usually are. Let me be direct about them.

« What if I get people I don't know walking in? »

Fair concern. The platform is built around the BJJ community specifically — not a generic booking app. People listing and booking on NEWAZA Network are grapplers. Verified profiles, community reputation, and the ability to set your own rules for who you accept are all part of the design. You control who trains at your gym. This isn't Airbnb for mat space — it's something built with martial arts culture in mind.

« I already have enough students. »

That's a good position to be in. But the platform isn't just about filling your beginner classes. If you have instructors who offer privates, if you run seminars, if you have morning mat time that sits quiet — those are revenue streams that don't cannibalise your existing membership base. They're additive.

« I don't want another platform to manage. »

Neither do I. The goal is to make NEWAZA Network the one place in the BJJ ecosystem where the commercial layer of the community lives — so that instead of juggling Facebook marketplace, a random booking widget, your own DMs, and a spreadsheet, there's one place that does it. We're not there yet, but that's the direction we're building toward.

« Is this actually going to have users? »

That's the right question to ask. The honest answer is: we're pre-launch. We launch May 30, 2026. The community we're building before launch is made up of founding members — gyms, instructors, and brands who shape the platform from the ground up and get the best rates and visibility for being early. If this sounds like something you want to be part of when it's already established and busy, the time to join is now, not then.

What "Founding Member" Actually Means

I want to be specific here because I've seen platforms throw that phrase around without it meaning anything.

For gym owners and instructors who join before launch, founding member status means you get locked-in rates that never increase as the platform grows, priority placement in search and discovery on the platform, direct input on features as they're built, and the credibility of being part of NEWAZA Network from the beginning. When a traveling grappler searches for a gym in your city on day one, your listing is there. When a competitor looks for a coach to run a seminar, your name is there.

Launch date: May 30, 2026 at 00:00 JST. The platform goes live globally. Founding members are listed and discoverable from that moment. If your listing isn't live at launch, you're not getting that first wave of traffic — and that early traction matters.

One Thing I Want to Say Directly

I'm a BJJ instructor, not a gym owner. But I've spent years training in gyms across multiple countries, building relationships with the people who run them, and watching the same frustrations come up again and again. I know what it's like to have a tool pitched to you as though it's going to solve everything. I'm not doing that.

NEWAZA Network is not going to fill your schedule overnight. It's not going to replace the work you put into building your community and your reputation. It's a marketplace — which means it grows as the community grows, as more grapplers use it to find places to train and professionals to train with, and as more gyms contribute their space and expertise.

What I'm offering you is a seat at that table from the beginning. A listing that costs you nothing to create and a platform that takes a fair cut only when value is exchanged — not a monthly fee for existing. If six months after launch you've had a few mat rentals, sold some gear, and picked up a private student or two who found you through the platform, that's a win. If it grows into something bigger for your gym, even better.

I built this because the BJJ community does an incredible amount of business with each other and deserves better infrastructure to do it. OSS.