Boulder GM Matthew Bloss: Anchoring a Life in Motion
Easton Boulder’s GM and Head of Easton Kids Muay Thai Program, Matthew Bloss has lived at least three different lives on his way to managing a martial arts academy. From semi-pro competitive hockey to late nights DJing in Brooklyn, ski company warehouse shifts and managing an independent electronic record label, each experience taught him valuable lessons in discipline, adaptability and grit that he still leans on today.
Over time, these experiences synthesized into his path as a martial artist, allowing Matt to deepen his lifelong passion while guiding others along the way.
Since becoming Boulder’s GM in 2019, he sees himself as the “captain of the cultural compass.” Each coach plays a vital role in shaping the quality of training, the temperature of the room, and every staff member shapes the experience of the entire academy, from the very first impression. By shepherding the next of Boulder community leaders, Matt gets to help people feel empowered, supported and growing in alignment with Easton’s values.
Matt received his Easton Muay Thai Black Shirt in 2021 and today runs the academy with his Academy Operations Director, Vi Burlew, and coaches Tiger and Adult Muay Thai classes every week.
While no longer actively coaching on Easton’s Adult Competition team, in the past, Matt has cornered Muay Thai athletes at the TBA North American tournament in Des Moines, IA, cornered professional Muay Thai for the Lion Fight Promotion, and locally for 5280, Sparta Combat League, and at all Easton events for both kids and adults.
Matt first walked through the Boulder academy doors at 25 years old after his mom, Katharine Mead, brought home a Groupon for a kickboxing class. She encouraged him to try it and started training right alongside him. Today, Katharine holds a Brown Shirt under the Easton Muay Thai banner and coaches Muay Thai Fundamentals and Muay Thai Intermediate classes. With Matt’s son, four-year-old Ren, who trains in Boulder’s Little Tigers program, the family legacy continues!
[Muay Thai Coach Terence Cheah: the Sanctuary of Structure]
A life in motion
Like many kids raised in the 80s and 90s, Matt grew up obsessed with martial arts – karate kid, ninjas, all of it. He started karate around age 7, continuing until he fell in love with ice hockey.
Between 10 and 18 years old, Matt’s focus lay solely in hockey, including getting recruited by a semi-pro junior team in Colorado in high school. He left his home state of Utah and moved in with a host family in Louisville, CO, at 16 where he trained on ice six days a week for two years.
It was during his first two years out of high school, when he moved to Montana to play for the semi-pro team Bozeman Ice Dogs, that he got back into martial arts. At the time, the UFC was exploding, and through local cross-promotions between hockey games and MMA events, he met the owner of a local boxing and MMA school who invited Matt to come train. Matt got a chance to hit the bag and try Jiu Jitsu, but he didn’t really start training until he moved back to Colorado at 20 years old.
Matt initially thought he might pursue MMA, and his childhood best friend, Rob, who had also wound up in Colorado, introduced him to Muay Thai at a small, local academy. Rob passed away a short while later, but Matt continues to train in his honor until this day.
Matt had known about Easton for a while, but insecurities around training at the best academy in the area had kept him from joining. Finally stepping through Easton’s doors at 25 symbolized a big moment along Matt’s journey as a student of martial arts – surrendering to being a small fish in a big pond and embracing a new community.
Concurrent to his athletic hockey and martial arts timeline, Matt had also DJed since he was 18, something he continued doing in the background even as he played hockey. Though the music industry brought excitement, travel and opportunity (like playing in Brooklyn, New York with artists like Louie the Child), Matt also found it destabilizing at times.
“In my other walk of life,” says Matt of his martial arts community, “I had all these people trying to help me develop as a human being and grow as a person.”
Training became an anchor that brought him back if he ever drifted, giving him something to come back and stay healthy for. It was during Matt’s time as a DJ that he also began to compete as an amateur in Muay Thai. This often meant bouncing back and forth between night clubs and drinking, and time on the mats training for fights.
[From Sparring to Scrimmage: The Muay Thai Competition Journey]
Shifting to day mode
Coming into Easton with a couple of amateur fights under his belt and a drive to move into something more stable and healthy, Matt began coaching kickboxing within a year. With this, the discipline of Muay Thai was starting to eclipse the nightlife that had once largely defined his schedule.
In 2015, Easton Arvada set out to move to a new location and launch its striking program. Matt, coaching in Boulder looking for a way to move out of nightlife, jumped at the opportunity. At the time, he didn’t know what titles like “Department Head” or “Program Director” meant within Easton’s structure. He just knew he wanted to build something meaningful.
Matt helped launch and run the striking program at Easton Training Center Arvada for three years, serving as its Muay Thai Department Head while learning the operational side of the academy through working the desk.
Then, in 2018, a period of major growth across the organization shifted things again as Boulder’s then-GM, Mike Tousignant, stepped into a CEO position.
Matt decided to throw his hat in the ring for Boulder’s new GM – and got the job. He began assistant GMing in September 2018 and officially stepped into his new role in January 2019.
Anchored by purpose
At Easton academies, the lines between gym, community and social outlet often blur. People build real friendships and family connections, and they process life on the mats. As GM, Matt often has to navigate these human aspects.
“The hardest part,” he says, “is the people stuff.”
Sometimes that means having difficult conversations with people he cares about. Sometimes it means recognizing that someone isn’t the right fit for a role. Sometimes it means separating friendship from responsibility. Luckily, he works alongside leaders who understand that duality.
One of the frameworks that’s guided him is the book The Four Agreements — particularly the first agreement: don’t take things personally.
“I’ve never worked in an organization where you’re almost encouraged to make mistakes and learn from them,” he says. “I used to be paralyzed by not wanting to mess up. But having support — even when something doesn’t work — has taken me further professionally.”
In his roles, he moves between team meetings, staff development, parent conversations, coaching and long-term planning sometimes all in the same afternoon. As someone used to juggling many different hats and responsibilities, including an independent electronic record label and negotiating distribution deals, bookings and residencies for four artists, Matt sees the way everything connects.
He jokes that as a GM, you become the “ultimate generalist” — not necessarily the best at one thing, but competent at many. In the end, it’s more about the willingness to do hard things and stay on the path long enough to see what unfolds.
Through martial arts, he’s learned that opportunities don’t always arrive in the form you expect. But if you keep showing up, you learn how to recognize them. His background, working in social environments, navigating different personalities, balancing logistics and vision, now serves him daily.
In this way, resilience and patience have become some of Matt’s greatest successes — learning to zoom out, take a holistic view, and see that things are always happening around us, not to us. So, how can we take ownership of our role?
