Movement Is Medicine: Inside Real Movement and Martial Arts
In this episode, Alex visits Real Movement and Martial Arts in Bartlett, Illinois, where Joey "The Real" Diehl runs a 13,000-square-foot academy on a single conviction: jiu-jitsu, MMA, yoga, and mobility aren't separate things you offer—they're one idea called movement. Joey walks Alex through a five-year arc that started with three people in half a rented room and grew into the whole building, and makes the case that a black belt and a yoga mat belong under the same roof. It's a study in refusing the usual either/or.
Starring
Joey Diehl is the owner and head professor of Real Movement and Martial Arts in Bartlett, Illinois — a BJJ black belt under Jeff "Big Frog" Curran and a professional MMA veteran with a record of 12-10. He started wrestling at five, was given a jiu-jitsu membership for his fourteenth birthday by his mother, who works the gym's front desk today, and turned pro at nineteen. A back injury in his early twenties led him to yoga; he was certified by twenty-five and has taught it ever since. He opened the academy in 2021 with three students in a sublet half-room and grew it past 300 members in five years, taking over the full 13,000-square-foot building in 2025. His worldview is on the record: "I'm not just someone who trains jiu-jitsu. I am a martial artist."
About the Gym
Real Movement and Martial Arts is a hybrid martial arts and wellness academy in Bartlett, Illinois, in the northwest Chicago suburbs, founded in 2021 by Joey "The Real" Diehl—a BJJ black belt in the Team Curran / Pedro Sauer lineage, a 12-10 professional MMA veteran, and a certified yoga teacher of ten years.
The academy puts Brazilian jiu-jitsu and MMA at its core and layers yoga, mobility, and group fitness on top, all framed as one practice: "real movement." Programs run from kids as young as three through adults, with a women's jiu-jitsu program led by head women's coach Tayla Meredith and a kids program led by head kids coach Kyle Perkins. The "real" in the name is the point—Joey defines it as authenticity, the opposite of gimmicky fitness fads.
📍 Location: 891 S IL Route 59, Bartlett, IL 60103
📱 Phone: (847) 987-7325
Summary
This is the story of a pro fighter who decided he was a martial artist first—and built a gym around the difference.
Joey Diehl started wrestling at five, was gifted a jiu-jitsu membership at fourteen by the mom who now works his front desk, and turned pro at nineteen. A back injury sent him to yoga at twenty-one, and he never drew a line between the two again.
He opened Real Movement and Martial Arts in 2021 with three students in a sublet half-room and the belief that "movement is for everyone"; five years later he took over the entire 13,000-square-foot building. His thesis throughout: "I'm not just someone who trains jiu-jitsu. I am a martial artist."
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