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This place is awesome ! I trained with Jackson for years, he's the best trainer around. Extremely knowledgable about the sport, super encouraging! Jackson makes training fun, while pushing me to do my best. I highly recommend !
Coach Jackson is a great instructor who takes on friendly students who are eager to learn. At no point did I feel uncomfortable with the speed or the level of difficulty and the group of people who I am getting to know all seem to enjoy the workouts due to the positive atmosphere that Coach Jackson has created.
Starting with no martial arts experience at all, I've been training at North Star MMA for about 2 months now. It's become something i look forward to every week. Coach Jackson has a great way of describing the intricacies of muay thai in exceptionally easy to understand ways. Lots of personal instruction and the other people in the gym really help with training. I really like the skills I've picked up so far all while getting a good workout in.
North Star MMA is by far the best training I have received as well as the best MMA facility. Fantastic atmosphere to learn, try, fail and ultimately succeed.
Jackson Galka's expertise and technical instruction easily qualifies him as a "fight nerd." However Jackson's passion and wit will have you kicking, striking and probably laughing too.
Jackson does a great job of integrating all levels of training with all levels of fighters.
Doesn't matter what level you are, you will learn each and every training session.
Top notch instruction, astounding technical expertise, challenging sweat soaked training sessions and a wicked sense of humor make for an unbeatable training academy.
I moved to Philadelphia in October and did a lot of shopping around for a new gym. After checking out NorthStar MMA, I quickly knew it was a perfect fit! I didn’t have much Muay Thai or BJJ experience at the time, but I felt both programs were very welcoming for beginners. Coach Jackson and the rest of the coaching staff have been super helpful in helping me to develop my skills and reach my fitness goals. Coach Jackson has created a great sense of community within the gym and does a great job of keeping the classes interesting, fun and effective! I look forward to each class and I couldn’t be happier to call NorthStar MMA my gym home!
Me and my brother came to train at North Star MMA, and we love it. Very good exercise, really good for getting in shape. Classes are very personal and with very good instructions. I would recommend this place to anyone who is interested in learning Muy Thai, BJJ and looking to get in shape in one of the best ways. It is also a very fun environment with great people.
Jackson is a huge asset to the combat sports community with years of experience as a fighter and trainer under his belt.
Happy Monday Team! Springtime is almost here! And with it some exciting events at the academy lined up for you. But first, just a reminder that we are operating on an adjusted schedule for Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. All other days will be scheduled as normal. Changes in the daily lineup will be italicized […]
Happy Monday Team! Yes, we are open today! Last weekend (2/11) we had a great showing for our “Path to Blue Belt” in-house seminar. We are considering doing a more regular seminar series so as to take some deep dives into basic, but large, concepts. What would you like to see? Let me […]
Happy Monday Team! Full disclosure: it’s currently Sunday @ 3pm as I’m writing this (I write these in advance, because “early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable ). So maybe it’s a super happy Monday, or maybe it’s a super sad Monday. Either way, I hope you all enjoyed […]
Happy Monday Team! We had a great time at the MOC Sparring event at 8 Limbs Academy yesterday in West Philadelphia. Ken, Tre, and Ade all stepped into the ring and put on a fine showing. Fighting is a team sport, even though you go out there alone. Without a strong support […]
“I’ll see if I can make some time to ABC..”, “I’ll see if I can find the time to XYZ… Look, time cannot be created or destroyed. And it’s everyone around us — we don’t have to find it, either. Pay close attention to how we structure our excuses! Time cannot […]
Happy Monday Team! We are in the process of organizing some competitive events this Winter, so stay posted for some cool announcements! In the meantime, we’ve made some small changes to the schedule. Please make sure to familiarize yourself with the class lineup and keep NorthStarMembers.com bookmarked for reference! We are also […]
Happy New Year and New Monday team! 2022 was an amazing year for the academy. After taking a serious beating over the two worst years of the pandemic, we were able to regain our footing and move forward again. I personally want to thank all the staff and students here for your […]
Regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs, the Christmas holiday is important in the sense that it also marks the Winter Solstice: the turning point between the shortening and lengthening of daylight hours. As a martial artist, especially one who pursues competitive success or exceptional advancement, you will have cycles of both dark and […]
Happy Monday Team! One final push left this year with the holidays, and then we’re officially in 2023 with a wiiiiide open schedule to really get back to business on the mats. I have two updates for you in this newsletter — first, a quick note about some upcoming changes in 2023, and […]
