ASHEVILLE, NC — After spending 94 days, $1,847 in legal fees, and an interstate move to extract himself from a predatory loyalty contract at his former academy, brown belt Corey Vandenberg, 32, walked into Mountain Lane Grappling on Tuesday and signed the new gym’s two-year auto-renewing membership agreement without reading a single word of it, sources confirmed.
Vandenberg, a software QA engineer, fled Charlotte specifically to escape Summit Ridge Jiu-Jitsu’s notorious 36-month “Loyalty Compact.” That contract featured a two-stage renewal trigger, a nine-month rolling exit window, and a non-compete clause his attorney described as “frankly the most aggressive grappling document I’ve reviewed since law school.” Vandenberg handed back the Mountain Lane clipboard within four minutes of receiving it, never having flipped past page one.
“It just feels right, you know?” said Vandenberg, who according to court filings sent 41 certified letters, retained two attorneys, and liquidated a Roth IRA to settle with Summit Ridge head coach Brendan Castellucci. “The vibe is different here. The mats are clean. Coach Derrick remembered my name on the first day. I had a really good feeling about the place. Whatever they put in front of me, I was going to sign it.”
The contract Vandenberg signed without reading is, by Mountain Lane’s own admission, longer than the Summit Ridge contract he spent three months escaping.
Among the terms now legally binding upon him: a 24-month membership commitment that auto-renews on a quarterly basis “in perpetuity,” a $385 cancellation fee that increases by 12% each calendar year, a clause forfeiting his belt rank if he leaves on bad terms, and what insiders refer to as a “Lineage Retention Clause” that bars him from training with any former Summit Ridge member for 18 months following any future termination. Vandenberg signed this provision three weeks after relocating his entire life specifically to train with former Summit Ridge members, four of whom now also train at Mountain Lane.
“You won’t even notice it,” Mountain Lane head coach Derrick Palumbo, 44, told Vandenberg as he held out a Bic pen and a clipboard. “Honestly most guys don’t even ask. The standard package covers everything. We’re a family here.”
Vandenberg, beaming, did not ask.
Sources at Mountain Lane confirmed the gym maintains a four-tier contract structure that mirrors Summit Ridge’s almost exactly, including a “Founders’ Tier” loyalty pricing that locks members into 60-month commitments in exchange for a $40 monthly discount and a complimentary rashguard featuring a logo Mountain Lane is in the process of being sued for using.
“Corey is a great addition to our community,” said Palumbo, noting that Mountain Lane’s enrollment is up 31% this quarter, almost entirely from refugees of contract gyms in surrounding counties. “He’s exactly the kind of guy we built this place for. Some of these guys come in here and they want to read every line, ask every question. Not Corey. Corey gets it. Corey trusts the process.”
The process, according to Mountain Lane’s own member handbook, includes a forced arbitration clause naming a private arbitrator who is also Palumbo’s brother-in-law.
Vandenberg, asked Wednesday morning whether he understood the terms of the agreement he signed, paused for several seconds before saying, “I think it’s like, two years? Or four? It’s a thing where they give you the gi and you can come whenever. Coach said it was the standard one.” When pressed on the Lineage Retention Clause, he laughed. “There’s no way that’s real. Did you make that up?”
He then drove to Mountain Lane for the noon class, where he rolled with three former Summit Ridge teammates he is now contractually prohibited from training with for 18 months after any future termination of his membership.
Vandenberg’s wife, Elena, who took unpaid leave from her physician’s assistant position to facilitate the family’s move to Asheville, said her husband described the new gym as “feeling like home” within his first 90 minutes there.
“He just kept saying it. ‘It feels like home, El. It feels like home,’” said Elena, sitting in the rented two-bedroom they signed a 24-month lease on the same week. “I asked him if he read the contract. He said he ‘skimmed.’ I asked him what ‘skim’ meant in this context. He said he looked at the part where he wrote his name.”
According to legal records, Vandenberg’s settlement with Summit Ridge included a mutual non-disparagement clause, a five-year prohibition on writing reviews of any Summit Ridge affiliate, and a buy-back of the gi he’d been issued at his last promotion. The total cost of his exit, including movers, came to $9,712.
Mountain Lane’s standard membership terms now place him 13 months away from a renewal he is not aware will trigger automatically.
“This is exactly what we kept seeing in the data,” said Dr. Marisol Reuter, a behavioral economist at the Piedmont Institute for Combat Sports who studies contract retention in martial arts academies and who was not consulted at any point in this matter. “Practitioners who escape predatory contracts are statistically more likely to sign predatory contracts. Once you’ve narrativized the gym you left as the bad gym, the gym you’re at becomes the good gym, definitionally. The contract is just paperwork. The community is real. That’s what gets you. The community.”
Palumbo, asked about the Lineage Retention Clause, said it was a “standard provision” he’d “borrowed” from a contract template another gym owner had emailed him, and that he had not personally read it either.
“To be honest with you,” said Palumbo, “I don’t even know what’s in half of these. My wife handles the paperwork. I just coach.”
Mountain Lane’s wife-handled paperwork is currently being reviewed by the same attorney Vandenberg used to leave Summit Ridge, who declined to comment beyond noting his retainer is $2,400.
At press time, Vandenberg was telling a new white belt at the gym that Mountain Lane was “way different from those contract gyms,” and that the white belt should “definitely sign up — it’s a really good place,” before adding, “just make sure you read what you’re signing. That’s how they get you.”