Since 1998, Easton Training Center has had one mission: to bring the best, battle-tested Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai to its students and put the highest caliber martial artists out into the world. Today, with eight academies spanning the Front Range and Denver-metro area, we continue to serve in the same spirit.
Our mission remains, but has now expanded to a larger vision: To build the greatest Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu academies through an unrelenting dedication to the students and staff.
A clear focus on principals keeps all of the academies aligned, connected and consistent in what we teach, how we teach it, and what we expect from our students in return
For us at Easton Training Center, these principals became what we call Core Values: something that we’re willing to lose friends and money over. They’re non-negotiable, and they make life a lot easier when it comes to making difficult judgment calls. When in doubt, we weigh the circumstance against these five values, and if even one doesn’t align, the answer becomes clear.
[Training for Life: Longevity Over Power]
Our Core Values
- Excellence – We set and surpass the highest standards through constant improvement.
- Trust – We authentically earn and grant trust
- Compassion – We honor the dignity of all.
- Stewardship – We empower others.
- Adaptability – We allow ourselves to redirect to hit our goals.
These five values can mean many things to different people, but to us they set the standard for how we approach any situation.
Excellence means we will never stop learning and growing. In martial arts, striving for excellence means continually refining our techniques, staying humble in victory, and learning from every defeat. Excellence doesn’t mean we have to be the greatest or win every competition. Excellence is the pursuit of showing up as our best selves and constantly striving for improvement.
Trust is a loaded word when it comes to the world of martial arts and combat sports – we voluntarily put ourselves in precarious situations everyday, but this willingness doesn’t mean it’s easy. Working in such close proximity to others cannot take place without an element of trust, and we need to be able to trust that our coaches, students and partners have our best interests at heart. On the mats, trust means believing your partner will protect you while challenging you — that they will apply submissions with control and strike with appropriate intensity. Without trust, training safely and effectively would be impossible.
[Consultant Larry Dressler on Standing in the Fire: Easton’s Organizational Shift]
Compassion becomes crucial not just for ourselves but for those around us, as we navigate battles both on the mats and in our minds. In a space built on growth and discipline, it’s easy to slip into self-judgment or comparison. But compassion reminds us that everyone’s journey looks different. In martial arts, compassion shows up when we encourage our partners, support beginners through tough moments, and recognize that every fighter has struggles unseen. It’s not just about pushing harder — it’s about showing up with care. We want everyone, no matter their path or pace, to feel at home in our academies. We want people to feel seen, and for that grace to carry onto the mats with every roll and every round.
Stewardship consists of two main components. It’s the part where we trust you, the student, to take care of the new kid in class. You’ve not only learned our values but have come to exemplify them. In martial arts, stewardship means taking ownership of the culture we create together — welcoming new students, setting a respectful tone in training, and ensuring the tradition of martial respect is passed down. At Easton Training Center, this means lining up by rank and peeling down to find your training partner – higher belts working with lower belts. It is also an edict for us as well. We are responsible for stewarding the experience and journey of each student and helping to facilitate their growth with compassion, trust and a focus on excellence. It means nobody comes up without bringing others up with them.
Finally, Adaptability, our newest core value, may just be one of the most important as we constantly strive to stay afloat and redirect against changing winds. Adaptability is essential in martial arts as the circumstances are constantly changing. If you can’t adapt to a partner or opponent’s game, you will struggle. Adaptability is essential in martial arts because circumstances are always changing — no two rolls, rounds, or opponents are ever the same. If you can’t adapt to a partner or opponent’s game, you will struggle to succeed. Adaptability also means no matter what life throws at us, we can find a way to see it in a positive light and work with it. We grow because we’re not married to one specific outcome or path, and we see that all roads to our destination can teach us something new.
“There’s a tremendous amount of responsibility in all of us to constantly strive for these values,” says Easton Training Center Vice President Ian Lieberman. “Every day we have the opportunity to either exemplify them or to break them.”
Without a structure of values, we might get people through the door, trying out a membership and coming back, but we wouldn’t have built such a long-lasting company and community identity.