Monday Mindset: The Progress Spiral It’s all about perspective. So much of our practice is routine — in a sense, we are running the same route over and over again. Rope, shadowbox, pads, spar. Warmup, drill, roll. Day in, day out. The scenery doesn’t really change too much and it can be easy […]
Happy Monday Team! We had a great seminar on Saturday with Jon Blank. For those who attended, I hope you picked up some neat little tricks. I do have a bullet point list of all the techniques and skills we went over — if you want a copy, just let me know! Regarding […]
Happy Monday Team! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday this past week. It was a great opportunity to relax, reflect, and rest. We’re moving into a slower season here at the academy. As such, our curriculum for our intermediate classes will be more relaxed. If you have any skills, drills, or […]
The training room is a high pressure, high intensity environment. And at some point, when we get through the initial on-boarding of how to actually train, we start engaging in live drills and even full, occasionally hard, sparring rounds. It’s easy to think that we are then working against our fellow students, rather than working with them. […]
Happy Monday Team! We continue to have non-stop events lined up over the next few weeks! Our full event schedule is listed below. But first, we are hosting Jon “Thor” Blank on Saturday, December 3rd, for a 90 minute workshop on the False Reap and Reverse De La Riva. These are cutting […]
With Halloween all around us, it seems appropriate to talk a little bit about “faking it till you make it,” or the act of putting on a facade (the word comes from the same root as “face,” by the way). Typically we apply a negative meaning to “putting on a facade,” as if the act […]
Happy Halloween! Just a reminder that we are running an adjusted schedule tonight. The lineup is as follows: 6pm All Levels Striking 7pm Touch Sparring (201+) 7:30pm BJJ (gi) Our 5pm youth class is cancelled today. We had a great turnout Saturday night for our Kick or Treat 2 Happy Hour! Although […]
Unlike more traditional martial arts, which have highly regimented curricula and skills that must be learned and demonstrated for each successive rank advancement, Thaiboxing and Jiu Jitsu are more performance based. You either can, or cannot, execute the skill against your opponent. As such, it can be difficult to know where to invest your […]
Happy Monday Team! We are back after an arduous but fun and successful outing at Grappling Industries on Saturday. The team picked up 5 Gold, 1 Silver, and 3 Bronze medals in some highly competitive divisions. We are back competitively this Saturday with Isis Toledo in a grappling superfight! This week also brings some […]
Kind of an appropriate one for today, as I’m traveling about 6,000 miles roundtrip at an altitude of 30,000+ ft — and enjoying the passing scenery below of the entire United States! One of the biggest paradoxes of martial arts is that everything is both incredibly simple and also incredibly complex at the […]
Happy Monday Team! I’m probably flying somewhere over the Midwest as you’re reading this now! After a quick trip to the West coast for a wedding, I’ll be back on the mats tomorrow without skipping a step. We are ramping back up for a ton of activity over the next couple weeks so buckle […]
What are our routines? The word itself is related to “route,” meaning our routines are the routes we take through our habitual cycles. Humans are creatures of routine. I remember in college, when we had no assigned seating, that my fellow students and I all generally sat in the same seat each day. It […]
Happy Monday Team! It’s officially October! Which means we are only weeks away from our second annual “Kick or Treat” fundraising party at Attic Brewing Company! I’ll have more information available shortly, but make sure to keep Friday, 10/28, open — we’ll have prizes, karaoke, and more 🙂 This event is a […]
Happy Monday Team! We are on the other side of a super busy series of competitive events across the spectrum of combat sports, so it’ll be nice to get back into a less frenetic rhythm for the next two weeks! While we didn’t get the result we wanted, Trevon Scales put on […]
If you really want to have success at what you’re doing, you gotta love it. In the fight game, there are basically two classes of competitors: Amateurs, and Professionals. Amateurs don’t get paid. They are essentially volunteers. Professionals get paid. That’s the main difference, on paper. This dynamic is a great example of the […]
Happy Monday Team! What a weekend! Friday night saw competitors Brittany Walker and Paul Sims engage on the Ground Zero Grappling stage here in Philadelphia. Both put in strong performances but did not walk away with wins. So it goes sometimes! Saturday we shot up to New York City for Gianna Vadino’s […]
Happy Monday Team! If I could describe this upcoming month in one word, I would probably say “TUMULTUOUS!” But that’s not a bad thing. We are packed to the gills this month with some awesome events and changes both big and small. Please note that our Striking 101 Review Test is […]
I’m guilty of really rambling on and on about mindset, paradigm shifts, etc. — but one lesson I learned as a competitor is this: The extra work is a choice. Inaction is a choice. Losing, too, is a choice. Making the right choices isn’t always easy, though. We are extremely good […]
