WOMEN & NEWBIES - DO NOT TRAIN HERE!!!
I'm not usually one to leave bad reviews, but I truly hope that I can help others avoid the experience I had at Nova Uniao.
I signed up for BJJ, classes, interested in eventually competing. However, from the second I walked into the studio, every coach there started pushing me towards MMA classes, saying these are more appropriate for "girls". I tried several times to attend the women's BJJ classes on Saturday mornings, but each time the class was cancelled with no notice because no one had shown up to train. When I asked Coach Pedro about this, he just told me to show up for the next class, as if my time is valueless and I have all day to travel back and forth to classes that may or may not happen.
Because the BJJ classes weren't working out for me, I tried the MMA classes for about 3 weeks. I got about 10 minutes of beginner instruction at the very start, but after that Coach Carlos expected me to use equipment I had received no instruction on how to use, and to follow moves with no explanation of how these moves fit with the numbering system I had learned during my beginner instruction. I was completely unable to follow the class and had to rely on kind fellow students to take time out of their training to help me, because Coach Carlos refused to answer any questions or provide any further instruction. I tried to ask him for clarification several times over weeks, but each time he ignored me. When I finally essentially forced him to take 5 seconds to listen to my question, he snidely said he did not teach me that, and then walked away without answering the question. He made it clear that he thought I was being a huge problem and incredibly stupid for requiring any instruction at all.
Because I had been misled about the BJJ classes and Coach Carlos refused to do the bare minimum of his job, I asked for a refund on my membership. Coach Pedro tried to lie to me on the phone about how he had given me an inaccurate schedule with classes that didn't actually happen until I pulled up the schedule he'd given me and started reading directly from it. He also explained that, even though the studio falsely advertises that it trains women, no women currently regularly train at the studio. Coach Pedro then proceeded to string me along for months just to get a refund for the BJJ uniform I had purchased. Since I returned the uniform to him completely unused, there was no reason he couldn't give me a refund immediately, but instead he made up an excuse about how he needed to sell the uniform to someone else first, as if it's my problem that he misled me about what classes are available. It took 2 months to get a refund, with him telling me multiple times the refund would be available and then it wasn't. If it's so uncommon for someone of my size and stature to sign up for BJJ, he should have told me this when I signed up, but instead he just wanted to take my money.
Every staff member at Nova Uniao consistently and exclusively refers to adult female athletes as "girls". I am an athletic person who has participated in many sports and workout classes, and I have never been treated with the lack of basic respect or responsibility I received from Coach Carlos in Nova Uniao's MMA classes. It was really a bizarre experience. I guess don't attend Nova Uniao unless you're an experienced male fighter, because that seems to be the only type of student the coaches have any respect or consideration for.
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Posted 1 year ago