Four 10th Planet Airlock members compete at Thursday Night Jiu Jitsu on Thursday, October 29, at 10th Planet Austin. Two of them are stepping onto a competition mat for the first time. The whole card streams free on YouTube.
Before we get to that, we need to tell you about September 5.
The Quintet, and the Part That Happened After
Five of our guys went out to Austin Fit Fest for a Quintet, which if you’ve never seen one is a five-on-five team format where it goes one match at a time and your whole squad is standing right there on the side watching it happen. It’s a different animal than competing by yourself. You’ve got four other guys out there with you, and whatever happens in your match is the situation the next guy walks into.
We lost in the first round. It happens.
And that could have been the end of it. Pack up, drive home, talk about what we’d do differently next year. But then the event put together some surprise superfights, and every one of our guys said yes.
All five of them won. Every single one by submission.
We’ve said before that the medal doesn’t matter, and we have never had a better example of it than that afternoon. We lost the thing we drove to Austin for, got handed five more chances an hour later, and finished all five of them. Nobody brought home a medal, but everybody left there a little different than they showed up.
You can watch the whole thing on YouTube.
Thursday Night Jiu Jitsu, October 29
Next up is Thursday Night Jiu Jitsu on October 29, from 10th Planet Austin and held at their gym.
Four of ours are on the card, and for two of them it’s the first time they’ve ever competed. If you’ve never done it, that first one is a wild experience. You don’t sleep much the night before, you warm up way too early, and somewhere in there you probably forget everything you know. Then the ref says go and your body just does what it’s been drilled to do, and you walk off that mat knowing some things about yourself you didn’t know that morning.
Airlock will be there in the room for them. Anybody who can’t make the drive will be watching the stream, and we’d love for you to watch it with us. TNJJ runs on 10th Planet Austin’s YouTube channel, free, every time.
One scheduling note for anybody who normally trains with us that night: there’s no Airlock After Dark on October 29. We’re closing it so the whole gym can go support our guys. It’s back the following Thursday.
Competing Is Optional and It’s Excellent
Plenty of people train here for years and never compete, and they get strong and they get technical and they make a bunch of friends and learn how to handle themselves, and then they go home.
That’s a complete way to do jiu jitsu, and nobody at this gym thinks less of it. If you came here to get in shape and learn a skill, you already have everything you came for.
And if you do want to compete, it’ll show you something the gym can’t. Rolling with your teammates is great, but they know you. They know your guard, they know which side you’re going to shoot on, and some part of them is rooting for you.
A stranger across the mat from you on a Thursday night is not rooting for you. Competing is about the closest you can get, safely, to finding out whether your jiu jitsu works on somebody who came there to beat you.
Win or lose, you’ll be back in the gym Monday knowing exactly which three things you need to work on.
How We Get People Ready
We don’t run a separate competition class these days, so the prep just happens inside the classes you’re already coming to.
When somebody has an event coming up, we start making their rolls harder and putting them in with the people who are going to give them problems. We push them to hit open mats with us, including out of town, because rolling with people who have never seen your game is most of what getting ready is.
And we sit down with them on the specifics: this is the ruleset, this is who you’re likely to see, here’s a gameplan and here are the three positions we’re drilling until the day.
It all starts with a conversation, the day you tell a coach you want to compete, and it goes until you step on the mat.
If You Want In
Tell a coach, and we’ll hook it up.
You don’t need a belt, a record, or permission. There are local events most months around Central Texas, and we live in the best place in the country to do this, which means you can find a competition within an hour’s drive almost any weekend you want one.
And if you’ve never trained at all, start there instead. Your first class is free and you don’t need any gear.
Or call us: (512) 271-5260
Or email: airlockbjj@gmail.com
10th Planet Airlock | 303 Martin Luther King Dr, Bastrop, TX 78602 | Inside Bastrop Fitness Project | Voted #1 Best Martial Arts Gym in Bastrop County 2025 | We Defy Foundation Partner