[The Power of Mindset in Martial Arts]
A Brief History of Easton
When founder and co-owner Amal Easton moved to Colorado after spending three and a half years in Brazil training with the renowned Gracie family, Amal brought Jiu Jitsu with him. Due to his own obsession to train, he launched a school where Jiu Jitsu was virtually unheard of at the time. Here is a brief timeline of Easton Training Center’s growth over the years:
1998 – Boulder Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (later renamed Easton Training Center Boulder) opened at 1750 30th Street. At the time of its launch, the academy did not offer Muay Thai but added it to the curriculum shortly after.
2007 – Easton opens a 4,000-square-foot facility in Arvada at 12421 West 49th Avenue, #3. The same year, it opens a small storefront in Denver that students and teachers lovingly referred to as the Favella.
2008 – Easton Centennial opens a 1,500 square foot bay.
2011 – Easton starts holding Jiu Jitsu tournaments at its Boulder academy. Starting with less than 60 people in attendance, eventually these semi-annual events become the BJJ In-House and the Muay Thai Scrimmage.
2012 – Easton Denver expands and moves into a beautiful 10,000-square-foot facility, having grown from a BJJ-only school to an academy with BJJ, Muay Thai and Kickboxing with almost 1,000 members. Eliot Marshall retires from fighting and partners with Amal Easton, switching the name to Easton Training Center.
2013 – Easton Centennial moves to its current location, replacing pasty green mats in a garage for a clean and expansive facility.
2014 – Boulder Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu finds itself bursting at the seams with a fast-growing member count and the addition of a Kickboxing program. In 2014, it moves to its current 10,000-square-foot facility at 2005 32nd Street.
2015 – Easton Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Thornton opens at 13762 Colorado Blvd #112.
2017 – Easton Arvada is purchased by Easton Training Center’s ownership company and put under new management. Denver’s Elevation Fight Team, a professional MMA team, officially calls Easton its homebase when its previous sponsoring facility moves to California.
2018 – Mike Tousignant becomes Easton’s first President and CEO, spearheading the effort to align Easton’s schools and principles. He re-orients the business towards a leadership-driven organization focused on values, competitive martial arts, and staff opportunities. Under a newly unified curriculum, Easton opens an academy in Littleton, run by black belt and pro MMA veteran and coach, Peter Straub.
2019 – Easton Centennial remodels its facilities and expands to accommodate the growing student body. Easton also launches its Easton Online platform run by Eliot Marshall and Jordan Shipman, a digital academy for Martial Arts school owners and managers to enhance their businesses with best practices, including courses like “First Impressions Specialists” and a podcast with strategies and resources.
2020 – Easton Training Center Longmont opens its doors in January right before the pandemic. Affiliate school Matrix Martial Arts is also opened in Castle Rock by Easton black belt Derek Alumbaugh.
2021 – We survived the pandemic! Cross-training between academies opens up again this year (previously shut down due to pandemic policies) and business returns to “normal” as previously laid-off staff get brought back into the fold.
2022 – In August, we take our two biggest in-house events outside of the academy! The Muay Thai Scrimmage and the BJJ In-House fuse into one, grand two-day event known as the Easton Open, which we hold at the Blue Sports Stable in Superior, Colorado. We also launch the Easton Community Podcast, hosted by Mike Tousignant.
2023 – Easton opens its newest academy in Lowry, co-owned by black belts Junior and Amy Fidelis.
2024 – Easton Littleton expands and moves to a new location, growing from a 2,000 square-foot space to a 6,000 square-foot one. The Easton Open begins to welcome outside students, including from Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai academies across Colorado.
2025 – The Easton Open gets rebranded as the Solid Series, a now regional tournament with its doors open to students outside of Colorado and even the USA.
[Community: The Heartbeat of Easton Training Center]
The Easton Community
We put a lot into making our community an inclusive and safe space for people to train and connect. The culture we foster on the mats extends to how we operate behind the desk as well, and since most of our admin staff also train, it creates a network of understanding and camaraderie.
