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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.
ACCELERATION, SPEED, MOMENTUM WEEK OF 9/7/2026 Acceleration: a change in speed (increase or decrease) Speed: rate in which an object covers distance. Momentum: the force of a moving object. Training, like physical objects, has acceleration, speed, and momentum. Of those three, acceleration is the least important, but the easiest to feel. Both momentum and […]
PERSPECTIVE WEEK OF 8/31/2026 Short one for this week, partially because I’m personally dealing with a week’s backlog to catch up on, and partially because I spent a week completely removed from the day-to-day of the gym. Here’s the thing: training will never be easy. If it is, you’re doing it wrong. Because of […]
HANG LOOSE WEEK OF 8/24/2026 Inspired by my trip to California this week, today’s Monday Mindset is about “Hanging Loose.” Because, you know, California, surfing, etc, right? But “hanging loose” is actually a really important physical cue in the Soviet Boxing system as well. Soviet Boxing is a comprehensive martial art — it encompasses […]
THE BEST ADVICE YOU CAN TAKE WEEK OF 8/17/2026 The best advice you can take is your own. As a coach, I’m in a position where people come to me for advice. Whether this is smart on their part is up for debate (insert smiley face here) but the fact remains that I’m often […]
HYDROSTATIC PRESSURE WEEK OF 8/10/2026 Catastrophic failures don’t happen in incremental phases. One moment, everything is fine.. and the next, a retaining wall collapses and floods the area below it. When it comes to technical growth in combat sports, a similar dynamic is often in place. It really can feel like we are just […]
TECHNIQUE, LIKE MATURITY, IS OPTIONAL WEEK OF 8/3/2026 Aging is mandatory, maturing is optional. Similarly in training, physical development will occur, but technical development is never guaranteed. It’s a mistake to conflate hard, physically overwhelming training with the optimization of skill. If anything, high intensity work will force you to fall back on what […]
YES, SOMETIMES IT’S THAT HARD WEEK OF 7/27/2026 Prior to starting in MMA in 2004, I had wrestled in high school and a little bit of college. So I wasn’t a stranger to the demanding, all-encompassing demands of these sports. But my first years of wrestling? A totally different story. Very few things in […]
SHOW, DON’T TELL WEEK OF 7/20/2026 Prior to my career as a full time punching bag, janitor, and amateur therapist, I enrolled in an English Education degree from Ithaca College. I maintained excellent grades to keep my scholarship alive and graduated with honors (inducted into the national honors fraternity Sigma Tau Delta along with […]
A NEW NORMAL WEEK OF 7/13/2026 Originally posted 12/9/2024 That’s kind of what we’re all looking to create with our work, right? To create a new normal state of improved health, wealth, and happiness? But what happens when we start to achieve a new normal in our lives? Do we recognize and appreciate it, […]
REVOLUTION WEEK OF 7/06/2026 A revolution is part of a cycle — it revolves. In combat sports training, therefore, the most revolutionary action you can take is to stick to a routine: analyze, audit, and adjust. And through diligence ad discipline, often revolutionary breakthroughs occur. Not by chasing the novel, but by cycling through the […]
FOCAL LENGTH WEEK OF 6/29/26 Sometimes, things can be right in front of your face, yet be completely invisible. Perhaps they’re obscured by something else. Perhaps they’re just out of focus. That’s why, as you grow in combat sports, you regularly say to yourself “I can’t believe I didn’t see that — it was […]
BALANCE WEEK OF 11/24/25 Quick one for you this week. When we talk about “finding balance,” the conversation typically revolves around the idea that we have to find “good” stuff to weigh against the “bad.” A recovery day after a hard week of training. A cheat meal for being so disciplined in our diet. […]
INSPIRATION WEEK OF 11/17/25 “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” — Stephen King There you have it. Inspiration, like Motivation (capital M), is one of those things people feel are necessary in order to move forward. But reality for most of us is […]
LOTTERY WEEK OF 11/10/25 We tend to think of training as a linear process. We train for an hour, we get an hour better. We train for a week, we get a week better. We train a year, we get a year better. And so on.While this might actually be true, on average, for […]
ROUTINES WEEK OF 11/5/25 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 […]
DON’T FORGET TO HAVE FUN WEEK OF 10/27/25 Quick one for you this week. So much of combat sports culture exists adjacent to stoic philosophy, warrior ethos, bushido principles, and on and on and on. We are hammered every day with messages of chasing kaizen — that is, never ending improvement across all facets of […]
BE UNDENIABLE WEEK OF 10/20/25 Nothing worth having comes easy. And sometimes the difficulty is not in the actual work, but in achieving the recognition of that effort you’ve been putting in. There will often be gatekeepers who stand between you and the goals you are working to achieve – and whether these gatekeepers […]
WE HAVE WORK TO DO WEEK OF 10/13/25 Hey there lazybones, what are you doing? Time to move. We have work to do. Here’s the thing about fitness — you can’t really “get ahead” of your fitness so as to buy yourself a holiday. Fitness is a process, a lifestyle, it’s not a certain […]
NOBODY IS COMING TO FIX YOU WEEK OF 9/29/25 That’s it. That’s the big insight: nobody is coming to fix you. Your coach? They can give you cues and direction. Your teammates? They can give you encouragement. Your family? They can give you support. But nobody can “turn the wrench” and solve whatever problems […]
