Kids Classes

"The parental decision to invest in a martial arts program for their children is one that should be carefully considered. The program they choose should efficiently teach the children the martial arts skills that they want to develop, while reinforcing the values they teach at home.

At Gracie Barra Costa Mesa, our youth students have the unique opportunity to participate up to five days a week in a program that builds them from the ground up. Three days a week, our students emphasize development of their ground fighting skills in the BJJ curriculum designed by the legendary Gracie Barra Academy, the most successful BJJ organization in the world. Two days a week, our students emphasize the development of their standing grappling in judo.

GBCM takes a long term approach to the development of our students. We focus on teaching our young students the fundamentals of judo and BJJ in a proven system, that not only benefits their martial skills, but also teaches and reinforces the traits of discipline, respect, self-confidence in a fun yet challenging environment. Classes are in a group environment, but our instructors are attentive to the needs of each individual within that setting.

There are no shortcuts to success in our program. Our instructors emphasize the fundamentals during training sessions, which are the building blocks of lifetime practitioners of the two arts. Too often, we have seen instructors not build a solid foundation for their students in pursuit of short term achievement in tournaments.

Tournaments are an important aspect of training and development for martial artists of all ages. While our students win more than their fair share of medals, we view tournaments as a way for us to measure the progress of our students.
We want the  tournament schedule to be an enriching and fun environment for our students where they can compete to the best of their abilities, build confidence, develop friendships, and look forward to coming to practice the next day.

Parents, coaches, and students attending the tournaments are expected to conduct themselves with the dignity and respect that the heritage of our coaches demands. We expect only positive reinforcement towards our young students, and any negative feedback towards the students, team, coaches or other participants is not tolerated. Our students are also required to maintain scholastic grades in order to participate in tournaments.

Depending on the tournament schedule, our kid's competition teams have extra practices clearly focused on upcoming events. Our students can compete in judo under the Orange County Judo Training Center, and in BJJ under the Gracie Barra Team.  To participate in the extra practices, students must be attending regularly, have no discipline problems at home, school or the club, and maintaining good grades at school. Our instructors carefully select the tournaments, to maximize the potential benefits for the student. We do not send our young students to tournaments unless we are confident that the student is fully prepared for the level of competition.

While we are always proud of the achievements of our students in competition, we are more proud of our role working with the parents of our students to develop strong, healthy, happy and confident young men and women who become outstanding citizens in our community.

If you share our values and philosophy, we encourage you to come visit our facility. If you have any other questions about our program, please contact us."