Absolute Martial Arts

I was recently contacted by this place to remove a review I wrote FIVE years ago. Long story short, they somehow found out my wife’s email, contacted her and asked her to convince me to remove the review.
This third party company they hired to contact us has since emailed us our family’s names and addresses in my wife’s former country, Russia. The email, written in Russian, states that «shady guys» will pay my family there a visit.
Very professional Absolute Martial Arts… Very mature. Is this SOP for McDojos nowadays?
I’ve contacted the BBB and the police.

I started my training at AMA the first week of 2008. I had always gotten into fights when I was growing up /​college frat fights /​etc… that I figured that I’d like to actually learn how to do this. I was 5’9″ weighed 170 and was 16% body fat. I played intramural soccer, basketball, football during college. There was also a ton of beer pong nights on Thurs, ½ price beers and wing nights on tues, Dollar beers on Fridays, parties on Saturdays… you get the point. I wasn’t in top notch shape. Well. Once I graduated in 2007, I saw my graduation photo and my cheeks were pretty round. I was always a skinny guy but not after 4 years of college. There was a nice solid 1 pack going on in my belly. When I got transfered to St. Louis for my job, I wanted to get back into shape.
AMA does BJJ, Muay Thai Kick Boxing, MMA, Karate for the adults. They do have children classes for karate but the gym is big enough that they can split up the kids and adults and have lessons going on for both of them.
Well. The first day, you have to pay $ 15 to have a quick introductory lesson with one of the instructors before you can sign up for a class. You pretty much talk to Anna to see what style of fighting you’re interested in. I wanted to do MMA so for the next 15 – 20 minutes, one of the instructors gave you a brief lesson to show you what MMA was about and to see what your fitness level was at. Let’s just say, those 15 – 20 minutes were pretty rough. I wasn’t in good shape but I wasn’t in bad shape either. However, I did work up a pretty good sweat and was out of breathe too. Well, after the first day, you talk with Anna and she goes over contracts/​prices to see if you’re interested. They don’t do month to month there so I ended up signing up a year contract which came out to around $ 140/​month. (Don’t exactly remember the total amount). If you just sign up for kick boxing or BJJ, it’s cheaper. However, with the MMA, you can take all the other classes too. And by other classes, this means that there are sparring classes, wrestling classes, circuit training… etc. There’s a lot more that goes on here than just MMA, BJJ and kick boxing. Oh. If you think $ 140/​month is bad, then try going to another gym. I actually went other places after a year and a half just to see what they were like. I had no plans of joining them but I wanted to see what my skill levels were. $ 140/​month for this good of a training is a steal. The gym doesn’t have a complete cage but there is a section against the wall where you can do wall work.
Well, the first MMA class, I was paired with one of the better guys. I really had no idea what I was doing but everyone there is really friendly and they taught me a lot of things in the first class alone. For the MMA class, we did some ground and pound drills, some stand up drills, some take downs, submissions, a little bit of everything. At the end, you get to roll with your partner for 5 minutes before swapping partners and rolling with them again. I got submitted each time but all of my partners did the submissions slow on me because I was new and showed me how to do the submissions and some defenses to it. Let’s just say, this 55 minute class took a lot to get through but when I left, I was happy and had fallen in love.
I then tried the BJJ class a couple weeks later and really liked how it was run. Keith is the second degree black belt BJJ instructor and he really knows his stuff. Eric is a pro fighter who also teaches some classes and has fought in Strikeforce. Both guys like to impart some of their knowledge onto you. Well. With the grappling/​BJJ class, you start of with a light warm up of shrimp crawls and then are partnered up. You do a drill where one guy is standing and the other guy is on his back. The guy who is standing tries to get into mount or side control while the guy on his back wants to pull the other guy into guard or get up. From there, Keith goes over new submission moves/​defense/​escapes and you practice it with your partner. Each class has a different move or a different variation so you will never be doing the exact same thing which is really good. After a bunch of drills/​exercises, you roll with your partner and then change partners. You’ll do this about 3 – 4 more times until the class is over. Afterwards, you can keep rolling or if you want to learn some new move, Keith or Eric can give you a quick lesson on it.
You learn a lot with the classes and I could go on and on about AMA but there isn’t space to do so. Let’s just say, I had a fight after I transfered out of St. Louis which I won easily because I was very well prepared. This could only be attributed to all the instructors and my training partners who not only beat me up and submitted me numerous times but were also willing to be patient and teach a new guy the ins and outs of this sport.
After 2 years of training 2 – 3 times a week, I am now 150 lb and 8.6% body fat. My 1 pack has now become 8. Read it and weep!