DECISIONS PRECEDE ACTION WEEK OF 9/22/25 Short one for you this week. This is more of a practical reminder than anything else. Decisions precede action. That is to say, before you move you must choose how to move — whether you are doing this consciously or not. Therefore, in training, it is important to spend […]
SKYSCRAPERS AND MAINTAINING YOUR BALANCE WEEK OF 9/15/25 A few weeks ago I took one of my every-few-years trips to Chicago for a long weekend of pizza, hot dogs, and architecture. No, seriously, the buildings in Chicago are amazing. From the tallest skyscraper to the smallest row home, Chicago’s aesthetic is just so perfect […]
THE RED CORNER NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE NORTH STAR ACADEMY OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS WEEK OF FEBRUARY 3rd, 2025 Happy Monday Team! Ah yes, February. The coldest and shortest month of the year. Thematically appropriate as this week’s newsletter is both short and kind of boring 🙂 As we roll into a new […]
THE RED CORNER NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE NORTH STAR ACADEMY OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS WEEK OF JANUARY 27th, 2025 Happy Monday Team! Quick one for you today, as we don’t have much extra stuff in the pipeline over the next two weeks or so. Big thank you to everyone who came out this […]
THE RED CORNER NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE NORTH STAR ACADEMY OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS WEEK OF JANUARY 20th, 2025 Happy Monday Team! First things first, we are open as normal today despite the holiday! If we encounter any weather-related issues we’ll send out a separate e-mail/notification to make sure everyone is on board. […]
THE RED CORNER NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE NORTH STAR ACADEMY OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS WEEK OF JANUARY 13th, 2025 Happy Monday Team! Writing you on the heels of a long and successful weekend of competition across both disciplines. Make sure to hit the links at the bottom for our Junior Samurai Stripe Challenge […]
THE RED CORNER NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE NORTH STAR ACADEMY OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS WEEK OF JANUARY 6th, 2025 Happy Sunday Team! I am incredibly excited to put the holiday stuff behind and get back to work in an serious and consistent way. For those of you that took a little break — […]
MONDAY MINDSET: WHAT WE DO IN THE DARK WILL BE BROUGHT INTO THE LIGHT WEEK OF 5/20/24 What we do in the dark, will always be brought into the light. If you could boil down the lessons I’ve learned from my competitive fight career into an easily digestible nugget, this would be it. Fighting […]
THE RED CORNER: NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE NORTH STAR ACADEMY OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS WEEK OF 4.22.24 Happy Monday Team! Wow.. what a weekend. Three events over two back-to-back days and over a dozen competitors! On Saturday, Isis Toledo competed in the Place of Peace invitational BJJ event. She dropped a competitive decision […]
THE RED CORNER: NEWS AND UPDATES AT THE NORTH STAR ACADEMY March 25th, 2024 Happy Monday Team! We are in the last week of March which means we’re wrapping up a bunch of our curriculum, as well as hosting our monthly Slamboree on Tuesday. For our Striking 101 students, Slamboree is an opportunity to […]
Happy Monday Team! Last week was a great teaser to the beautiful weather (and therefore amazing training conditions) that are right around the corner. As the world and we move into Spring, let’s take a moment to consider the ideas of cycles and rebirth. As a coach I truly believe that progress looks like […]
Happy Monday Team! February’s Slamboree was a great success — congratulations to both Mike and Coltrane on their advancement to blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu! Although technically only the second adult belt in BJJ, the blue belt is not easy to achieve. It demands a working understanding of the basic mechanics of the art, […]
MONDAY MINDSET: FOCUS FORWARD Quick one for you this week. Sometimes when I’m writing these, I find myself asking the big question: “why?” Why write these monday mindset articles when 99% of this stuff is just obvious? I’m not breaking any new ground here. Just simply pointing out the simple, basic, and obvious things that […]
MONDAY MINDSET: THANKSGIVING Mental tips, tricks, and new perspectives Just want to give a shout out to everyone reading this that I am incredibly grateful that you are all part of this academy!. Visitors regularly compliment me on how awesome the gym is, and I am quick to tell them that it’s the people that […]
THE RED CORNER || 11.27.23 || JIU JITSU CLASSES News and updates from North Star Mixed Martial Arts Happy Monday Team! Sadly this will probably be the final Monday newsletter with this format — we are transitioning over to a new software and its e-mail editor kinda stinks. As with all good things, […]
MMA, JIU JITSU, AND MUAY THAI CLASS SCHEDULE FOR THE THANKSGIVING 2023 HOLIDAY WEEK Please note the following class lineup! Hey Team! With Thanksgiving on the horizon next week, I wanted to send over our adjusted holiday schedule. Beyond the schedule, I’ve included a copy of the billing update email I sent […]
Hey Team! Just a reminder that our new Friday night class starts this week! Friday Night’s Jiu Jitsu 101 “Nogi Live Drills” class will focus on positional, live drills both incorporating and moving beyond the position of the month. This class is open to all BJJ students with 1+ months experience, and the nogi apparel […]