El Cerrito Martial Arts

"My 6 year old daughter loves this place. She did 4 camp days so far and we will continue weekly lessons. The owner, Cody, and all staff are so nice and supportive. We love how kids of all ages play so well together."

"All of our kids (4, 8, 10, 14) have taken classes at El Cerrito Martial Arts. Whether as part of the after school program, in form of camp during the holidays or just weekend classes - and they genuinely like it. Which isn't surprising at all, because the teachers - mainly Cody, Brin & John - seem to also genuinely enjoy what they're doing. It's impressive how they run the show allowing the kids to have fun and run free playing games and ensure at the same time that the kids stay in line. Sometimes our kids even do homework there after school, which is quite nice. The studio has a back room with tables and chairs. And as far as Jiujitsu goes: our kids have learned a lot and they keep getting better and better!"

"When you order over the phone, you need a credit card, and online order system is not user friendly. They need apple pay online. Also, the person who answered the phone at 11:15am on 11/04 was incredibly rude."

"My daughter loved karate and the teachers here are friendly and made karate fun. Every week she is asking to go back to class and learn more and play fun games."

"Our children attended El Cerrito Martial Arts for over a year, so we have been able to observe the priorities and changes over time. When we began, we felt that there was a focus on teaching children, and there was a high ratio of teachers to students. While the teachers were high school students, they seemed to be well-trained and focused. However, over the last six months or so of 2018, we noticed big changes that have caused our attitude to change: we noticed that there was not consistent teaching and training - some of the high school students seemed to be more concerned with what Cody (the owner) thought of them than focusing on the children. There is no concern about making sure there is appropriate staffing: at some sessions, there might be 20 children and 3 teachers. This is absolutely NOT OKAY when there are children who are practicing jiu-jiutsu moves in an unsafe manner. One child was hurt during our last class, when we finally decided we had enough. What was most disturbing was that we, from the sidelines, had to point out the injury to Cody - who was busy chastising us for "coaching from the sidelines." We left unhappy and sad that while we started with a lot of hope in our children learning safe and respectful martial arts moves, we felt we were just "customers" at Cody's growing business, and if we were problematic, oh well. I would urge you to consider: if you want childcare, this might not be safe. If you want your child to learn martial arts training, this is definitely not a good long-term option."