Gym Marketing
Walk into NEO Martial Arts in Brampton, Ontario on a Tuesday night and you see what most gym owners only describe in pitch decks: two mats at capacity, kids drilling fundamentals on one, women training and laughing on the other. It looks like chaos. It runs like a machine.
That women's mat isn't a side program. It's part of the engine.
It exists because one of the co-founders looked at a room full of waiting parents and saw something nobody else did.
I remember walking into that gigantic room, and I'm like, look at how many moms are sitting there on their phone or just waiting for their kids to be done. Let's get mom into this class. Get her jiu-jitsu in.
Solana is NEO's co-founder and the director of its ladies program.
Her business partner, head coach Patrick Teruel, is a two-time IBJJF Masters World Champion. But the most valuable thing NEO built isn't a shelf of medals. It's a loop that turns waiting parents into members, and members into coaches for their own kids.
That's the kind of retention you can't buy with ads.
Here's how that loop spins—and why a women's program is one of the highest-leverage moves a martial arts gym can make.
This story comes from our Gymdesk Originals series, hosted by our CEO, Alex Cuevas. If you'd rather watch this (or do both!), here's the full episode:
Why Women Try Jiu-Jitsu Once and Never Come Back
Most women don't walk into a coed jiu-jitsu room and feel at home. Solana names the reason.
"Let's be honest, this can be really intimidating for women," she said.
"You're going into a sweaty room with all these big guys learning how to basically kill each other, choke each other. It's not super attractive."
Then there's the physics. New women are usually rolling with partners who outweigh them by 40 or 50 pounds.
Alex put the mismatch in terms any man would feel: "A woman who's on average 110 to 140 is always going against guys that are 170, 180, 190. It's like me going against a 230, 240 guy."
Solana lived it before she ever coached it.
"When I first trained, sometimes I'd be the only girl, and you'd probably be the person I'd drill and roll with—just average, maybe buck-70," she said.
"I got injured a lot. I wasn't getting the feedback I needed, because we just roll differently. But women deserve a spot on the mats."
That's the barrier.
A dedicated women's class is how you remove it—a place to learn at a learning pace, ask questions, and build real technique before stepping into the deep end.
(Many women come to the art for self-defense in the first place; if you're mapping that demand, our guide to the best martial arts for women covers it.)
Self-Defense Gets Them in the Door—Community Keeps Them
Here's what most "start a women's class" advice misses.
It's one of the high reasons why women come into the sport, but it's not actually the reason why they stay.
Read that twice if you run a gym. The thing that markets your women's class is not the thing that retains it. So what does?
"What keeps you coming back is having a really fun class, one that challenges you, but a really good community of people who support you through it," she said.
"When you have this amazing group of other women cheering you on, realizing mistakes are okay—just get back up and try again—it creates this sub-community in the sport."
That's the difference between a women's class that empties out by month three and one that compounds.
Solana refuses to treat women as a softer market.
NEO's program is built to "make it female friendly, but still learn very high technical jiu-jitsu." Full athletes, full curriculum, with a community wrapped around it.
A women's program that holds is really just safe, well-built gym culture that happens to start on one mat.
The Scheduling Move That Changes the Economics
Now the part that turns a good class into a flywheel: when you run it.
NEO schedules the women's class at the same time as the kids' classes. On paper that reads like a convenience for parents. In practice it changed the economics of the whole academy.
Those moms on their phones in the lobby were already in the building, already on a weekly routine, already paying for their kids.
The friction that kills most new-member acquisition—getting someone to show up at all—was already gone.
"We value the time of moms and the women in our lives. They've got so much stuff to do, a lot of them are working moms," Solana said. "So we've got to create a space and utilize the time when [the kids are] in class."
The smartest class scheduling decision NEO made cost them nothing in new facility or new staff. They just stacked an existing audience onto an open mat at an hour they were already standing around.
When Moms Start Coaching Their Own Kids
This is where a women's program stops being a niche offering and starts changing the rest of the gym.
When the moms started training the same system their kids were learning, something happened that NEO didn't plan for.
The coolest thing is now they're learning the same game their kid's learning. So instead of going to a tournament and saying "get up, up, up," they're like, "hey, I know he can't do that — he went through, frame, burst, make that space, then get up."
The mom on the sideline became a coach who speaks the language. She understands her kid's struggle because she's lived it on the mat herself.
That's a parent who isn't going anywhere—and neither is her child.
"There's a lot of compassion that these parents and moms are learning that I don't think, without a ladies program, they would ever have the courage to do," Solana said. "That's why we have it going at the same time as the kids' class."
Think about what that does to retention.
You're no longer holding one membership. You're holding a family that trains together and talks the same vocabulary at the dinner table.
The gym becomes part of how they relate to each other, and that's what member retention really rests on.
From the Women's Room to the Open Mat
A women's-only class works best not as a permanent silo but as an on-ramp.
NEO's is already feeding the rest of the school.
"What we're seeing is more women starting to venture off to the co-eds. More women tickling the idea of competing," Solana said.
"We're seeing this confidence build from a ladies program that's not just focused on self-defense, but community, fun, and still really high technical jiu-jitsu. That's my passion, to be honest."
The women's room builds the confidence; the open mat and the competition floor cash it in. Students who started out terrified are now the ones pulling other women onto the mat.
As Solana put it, with a grin you can hear: "It's a party in here."
Why the Owner Has to Buy In, Too
It would be easy to file all of this under "the women's coach is passionate about the women's program." That misreads it. At NEO the philosophy runs straight through the head coach.
Because I have two daughters, female empowerment has long been a huge aspect of my philosophy, which is kind of what led Solana into the company. We have female mat enforcers, especially in the kids' classes. If we have new kids or visitors, almost immediately we'll put them with super tough females first, so the humility is there. It breeds a good culture and builds tough girls.
That's the tell.
When new students—boys included—roll first with the academy's toughest women, the gym is broadcasting what it values: skill over size, and respect from day one. The women's program sets the temperature for the entire room.
As Solana noted, that kind of top-down commitment is rarer than it should be:
"It's rare to find a leader, especially in a male-dominant sport, who prioritizes women."
What It Takes to Actually Run It
None of this requires a renovation or a second location. It requires a slot on the schedule, a real curriculum, and a system that keeps the moving parts from eating your week.
That's the unglamorous half of the flywheel.
Concurrent class times only help if your scheduling is clean. You can't keep the family-coaching loop spinning if you can't see who's drifting before they vanish, and a nervous first-timer won't come back if her first visit is chaos.
This is the layer where martial arts software earns its keep—so the owner stays on the mat instead of buried in a spreadsheet.
Building the program itself—the launch slot, the fundamentals-paced curriculum, the named reasons women drop off and how to stop them—is its own playbook.
Why Women Shape the Whole Room
How women experience your gym tells you how everyone else does.
When the women on the mat are training hard and feel safe doing it, the whole room gets more technical and beginners stick around longer. When they don't, you feel that too.
NEO didn't get there with a marketing budget. A co-founder looked at a lobby full of waiting moms and refused to see downtime. She saw members.
So give women a real place on the mat. Then watch what it does to the rest of the room.
If you liked this, you'll love digging into our other Gymdesk Originals episodes, where we dive into the stories behind the gyms, their coaches, and the passion that drove them.
