Adult Class Schedule
This information is about the adult program schedule (ages 15+). For information on the youth program (8-14), please click HERE. If you are about to take your first class, please reach out to the student coordinator HERE, about what classes are ideal to start with.
Monday • Jiu-jitsu
6-7 PM Jiu-Jitsu Fundamentals, with Charles
7-8 PM Marathon Monday, with Charles
8-9 PM Marathon Monday, with Charles
Tuesday • MMA
6-7 PM MMA Fundamentals, with Kirik
7-8 PM MMA Practice, with Kirik
8-9 PM Open Mat Lab, with Kirik
Wednesday • Wrestling and jiu-jitsu
6-7 PM Wrestling Fundamentals, with Josh
7-8 PM Wrestling Practice, with Josh
8-9 PM Open Mat Lab, with Josh
Thursday • Kickboxing
6-7 PM Kickboxing Fundamentals, with Kirik
7-8 PM Kickboxing Practice, with Kirik
8-9 PM Kickboxing Open Mat Lab, with Kirik
Friday • Jiu-jitsu
6-7 PM Jiu-Jitsu Fundamentals, with Charles
7-8 PM Jiu-Jitsu Practice, with Charles
8-9 PM Jiu-Jitsu Open Mat Lab, with Charles
Saturday • kickboxing, and open mat lab
10-11 AM Kickboxing, with Emmanuel
1-3 PM Open Mat Lab: MMA, kickboxing, jiu-jitsu, and wrestling
Sunday
The human body only improves as you rest, so rest already 🙂
NESF offers adults a total of 18 classes per week. You can sign up for one, two, or even three of the classes in a day. Just please be aware, each class is about an hour long, and three hours is an extreme amount of training. If you start a class, please make an effort to complete the hour, as many drills require partners, and it can be challenging if the number of class participants changes. Likewise, please make an effort to be on time.
Adult Class Descriptions
Every weekday, we offer three classes for adults, Tuesday through Thursday these are:
6-7 Fundamentals
7-8 Practice
8-9 Open Mat Lab
Fundamentals
This is an instructional class, the first half of which is typically focused on learning the most basic techniques. This is great for someone just starting out, but no one should forget, fundamentals win fights, so everyone can benefit. The second half of the class typically imparts techniques of a higher level; these are generally accessible to beginners, although with a less complete comprehension level.
Practice
In this class, techniques, tactics, and strategies are introduced and refined through a wide variety of drills. In order to become a skilled mixed martial artist, you have to know how to fight (offense, defense, and transitions) in four ways: while standing and separated; while standing and clinched together; against a wall, and on the ground. During the week at various points, all four are addressed. Further, as the iconic catch-as-catch-can wrestler Karl Gotch famously explained, “the greatest hold is conditioning” so S&C too is developed. You can try this class with no experience, but may feel overwhelmed initially, to varying extents.
Open Mat Lab
As the name suggests, during an “open” mat, you can focus on whatever you think will most improve your ability. It could be hitting the bag or doing pushups, but more typically, participants engage in free sparring. Termed “rolling” in jiu-jitsu, “sparring” in boxing, and “randori” in judo, this was one of the central pillars of judo codified by founder Jigoro Kano. Practitioners engage in unscripted, dynamic, and live-action scenarios, against active resistance, in a controlled and supervised environment. This can take the form of working for a takedown and a pin (wrestling), staying grounded and looking for a submission (jiu-jitsu), trying to land clean but controlled strikes from standing (kickboxing), takedowns with strikes (Sanda), or all the above (MMA). Further, subsets of a fight can be practiced, like takedowns on a wall, or standing up from the bottom. The level of intensity and contact can vary significantly, from technical sparring (no significant contact, in an exchange that’s a little like dancing) to up to 80% of full power. The level must be decided mutually by both participants beforehand, and must be appropriate for your skill level. Sparring is a crucial component in developing practical skills and promoting mental and emotional resilience. It is generally recommended to get a solid foundation in the basics, before attempting an open mat.
While the three class formats (fundamentals, instruction, open mat) are the same each day, the focus changes. Although NESF is a mixed martial arts facility, counter-intuitively, if MMA is practiced every day, progress is not efficient. For example, if you are always training with strikes, there is no space to relax and refine your submission ability. If there are always takedowns, there is no space to refine striking ability. So classes at NESF are separated into kickboxing, grappling, and MMA. Each of these is defined immediately below.
Kickboxing
These classes focus on striking while standing, both from the outside (fighters are separated) and the inside (fighters are holding each other, in what is referred to as the Clinch). Kickboxing is an international sport with fairly well-defined rules and traditions, as is muay Thai. While this class draws techniques from both, as well as from Western boxing, karate, and sanda, the focus here is on the standup striking aspect of MMA. This means there are subtle differences in stance, defense, footwork, etc that are ideal for a mixed rules circumstance, but not ideal for the more rigidly defined rules sets in kickboxing and muay Thai. The term kickboxing is used here due to public familiarity with it, but this is not a class to prepare you for a kickboxing bout. Rather, as noted, it prepares you for the standing and striking aspect of MMA, but without the distraction of takedowns, fighting on the ground, etc. Kickboxing classes are ideal for many people to start with, due to the limited physical contact; close contact is necessary for grappling and can at first be off-putting for some.