Community expands into numerous facets of our business and lifestyle, and one of the ways this has manifested is through the creation of the Easton Community Podcast.
Initially begun as a way to connect with staff, and later with students to give full transparency on what happens behind the scenes, in 2023 Easton rebranded its podcast as the Easton Community Podcast. Now telling the stories of and serving the wider community, the podcast has grown to include interviews with fighters, business owners, homesteaders, competitors, and leaders in the community.
In addition to the Easton Community Podcast, we run the Easton Blog, which consistently publishes between six to eight articles a month written by members of each academy and edited and distributed by our in-house editor. This blog gives new students a peek into the culture at our academies, and it also highlights the many talents, capabilities and various interests of those training on our mats.
At Easton, our martial artists don’t just limit themselves to one passion or one perspective. They come from countless backgrounds and bring a host of talents that adds color, spice and depth to the room. The character and dimension that this adds to each academy creates a richer, more dynamic training environment and reminds us that anyone can start martial arts at any time.
Claus Antunes de Souza, the Denver Nuggets strength and conditioning coach.
In addition to the student-led topics and articles, we also run a series of written interviews which we publish each month and call Story Portraits – illustrating a snapshot of a key figure in our community.
Some of the individuals we’ve highlighted include Denver Nuggets strength and conditioning coach, Claus Antunes de Souza, Easton black belt and publisher Jeff Suskin, Columbine shooting survivor Veronica Fuller, performance coach and mountain guide, Jason Antin, pro MMA fighter and Easton black belt Bojan Velickovic, black belt and MD Vassily Eliopoulos, Easton Open’s Co-Event Director, Alisha Bielak, national competitor and Muay Thai coach Allie Readmond, and of course, our founder, Amal Easton.
Since 2023, we have begun publishing some of our top stories in a longer-format publication we call the Easton Zine, starting with the 2023 Easton Fall Zine, vol. 1, followed by the 2024 Easton Winter Zine, vol. 2.
Easton Events
At Easton Training Center, events make up an integral part of our community life. They create opportunities for all of the academies to come together and connect under one roof, reminding us that we all belong to one Easton.
Events include BJJ Belt Promotions, Muay Thai Shirt Promotion Ceremonies, Seminars, Randoris – including all-women’s and teen randoris – as well as youth and women’s sparring days, fundraisers and of course, our semi-annual Easton Open.
Why do we run these events?
Belt promotions and shirt promotion ceremonies allow us to celebrate our success and hard work both individually and collectively as a school. A critical component to our community’s health, they allow us to see – and train with – everyone who has put in the effort day after day to elevate their game, improve their technique and deepen their knowledge of their martial art.
As a martial arts academy, we prioritize learning in a number ways, both in-the-field through tournaments and sparring days, and through a series of visiting, skilled martial arts practitioners who coach technical workshops on different expertise.
Seminars like these with MMA champ and Jiu Jitsu black belt Rafael Lovato Jr. give our students an expanded experience, outside of our curriculum.
Some of our guest instructors in the past have included Professor Jon Thomas, a BJJ Black Belt, 2x IBJJF World Champion and 3x IBJJF Pan Champion, mult-time stadium Muay Thai champion in Thailand and European legend Damien Alamos, renowned fighter and coach, Addy Rentap, and IBJJF World Champion and 2024 ADCC Silver Medalist, Luke Griffith.
Our academy-wide sparring days and randoris bring together students from all eight of our academies, allowing people to train with new partners, body types and skill levels – all of the things that add experience to our game and depth to our practice. New training partners challenge us to stay sharp, letting us to test our skills in a fresh environment against people who have a different approach to the same techniques – and most importantly, they don’t already know all of our tricks.
The commitment to a never-ending path of growth and innovation has led to a number of first-time events – and many more to come. Since 2019, we’ve had our first ever all-academy sparring, women’s sparring, kid’s sparring, teen randori, teen belt promotion, and women’s randori.
First All-Academy Sparring
Easton Muay Thai threw its first ever All-Academy Sparring Session in August 2023! The session was a massive HIT with over 90 people showing up to train and spar with people who they don’t always get to train with. After training, we had a food truck pull up so everyone could get some well-earned grub while catching up with their sparring partners.
