Reinaldo “Rei” Villa is the owner and head instructor of 10th Planet Airlock in Bastrop, TX. He’s a 10th Planet Black Belt. An IBJJF Certified First Degree Black Belt. And a retired 20-year U.S. Army Infantry veteran.
Rei spent 20 years in the United States Army. Infantry. Multiple deployments to the Middle East. Along the way, he accumulated the kind of experience with real-world violence that almost no martial arts instructor anywhere in the country can claim. He didn’t read about it. He lived it.
Somewhere along that 20-year path, the Army started asking Rei to teach other soldiers how to fight. He trained in SOCP (Special Operations Combatives Program). He served as a Tactical Combatives Instructor at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, teaching hand-to-hand fighting to active-duty soldiers preparing for deployment. On the civilian side, he became a Certified Instructor for Sheepdog Response, the self-defense training organization founded by Tim Kennedy.
If there’s a résumé for combat-relevant martial arts instruction in the United States, Rei’s is pretty close to the top of it.
In February 2024, Rei retired from the Army after two decades of service. He could have opened a gym anywhere in the country. He chose Bastrop. Not by accident.
Rei spent five years stationed at Camp Swift, right here in Bastrop County. Over those five years this place went from a duty station to a home. He got to know the community. The small businesses. The people who make this town the town. When it was time to build something of his own, he built it here, because he couldn’t picture doing it anywhere else.
Rei’s martial arts career ran parallel to his military one the whole time. He’s a 10th Planet Black Belt under Curtis Hembroff at 10th Planet Austin, and an IBJJF Certified First Degree Black Belt. He’s competed on the IBJJF, NAGA, Fight2Win, Elevate Submission Series, KIRIN, and Garcia Promotions circuits. He’s done the competition thing the way you’re supposed to, not for a highlight reel, but to pressure test the skills he teaches every day.
Rei founded 10th Planet Airlock on July 4, 2023. Nearly three years later, the gym is now a proud partner of the We Defy Foundation, which provides jiu jitsu scholarships to combat-wounded veterans diagnosed with PTSD and TBI. And in 2025, Airlock was voted the #1 Best Martial Arts Gym in Bastrop County. One of those tells you what Rei stands for. The other tells you what this community has decided about the gym he’s built.
Rei doesn’t run Airlock alone. He partnered with Andrea and Tyler Hixson, who came up in the 10th Planet system training at 10P gyms all over the country before finding their home training under Rei, to build the business and community side of the gym. And he’s joined on the mats by Coach Chris Bennett, a fellow 10th Planet Black Belt who moved from 10th Planet Tucson to Texas specifically to coach alongside Rei.
What Training With Rei Is Actually Like
Rei is patient with beginners. Not the patient-for-three-classes kind. The actual kind. And he’s fierce about making advanced practitioners better. He never turns down a roll. As far as we can tell, he’s universally respected among the jiu jitsu coaches of Central Texas, which is a pretty small world in which to have that kind of reputation.
The thing that really separates his teaching, though, is that his game is grounded in realistic fighting… because that’s where he came from. There’s no “in a controlled setting, you might…” in a Rei Villa class. It’s: here’s what works, here’s why, here’s how to make it yours.
And unlike a lot of head instructors, Rei hasn’t locked himself in his own gym. He believes in continuing to grow. He travels to seminars. He trains at other gyms. Every single week, he drives into Austin to cross train and get hard rolls with our friends at 10th Planet Austin.
If you want to see what training under this kind of instructor is actually like, your first class at 10th Planet Airlock is free. No experience needed. No gear required.
Adult no-gi jiu jitsu six days a week. Seminars with some of the best names in the sport. And a community that takes care of veterans in a real way.
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