Happy Labor Day team! I apologize for missing last week’s e-mail — my excuse is legitimate, but terrible: I was somewhere along the western coast of Ireland dodging mountains and sheep 🙂 Internet cafes aren’t much of a thing in Ireland, even in Dublin and Galway. So, apologies there! We have an extremely busy […]
Often I give a brief, lighthearted anecdote in this column, and discuss a perspective that can give you an edge to your training. But today I am going to be a little more direct, and address something I see way too often as a coach. In fact, I see it a lot, and as […]
Happy Monday Team! We’ve been working our tails off this month and I’m excited to wrap it up with a strong showing at the Finisher’s Submission Only Grappling tournament this weekend! September is shaping up to be a huge month for competition as well — we still have some irons in the […]
I completed my high school wrestling career as a senior in the 130lb weight class as a nearly 6′ tall bundle of knees and elbows. I spent my entire high school athletic career being as tall and skinny as possible — I competed freshman year at 119lbs. When I stopped wrestling halfway through […]
Happy Monday Team! Heads up that we will be running a modified class schedule the week prior to Labor Day (8/29 – 9/3). Often, during a week leading up to a holiday, we compress our 101 and 201 classes and loosen our ties a bit. However, the class times may change a bit […]
As a kid, I once heard that “watched pots never boil,” and I actually believed it. I realized had never directly observed water coming to a boil, and in my little monkey mind I figured that the act of watching it somehow stalled or negated the boiling process. Of course, I was a curious […]
Happy Monday Team! Just want to send you a quick (and final) reminder that our format for the Striking 201 program has changed a bit. These changes include: Classes are now 75 minutes long (excluding Thursday boxing). Free sparring/clinching will continue after the “official” end. Gloves, shinguards, mouthguard, and kneepads are required* Additional […]
One of the most important concepts in becoming a successful martial artist (regardless of how you define “success”) is that of ownership. We could spend hours talking about all the different ways ownership is important: owning your excuses, owning your responsibilities, owning your emotional state, etc. All of these could even be the […]
Happy Monday Team! Back to work after a packed weekend! Our Path to Blue Belt workshop was packed — I hope you all got something out of it. When we go over a comprehensive and exhaustive set of ideas and concepts, it’s unrealistic to absorb everything. Many of these concepts require multiple […]
There comes a time in your training career where it feels like you are just not progressing at all. And if it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. We have to remember that “progress” is a relative term. Unlike in weightlifting, us martial artists don’t have a quantifiable metric to track (i.e. how […]
Happy Monday team! Have a little more for you to chew on today.. we are covering three topics in this newsletter so sit down with a cup of warm joe and make sure to get yourself up to speed! We are hitting the mats fresh off another successful weekend in competition. On […]
Happy Monday Team! Looking forward to another great week on the mats with you all. Don’t forget, Trevon Scales is competing this Saturday for Gut Check Championships in Hockessin, Delaware (about an hour from the gym). We have tickets available at the front desk! On Saturday, June 25th at 1pm, we will […]
“The path of the Warrior is lifelong, and mastery is often simply staying on the path.” Pop-culture often makes a big deal of “The Warrior Path,” making it seem that the apprentice fighter must walk over coals, survive in the wilderness with just their wits, defeat hordes of faceless enemies, and stand on poles […]
Happy Monday Team! June is going to be a busy month here at the academy — we have something cool happening almost every weekend! 6/18 Gut Check Championships featuring Trevon Scales Hockessin, DE. See Trevon or a coach for tickets. 6/26 FLOWwork movement workshop with Coach Alex Brazinski Info and Registration can […]
I wrote a Monday Mindset article a in February of 2020 with the same title, basically, while overseas in Paris. I really had no idea how different my life trajectory would go in only a month with the onset of the COVID pandemic and all associated shutdowns, restrictions, anxiety, and general instability of the next two […]
I originally wrote this in the early Spring of 2019, when we had just secured the large space we now call the “Thunderdome.” Prepping 3400 square feet (including demo) while also teaching a full schedule of classes was not easy 🙂 Novelty, Plateau, Reward. These are the stages of every endeavor. It’s funny, 15 […]
Happy Monday Team! We are heading into an important week here at the academy, with the return of our Striking 101 Review Test on Wednesday! This test is for any student that has completed more than 4 consistent weeks of training in our fundamentals program. Participation is free, but you will need […]
Short and silly one for you all this week! For any of you younger students who are yet to move out on your own for the first time, here’s a piece of advice: buy the toiler plunger before you need it As martial artists, we too need to invest in ourselves so that […]