First All-Academy Sparring + Shirt Promotion
Inspired by its first All-Academy sparring event, Easton iterated on it. We held our first-ever Muay Thai sparring and shirt promotion event in May 2024. With over 150 people on the mats, it was amazing to see how much the Muay Thai program has grown throughout the Easton Training Center schools in the past decade.
Muay Thai doesn’t traditionally have rankings, but at ETC we’ve developed a ranking system that closely mirrors that of Jiu Jitsu. If you’d like to know more about our shirt system, you can read all about it here.
First Teen Randori
On May 25 2024, Easton Training Center held its very first teen randori, inviting teens from all the Easton Jiu Jitsu programs. With plenty of training partners on the mats, as well as coaches, training with the students, we had an hour of sweaty Jiu Jitsu fun. This first event was such a success that we decided to hold regular Teen randoris, alternating the host school each time.
First All-Academy Sparring Day for Tigers
Easton’s Tigers Muay Thai program made history in June 2024 when we held our first All-Academy sparring day at Easton Training Center Boulder. With over 20 kids on the mat, the youth Muay Thai program showed its growth with excellent displays of skills, technique, and friendship by all involved. Led by Easton Kids Muay Thai Program Director, Matt Bloss, and a host of coaches from all the Easton academies, the session was a blast for everyone. We’ll be putting on these sparring sessions multiple times a year moving forward.
First Women’s Randori
The ladies dropped in on the new Easton Littleton for Easton’s first All-Academy women’s randori in August 2024. With over 50 women in attendance, the mats were packed and, by the end of the session, very sweaty. It may have been fun, light-hearted training, but the Easton ladies got after it and put pressure on each other the whole hour. The first Women’s randori was a huge success!
First Women’s Sparring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPUUt1B9tCk&t=4s (there’s no video for the first one)
The Easton Muay Thai women showed in full force for our first All-Easton Women’s Sparring event in August 2024, as 40+ women came out to our Boulder academy to test their skills against ladies from all the Easton schools. While the spirit of these events is light hearted, that didn’t stop everyone from putting on a strong pace and pressure to test one another. Everyone had fun, but most importantly everyone got better from the session.
First Teen Belt Promotion
In February 2025, we hosted a special and inspiring event at Easton Training Center – Denver. For the first time ever, we recognized the achievements of a cohort of teens from all of the Easton schools as they graduated from the youth belt system to blue belts in the adult belt system. This jump is special as it marks the end of these students’ time in the kids program at Easton and welcomes them into the adult ranks where their skills will continue to grow and flourish.
If there’s not a space for everyone on the mats, then there’s not a space for anyone. We plan to continue creating new ways to bring people onto the mats together, learning from each other and improving their skills. These events let us celebrate all of the unique aspects of being a martial artist, and remind us that we’re not alone in that journey.
Competition at Easton
At Easton, battle-tested martial arts are as much part of our DNA as the core values. One of the most powerful things we can do to improve our martial arts experience and game is competition, and this means especially testing ourselves against others outside of the academy.
While not everyone who trains Jiu Jitsu or Muay Thai chooses to compete, we highly recommend it if you’re interested in expanding your physical and, most importantly, mental toolkit. Simply going through the competition journey becomes enough to give you an exponential boost in confidence, resilience and deeper self-awareness.
To support our athletes and competitors, Easton hosts and participates in a number of tournaments every year, from homegrown to regional and national. Each year dozens of people compete in the Denver IBJJF tournament, and kids and parents from all of our academies travel to Kids PANS in Florida, and our Muay Thai department always takes a team to both the Colorado State Tournament and The Thai Boxing Association (TBA) World Expo.
These opportunities have not only sharpened those individuals competing, but they bring a whole new level of skill back to the training room, keeping everyone else on the mats pushing harder and leveling up.