Grappling
Mixed martial arts was born from Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but for many, many years, wrestling has been the most important single discipline in MMA. This is because wrestling allows the practitioner to determine where the fight takes place – on the ground, standing, or against the fence. However, without striking and above all without jiu-jitsu, wrestling doesn’t do much. So it is vital for jiu-jitsu to include wrestling, as it is vital for wrestling to include jiu-jitsu. Therefore, both of our grappling coaches have decades of wrestling experience, and weave the two together seamlessly. No gi jiu-jitsu, or “grappling” is an excellent transitionary step to becoming a full MMA fighter, and is an amazing sport in its own right. Therefore much of the grappling class does not assume that the opponent is trying to strike throughout, but rather often separates out that aspect, allowing the student to more efficiently develop their grappling ability.
MMA
These are the classes where everything comes together. Be forewarned, it’s not easy, or simple. Participating in MMA requires a broad skill set, including takedowns and their defense, cage control, controlling an opponent on the ground from top and bottom, submitting an opponent and escaping from all common subs, plus striking and defending against same. Further, all the offensive skills are worse than worthless without setups. It’s a lot. And the skills have to be pressure tested, which is a lot more still. Training in full-on MMA on a daily basis would be a terrible grind, without a lot of juice for the squeeze. But at the same time, if you want to be a fighter, it is an indispensable part of your training.
Monday is the exception, and is historically among the most popular classes we have ever offered. There is a fundamentals class in jiu-jitsu, and then free rolling until everyone is done.
Facility
The greatest team in the history of MMA is Miletich Martial Arts. At a time when the UFC had only five divisions, during a one-year period, Miletich fighters held three of the belts. At the time, the team trained in a racquetball court. In short, you don’t need a gym full of equipment to be your very, very best.
That said, NESF is a gym full of equipment. An MMA and jiu-jitsu gym begins with the mats. For a decade, NESF had 2″ Dollamur rollouts, but repeated tapings and gluing left the surface rough in places. And it was too slippery for standup. Further, mat technology developed over the past decade, with 1 meter x 2 meter mats weighing about 50 pounds each coming to the fore.
World-class mats typically come with either a “smooth” or “tatami” surface. The latter is rough enough to provide excellent footing for standing strikes and throws, while the former is perfect for rolling on the ground, but not for standing technique. Then Mike Swain, the first American male to win a world championship in judo, developed the hybrid mat, offering a surface textured enough to allow all standup techniques safely, while being smooth enough for hours of grappling. The new 1.5″ Hybrid mats were laid over the old 2″ rollouts, with a 1/8 layer of board between them, providing members of NESF with an unprecedented surface to train on.
We also offer a wide variety of equipment to enhance skill, including:
•10 banana bags, plus speed bags and double-end bags;
•Thai pads, focus mitts, suitcase pads, punch pads, and body and thigh shields;
•Battle Ropes;
•Bulgarian Bags;
•TRX suspension training developed by former U.S. Navy SEAL Randy Hetrick;
•Sand Bags from light to unliftable;
•Jump, speed, and heavy ropes;
•Grappling dummy;
•Climbing board and climbing rope;
•Mirrors;
•Medicine balls, Swedish balls, and a Maize ball; and,
•Lots more
We also offer a traditional Strength & Conditioning training area.
“The greatest hold is conditioning.”
-Karl Gotch
And changing rooms.
Our Mission
The NESF mission is to welcome everyone, young and old, athletes and individuals who just want to start getting in better shape, to discover the many, many benefits of mixed martial arts. Founded at this address in 1993, it’s the oldest MMA school in Massachusetts in continuous operation. The name, New England Submission Fighting, is anachronistic, but we started well before the term mixed martial arts existed.
For those of you unfamiliar with MMA, the founding concept is as simple as wheels on luggage – if you want to discover what martial arts actually work, have exponents of each test one other with as few rules as possible. In the earliest days, there were only two prohibitions (no biting, no eye gouging) and they were broken regularly. The answer as to what martial art is best turned out to be none, and all. That is to say, all martial arts have to be altered to a significant degree against a trained aggressor, and nearly all martial arts have something in their approach that can be useful.
From these crude origins, over decades, the parts of each martial art that verifiably work against a dangerous opponent came into view. Today, there is a large, organized body of knowledge on what is real, and what isn’t. It draws from a number of cultures globally, including Japanese submissions refined in Brazil, kicks from Thailand, wrestling from Dagestan, punches from the West, Capoeira from Brazil which has strong historical ties to the Bantu-speaking peoples from Africa, takedowns combined with strikes from China, and much more. As well, a strong ethical basis for the practice has evolved.
If you have any further questions about the schedule, or to sign up, or to try the free trial, please reach out to the student coordinator HERE.