From Bodybuilder to Black Belt: KingJiuJitsu's Story
Alex drives 45 minutes from downtown Toronto to Thornhill with his son Neo in the back seat. He's looking for Chu's Martial Arts—a 6,500-square-foot facility that's been operating since 1996 under Master Thanh Chu.
Inside, past the main training floor, Gregg King leads them to a section of mats tucked away from the rest of the space. No windows. No frills. The kind of room where the summer heat sits heavy and the smell of sweat never fully leaves.
"The blood, sweat and tears, the dungeon feel. It just has that originality, that little charm from the humble beginnings."
This is KingJiuJitsu HQ. It started with two or three students.
Today it's one of five locations across the Greater Toronto Area, and Gregg—a 2nd degree black belt going for his 3rd, the first Armenian BJJ black belt in Canada—still teaches here himself.
He walks Alex and Neo through the space like someone showing you around their childhood home.
"Welcome home, guys. This is what it is. This is where it started. And that's why I have very big emotional, sentimental value in this place."
185 Pounds of Nothing
Before jiu-jitsu, Gregg King was a bodybuilder. Big. Jacked.
He trained at a GoodLife Fitness on Yonge Street in North York, working toward the kind of physique that turns heads in a club. Then one day, walking to get water, he saw something that didn't make sense.
A few guys—skinny, young—rolling around on fold-out mats in a studio. Grappling. Whatever it was the UFC guys did.
A coach invited him to try.
"Arm drag, arm drag, start from the knees. This guy just goes—snaps me down. Whatever it is, Kimuras, arm bars, triangles, guillotines. I'm like tapping left and right."
A 130-pound guy locked him in a triangle. Gregg tried to power out. Couldn't. The smaller guy hooked his leg and held on.
Gregg was 185 pounds of muscle and none of it mattered.
All this muscle means nothing. It means something when you train, but at that point—that means nothing.
He walked home that day with one thought: "One day I want to become a jiu-jitsu black belt. This is the real thing."
He was also going through a bad breakup. Open to change. Looking for something real.
He went back the next day and never stopped.
You don't find jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu finds you. It comes to you in time. When you're ready, it comes.
Books Before YouTube
Training wasn't much different. A purple belt running no-gi classes on fold-out mats inside a GoodLife studio. Three meters of mat space. Four or five guys.
Gregg started no-gi, fell in love, then found a gi academy for belt progression while staying loyal to his first coach.
A small moment of connection during the interview: Alex mentions that his own first jiu-jitsu experience was also with Saulo Ribeiro—training at the San Diego Judo Club around 2005–06, right around the time Saulo published the book.
Two people on opposite sides of the continent, learning from the same source material, meeting years later on a mat in Thornhill.
From Clothing Company to the Mats
Gregg's first business in jiu-jitsu wasn't an academy. It was a website called Grapplers Planet, built with a business partner who believed in his vision.
Then came Veni Vidi—a gi and rashguard company. "Veni, vidi, vici—I came, I saw, I conquered." The name suited him.
But the clothing business didn't survive. The partnership split.
What did survive: Gregg's instinct for teaching. He'd been at it since blue belt, thrown into running a program at Team UMAC before he felt ready for it.
"I was pretty much thrown into it. I was like, I like teaching." He pauses. "I wasn't even getting paid. I was just kind of loved it."
When the business partnership ended, he made a choice. All eggs in one basket. Teaching. Running an academy.
"It was not something that from the beginning I was like, I'm going to run an academy. It's just something that I kind of fell into."
Some of his first students are still with him. One of them—Professor Dane—is now a black belt running the Vaughan location.
That kind of longevity doesn't come from marketing. It comes from the mats.
Two Students to Five Locations
Before Thornhill, Gregg was running classes out of a small space in Scarborough. Not many students. Tough going.
Then Master Thanh Chu—longtime friend, owner of Chu's Martial Arts in Thornhill—invited Gregg to operate inside his facility. The space wasn't matted up. Gregg saw potential.
He started with two or three students and grew it into what he calls one of the top three kids and teens competitive schools in Ontario.
Today, KingJiuJitsu operates across five locations in the Greater Toronto Area:
- Thornhill HQ—inside Chu's Martial Arts, the original dungeon
- Vaughan—run by Professor Dane, one of Gregg's first students turned black belt
- Budo Canada, North York—Lawrence and Dufferin, where Gregg serves as Head BJJ Coach
- Woodbridge—at Matador, Highway 7 and 27
- Toronto Striking Academy, North York
All five operate under the Tropa De Elite affiliation, through Professor Hugo Fevrier in France.
As the student numbers grew, managing memberships by hand stopped working. Gregg needed software for payment processing, email, newsletters—the operational side that grows whether you're ready for it or not.
He tried a few options. Landed on Gymdesk.
This is not something that I was asked to say. It is actually something that I really believe. The customer service—whenever I needed some help, whenever I had some questions, I always had polite staff always come and help me out.
He now runs two Gymdesk accounts—one for Thornhill HQ, one for Vaughan. He stayed for the same reason most gym owners stay with anything: it worked, and someone picked up when he called.
The Work That Doesn't Feel Like Work
Gregg is nearly 19 years into jiu-jitsu. Still learning from white belts. Still grinding toward his 3rd degree. Still running five locations and teaching classes himself.
I don't feel like I'm working. It is work, but I don't feel like I'm working. I feel like, you know what? I'm happy to be here.
He didn't set out to build a multi-location academy. He set out to learn jiu-jitsu—and the teaching, the business, the five locations all followed from that, one thing at a time.
Before COVID, he made the decision: "This is what I'm going to turn my life into. I'm going to focus on this. I'm going to grow and I'm going to make this one of the best academies in Ontario, in Canada."
Back on the Thornhill mats, Neo joins the kids class. The rash guard—the one Alex and Gregg have been going back and forth about—remains contested.
Gregg turns to the students waiting at the door.
"All right, I think we can let people in."
Class starts. The dungeon fills up.
Watch the full story of KingJiuJitsu in the Gymdesk Originals series.
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