The martial arts exist in a state of duality: one side concerned with the fundamental rules of combat, physics, and body mechanics (the “martial”), and the other side being the human expression that operates behind these (the “art”). Newer students often talk about “styles” or “games” — what game should I be focusing on? […]
Happy Monday Team! I am exciting to announce our return to a more formal grading and testing system to both hasten, and focus, the progress of our students in their pursuit of striking mastery. One of my most bittersweet memories as a coach was Wednesday, March 11th, 2020. We had a packed […]
Picture this. You’re zooming down a stretch of flat road on your bike, when suddenly you encounter a hill. It’s steep. You quickly downshift into first gear, pedal like a madman, and struggle to the peak. Up top, you shift back to your high gear, and coast down the other side. Pretty […]
Happy Monday Team! We are fresh off another banger of a weekend, and back to the mats for another week of tough practice. Let’s give a big shout out to Timmy Green on a dominant and educated performance Saturday night at Art of War MMA! As a coach, one of my greatest joys […]
Own your mistakes. After all, you made them, right? Here’s the thing–most people have it twisted. In our hyper-connected world, we are privy to the “success” of other people. At least, a cultivated image of success that they often present on social media and other myriad outlets. It can be challenging to not feel […]
One of the most common excuses you’ll hear, in almost any circumstance, is that a person cannot “find the time” to do something. What does that even mean? Does time trickle inbetween the seat cushions of our couch? Do we forget it inside the pocket of our winter jacket that’s been stored away […]
Happy Monday Team! Before I get into the run-down of our upcoming event schedule, I want to remind everyone that Friday night’s schedule this week (3.25) has changed: We’ll be running an open mat from 6-8pm. NoGi open mat starts at 6:30pm as normal. We are officially out of Winter! Every transition is a […]
Happy Monday Team! I want to start out by saying a giant, huge, humongous, gargantuan thank you to everyone who came out for our anniversary shindig. A good measure of whether a party is fun can often be how few pictures there are — I was personally too engrossed in hanging out that […]
Be careful with your excuses. They expose your values. When an athlete or student tells me they want to take their training to the next levell, but then makes an excuse for skipping practice, or not focusing on the drill, or whatever really–there is always something written between the lines. Truly, I do not […]
Happy Monday Team! I want to first apologize for whatever happened last week that sent the newsletter out like four times. Technical error? Or was I just really excited about what was in that e-mail? Perhaps we will never know.. (It was a technical error! But I was also excited about that e-mail) I’m […]
MONDAY MINDSET: THE SWORD YOU SHARPEN IS THE ONE YOU CARRY INTO BATTLE Although most of us will intuitively understand this, there is absolutely a major difference between understanding and application. Too often we conflate the visualization of a task with the accomplishment of that task. On a chemical level, visualizing the completion of a task–say, going to the […]
Hey Team! After a looooooong hiatus on my weekly newsletter, I’m back! I’m looking forward to sharing some of my own personal training experiences, insights, and tips here in “The Red Corner.” Traditionally speaking, the champion or higher ranked fighter would be assigned to the red corner — so it seems like an apt name for a place […]
In one of my earlier emails, I told you that persistence is one of the five core tenets of martial arts. It’s a must for kids to learn to fulfill their obligations and stick to their commitments – but what makes them want to do that? In martial arts, we attribute it to one small […]
You know how good it feels to set your sights on a goal and then achieve it. It’s empowering and invigorating – and it’s not just a matter of chance. Goal-setting is an important life skill. The good news is that studying the martial arts can help your child learn: The importance of setting goals How to […]
There are a lot of emotional benefits available to kids who study the martial arts. We’ve talked about some of them already, but today I’m going to talk about one that sometimes gets overlooked: Martial arts classes are a great place to make friends! Think about how most of us make friends. Friendships often start with commonalities, […]
As adults, we think a lot about stress. Modern life is difficult. We worry about paying the bills, doing our jobs well – and we worry about our kids. That’s part of our jobs as parents, but we don’t want our kids to be affected by stress. It’s not good for them physically or emotionally. Still, […]
It’s time to talk about the emotional benefits of studying martial arts. Let’s face it – kids have a hard time managing their emotions. You’d be hard-pressed to find a parent who hasn’t had to deal with their share of temper tantrums. It’s exhausting. Also, consider the other side of the coin: it’s exhausting for […]
It’s time to talk about the fifth and final core tenet of martial arts. In many ways, this tenet brings all the other tenets together – and it explains why kids who study martial arts have a light in their eyes that other kids don’t. We call it Indomitable Spirit. What does it mean to have an indomitable […]