[Training for Competition: A Breakdown]
Kids BJJ Travel Season
Each year, we offer a roster of competition opportunities for our kids to take them out of their comfort zone and challenge them against some of the best in their divisions. The biggest of these competitions is always PAN Kids, which takes place in Florida – the largest BJJ Gi tournament for kids in the world! It’s a three-day event of camaraderie, family and competition for kids to level up their game and immerse themselves in the world of Jiu Jitsu.
Other tournaments we attend include World Jiu Jitsu Championship in California, American Nationals in Vegas, ADCC US Nationals in Vegas and Jiu Jitsu Con also in Vegas.
The kids and teens who take part in these competitions all participate in our Kids Comp Team training sessions and devote lots of time outside of normal classes to improve their skills. We want everyone competing to feel confident about their Jiu Jitsu and, most importantly, have fun while learning.
[Team Easton Takes On Kids PANS 2023 With Flying Colors]
Competing in the IFMA World Championship
Competition is also incredibly important for our Muay Thai students. In 2023, one of our very own coaches, Allie Readmond, traveled to Thailand to compete in the IFMA World Championships against the very best Muay Thai Athletes in the world.
Allie, a Muay Thai coach at Easton Training Center Boulder, became Easton Muay Thai’s first home-grown IFMA qualifier. Allie did not grow up training in martial arts, and in fact, when she first began, she was lost, nervous, and afraid of everything. Still, she willingly walked into Easton Training Center for her first Kickboxing class. Then, after some coaxing from coaches, she joined the Muay Thai program. Shortly after she competed in her first Smoker. From there, she’s experienced the gamut of emotions, from triumph to utter defeat. Yet, Allie remained persistent.
In March, 2023 she competed at the National Qualifier Tournament in Lakewood, CO to determine the representative for USA Muay Thai in her weight class. She won, which meant she got to travel to Bangkok, Thailand to compete in the IFMA World Championships. You can listen to Allie tell her own story here on the Easton Community Podcast!
[Easton’s Allie Readmond: Competing Globally + Representing Women in Muay Thai]
Muay Thai in Competition
Every June, Des Moines, Iowa plays host to one of the biggest Muay Thai tournaments in the world. The Thai Boxing Association (TBA) World Expo is a four day tournament that features some of the best Muay Thai athletes from the US, Canada, and surrounding countries. In all, 1000+ competitors travel to Iowa to compete for division titles, and Easton always brings a team of athletes to compete.
Competition is broken into categories by gender, age, weight, and class: C class is for fighters with 0-4 fights, B class is between 5-12 fights, and A class is 13+ fights. Athletes fight 1-2 times a day from Thursday through Sunday, with winners advancing to the next round and losers dropping from the tournament. Every day the brackets get tougher and competition more fierce, all while injuries and fatigue compound.
[Experience Muay Thai: TBAs Recap]
The Muay Thai competition team places a lot of emphasis on TBAs each year. Fight camp starts eight weeks out, but the fighters who get selected to represent Easton are constantly in the training room, improving consistently. Usually, Easton Muay Thai takes around 10 athletes to TBAs.
The Easton Muay Thai team also competes annually at the Colorado State Tournament in Castle Rock, CO. Last year, the team brought 12 athletes to the tournament and finished with 10 individual champions.
The team is already back to work in the training room, with many of those who competed at the state tournament preparing for their next fight. The train doesn’t stop and the fights keep coming.
[Experience Muay Thai: State Tournament 2024 Recap]
IBJJF Denver Open
For our Jiu Jitsu athletes, one of the best (and local!) competition opportunities Easton attends each year is the IBJJF Denver Open tournament. As an external event, the Denver Open is particularly a good goal for those looking to compete because, as an IBJJF event, it brings athletes traveling from all over the country and the world.
This year, Easton took 125 individuals to the tournament, including 15 black belts, with over 100 registrations in the gi and 65 in no-gi. The turnout marked the largest number of participants in the last four years that Easton has attended, with the most points scored, the most matches won, and the most medalists we’ve ever had
While these are some of our most popular competition opportunities, there are so many more out there if you’re interested in competing! Ask your coaches about our special competition training classes and find out how to join our Muay Thai or Kids Comp Teams!
