Tran’s Martial Arts & Fitness Center

My son began in the Little Dragons program when he was 4-​years old. He has now moved up to Juniors. I can not say enough about the excellent training and amazing people who own/​run/​work at Trans Martial Arts. The kids program is the perfect mix of physical fitness, self-​discipline, respect and fun. Other programs and sports ebb and flow in our family but martial arts at Trans is the one program my son has remained excited about for 2 solid years. He plans to become a black belt and I hope he does.

I joined trans a few weeks ago and so far I’ve only taken Krav Maga classes (I’ll update this post when I’ve tried the kickboxing or the transfit classes). I’ve taken a variety of martial arts classes before but I’ve never stuck with any for more than a class or two. The Krav Maga classes are taught by Tran — he is super patient and nonjudgemental, which is very important to me when learning new things. We learn new ways to deflect attacks every class, keeps things interesting. There is an emphasis on having us learn not just the moves but how to apply them in real world situations.
The best part of this class for me — we use props! For certain parts of the class each group gets fake knives to attack people with. I now know what to do if (when?) someone attacks me with a knife in three different ways (you have to be prepared for anything on the mean streets of Boulder).
There are some gym guidelines that takes a bit of getting used to — bowing in and out of class, how to refer to other students and the instructor, saying «Osh» instead of «yes», etc. The nice thing is that they aren’t super strict or judgemental about any of this right off the bat.
Also there is a decent ratio of men to women in each class.

i bought the living social deal for 10 kickboxing classes at trans, and i believe it was $ 29. my friend that also bought it called to see if we could go to a class that week (boulder location) — she called to see if it was full. she was told that we actually had to do an intro lesson to learn the moves prior to doing a full on class. this seemed reasonable but was pretty difficult to schedule since we work and cant go to a lesson in the middle of the day. we ended up leaving work early to get the lesson in.
when we arrived we got a tour and master tran asked us a couple questions about what we were looking for. he explained that people who try out the gym on the livingsocial deal get a special membership rate if they decide to join afterwards (something around $ 150). what surprised us was when he said the living social deal is good for 10 classes in 6 weeks and the intro class counts as your first one. shouldnt this be in the small print of the living social deal? not to mention, one of the saturdays within our «six weeks» the gym was closed for a black belt ceremony — and like i said, we work, so saturdays was one of the only days we could go. we planned to fight this six week rule if it came down to it, because its not stated anywhere on the voucher. the intro lesson ended up being pretty helpful, but there were definitely new students in all my classes who clearly had just shown up to a class and never done an intro.
as for the classes themselves, they are a pretty decent workout. a lot depends on who you are partnered with. once i got partnered with a guy who was pretty advanced and in that class i burned about 650 calories working with him. on the flipside, getting partnered with a superweak beginner can almost feel like a waste of time if youre going strictly for a workout. i ended up only wanting to go when my friend could go because then i knew exactly what kind of workout i would get.
there are also a lot of rules. you recite things, count a certain way, line up a certain way, bow a lot, say sir and ma’am, address people by mr or ms last name, etc. i get thats part of their culture and people who want to JOIN a thai gym are into that. but people casually giving it a try with a livingsocial deal can end up feeling confused and embarrassed when they dont know the right thing to say or where to line up. i wished in the intro lesson, more of the rules had been explained to make the whole experience seem less exclusionary.
i ended up going to 8 classes, including the intro lesson. towards the end, a couple things really turned me off and i decided not to finish out the 10 classes (same with my friend). the biggest one happened after a class that i felt wasnt that tough of a workout — my watch said i burned only 430 calories. i asked the instructor (it was not tran himself) if it would be ok if i used the treadmill in the gym part of the facility, which was empty at the time — the lights were off. she replied in a super snotty voice and rude tone «not really… it would be ok if you were a member…» first of all, dont give us a tour of the facility if we cant use parts of it. second, how do you expect to sell people on buying memberships if they cant even use the equipment first? finally, if you want your students to use and believe in all the terms/​signs of respect you ask of them, you should lead by example and treat them with the same respect you demand for yourself.
bottom line, the classes are decent and a nice change in my workout routine. but there is fine print that they invent on the spot and you are potentially signing up for feeling like a second class citizen because you dont know the rules and arent a member.