Folks, exciting news: It seems the sacrifices and efforts people have made to slow the spread of coronavirus are paying dividends.
We’ve been working hard on our re-opening plan — a plan that doesn’t just follow the law, but goes above and beyond what the law requires to prioritize health and safety. We have that plan, and you can read it in full below if you like. I’ll also provide a quick summary.
Why are we telling you about this plan now? For the first time, it seems like we have a tentative schedule for re-opening.
Currently, our state is in Phase 1 of its re-opening plan. The state guidelines provide a basis for which business can re-open, where and when. Some counties have already received state approval to move on to Phase 2. Other counties, like Whatcom, are expected to move into Phase 2 on June 1.
What does that mean? In Phase 2, some limited martial arts activities are technically allowed. Because jiu-jitsu has some unique risks (besides wristlocks), we want to be even more careful than the federal and state guidelines suggest (more on that below). To that end, we will not be opening until Phase 3. But because the guidelines suggest three weeks between phases … it seems likely that our re-opening date will be July 1.
It’s OK to get excited about that. Believe me, we are! But remember that this could change if there are public health setbacks in the meantime. It’s still important to practice social distancing, wear a mask in public, clean your hands regularly, and do all the smart, small things that are useful during a crisis like this.
I also want to be clear that we are going to have a phased re-opening ourselves. We get into that in detail below, but in summary, here’s why we’re going to have a phased re-opening.
- We will never compromise on health, safety and hygiene practices. Your health is our first priority, period. Prior to the crisis, we already had robust hygiene practices developed in consultation with doctors. During this crisis and as we emerge from it, we will take the precautionary approach, being more careful than the federal and state guidelines require.
- We will adapt this protocol to the best available science and research. We are learning more and more about COVID-19, how it behaves, and the best practices for preventing it. As our knowledge evolves, we will adapt so that our practices are always based on the best current information.
- We will do all of this in consultation with public health professionals. While we can never eliminate risk, we will always proceed with the utmost care, caution and forethought.
So, what does this mean when we re-open? What’s going to change?
Smaller class sizes, shorter classes. We’re going to mark off areas of the mat so people can maintain distance from each other, keep the class sizes small, and keep the classes an hour or less so we can maintain our level of training while limiting exposure.
The livestreams will continue. People have different risk tolerance. If you want to wait longer to come back in, the streams will still happen even after we re-open.
Limited exposure to training partners, gradually increasing. You can see the schedule below, but the upshot is: We’ll start with solo drill classes, training with a quarantine partner, and then, small group (“pod”) training, before we get back to normal.
No rolling at first. We’ll do solo drill classes first, then partner drill classes, and after we’ve established a baseline of safety … then we get back to sparring.
Last one, and I want y’all to know about this early:
PLEASE DO NOT ATTEND OPEN MATS OR CROSS-TRAIN AT OTHER TRAINING SPACES until we hit Phase 5. This is a tough one for us, because we’re huge advocates of training with everyone. But during a pandemic, we have to responsibly manage our exposure to other folks.
You’ll see from the phases below that we will limit the number of training partners people can have even within our academy for several weeks. This means we can’t have people training elsewhere during any of these phases until we’re fully re-open. (If you have training requirements at work — for example, our law enforcement crew — let’s get in touch and create a risk minimization plan).
We all have to pull together to minimize risk, and we appreciate your patience and understanding. And those of y’all that have been voluntarily paying dues to help us stay afloat during this … we appreciate that more than you can know.
One last thing: If you’re signed up for Intro to BJJ — or you were in an Intro session that was interrupted — we’ll be in touch with a separate email about scheduling those clases.
Thanks for being part of our community. Thanks for being patient. Thanks for helping flatten this curve. We appreciate y’all, and we’ll be back in touch soon!