If you own or manage a BJJ academy in the United States, there’s a good chance your gym is already on BJJ Recon. We’ve built a database of roughly 4,800 US academies, covering every state, and your listing is sitting there on the map right now whether you know about it or not.
The question is whether you want to control what that listing says.
Claiming your gym is free. No credit card, no trial period, no catch. You claim it, we verify you’re the real owner, and then you have full control over your gym’s profile on the platform. Here’s what that gets you.
Your Gym Is Already on the Map
Let’s start with what’s already happening. BJJ Recon is a discovery platform for practitioners who are traveling, relocating, or just looking for a new gym to train at. When someone opens the app, they see an interactive map with every academy in our database. They can click into any state, browse individual gym pins, and pull up info cards with details about each location.
Your gym has a pin. Students are already finding it. The only thing missing is your input on what they see when they tap on it.
What the Free Tier Includes
When you claim your gym and get verified, you unlock the ability to edit your listing directly. No emailing us to request changes. No waiting for someone to update a spreadsheet. You log in, open your owner dashboard, and make changes that go live immediately.
Here’s what you can do at no cost.
You can set your gym intel, which is the information that traveling practitioners care about most. That means your drop-in fees, so visitors know what to expect before they walk in. It means your class types, like Gi, No-Gi, Kids, Open Mat, Competition Team, and Women’s classes, so people can find exactly what they’re looking for. And it means your amenities: changing rooms, showers, parking, A/C, a gear shop, and public transport access. All of this shows up on your gym’s info card when someone taps your pin on the map.
You can add your website link and phone number, making it easy for prospective visitors to reach you or check your schedule before they show up.
You can set your operating hours, which is one of the most requested pieces of information from travelers. Nobody wants to drive across town to a gym that’s closed. Posted hours solve that problem instantly.
And you can write a gym greeting. This is a short welcome message that appears on your info card. Think of it as the first thing a visitor reads about your academy. A good greeting sets the tone: “All experience levels welcome, come train with us” goes a long way for someone who’s nervous about dropping in at a new gym.
Community Ratings Are Already Working for You
Every gym on BJJ Recon has community ratings across four dimensions: Cleanliness, Visitor-Friendly, Female-Friendly, and Vibe. These ratings come from practitioners who have visited or trained at your gym, and they’re visible on your info card.
You don’t control these ratings directly, which is by design. They’re authentic feedback from real users. But here’s the thing: a gym with strong ratings across all four categories stands out to travelers making a decision about where to drop in. If your academy is clean, welcoming to visitors, inclusive, and has a great vibe, the community will reflect that in the scores. And those scores influence which gym someone chooses when they have three options in the same city.
Claiming your gym and filling out your profile doesn’t change your ratings, but it does show that you care about your presence on the platform. An incomplete listing next to a fully built-out profile with photos, hours, and a greeting? The complete one wins every time.
No Credit Card Required
I want to be clear about this because the gym software industry has trained owners to expect a catch. There is no trial that converts to a paid subscription. There is no “free for 30 days” bait-and-switch. Claiming your gym and editing your listing is free, period.
We do offer a paid tier at $199 per year that unlocks advanced tools like QR check-in, attendance tracking, student retention alerts, and data exports. Those features are genuinely valuable for gym management, and we’ll talk about them in future posts. But the core listing, the part that gets your gym in front of traveling practitioners, costs nothing.
The Traveling BJJ Market Is Real
Here’s why this matters even if you’re not actively marketing your gym. The BJJ community travels. Tournaments bring hundreds of competitors to a city for a weekend, and a huge number of them look for open mats and drop-in sessions while they’re in town. Business travelers who train want to maintain their schedule on the road. Families on vacation include a gym visit as part of the trip.
These are real potential students walking through your door, and for many gym owners, drop-in fees and new memberships from travelers represent meaningful revenue. Having a complete, accurate listing on BJJ Recon is the digital equivalent of having a visible sign on a busy street. It doesn’t cost you anything, but it puts you in front of people who are actively looking for exactly what you offer.
How to Claim
The process takes about two minutes. Find your gym on the map, open the info card, and tap the “Claim this Gym” button. Fill in your role, phone number, and an optional message. We verify claims manually to make sure the real owner is getting access, and once you’re verified, you’re in.
If your gym isn’t in the database yet, you can still submit a claim and we’ll get it added. But with roughly 4,800 academies already listed, odds are you’re already on the map.
Head to BJJ Recon and find your gym. The features page has a full overview of what’s available for owners, and the how-to guide covers the claim process step by step.
Your gym is already being discovered. Take control of the story.
