TEMPE, AZ — Iron Temple Jiu-Jitsu announced last week that May would be officially designated Mental Health Awareness Month at their facility. As of Tuesday, twelve of the gym’s 74 active members have come forward to report they now feel noticeably, specifically, and in several cases dramatically worse than they did before any of this started.
“We wanted people to feel safe opening up,” said Head Coach Raul Figueroa, 47, who has run the gym for eleven years and prominently features a poster above the whiteboard that reads ‘PAIN IS JUST WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY.’ “The BJJ community doesn’t talk about this stuff enough. We’re changing that.”
The initiative, which Figueroa designed over a single weekend, includes a laminated teal banner reading ‘IT’S OK NOT TO BE OK’ zip-tied to the cage, a suggestion box near the water fountain, and a mandatory five-minute feelings check-in circle before Wednesday evening advanced class. Figueroa also appointed Derek Stanhope, 38, a brown belt and Allstate Insurance regional manager from Chandler, as the gym’s first-ever Mental Health Ambassador.
Stanhope took the role because he “went through some stuff in 2019” and has since listened to roughly four hundred hours of self-help podcasts. He has no clinical background. He wears a teal armband during drilling.
“I just want people to know they can come to me,” Stanhope told this outlet from the mat, between positional sparring rounds. “The mats are a safe space.”
The mats are where Connor Albright, 29, a blue belt and project manager, got triangled twice in a row by a 19-year-old white belt approximately forty seconds after disclosing to the feelings circle that he has been struggling with what he called “some pretty real anxiety stuff” since his last performance review. Albright, who had never told anyone at the gym anything beyond his weight class preference, described the experience as “a lot.”
“I said maybe twelve sentences,” Albright recalled. “I said I’d been feeling overwhelmed. I said my sleep has been bad. I said sometimes I wake up at 3 a.m. and just lie there. And then Coach Raul said ‘thank you for sharing that, brother’ and blew the whistle and I got immediately choked by Tyler.”
Tyler, reached for comment, said he was not aware the feelings circle had concluded.
Albright is one of twelve members documented in a survey circulated this week by Stephanie Wirth, 33, a purple belt and licensed dental hygienist who made the survey because she now feels worse and “wanted to see if it was just me.” It was not. The survey got twenty-three responses. Fifty-two percent reported increased anxiety since the initiative launched. Thirty-five percent said they now avoid eye contact with at least one person they used to train with comfortably. One respondent wrote “please take the suggestion box away” four times in the open comment field.
The suggestion box, Figueroa confirmed, has received sixteen submissions. Fifteen are unsigned. The sixteenth is signed “Marcus,” which everyone knows is Marcus Webb, 41, a recently divorced white belt who, during the first feelings circle, shared approximately nineteen minutes of personal history including two job changes, a custody arrangement, a shoulder injury he has been training through for eight months, and a childhood relationship with his father that Stanhope later described as “a lot to hold.”
Since Webb’s disclosure, an 18-inch radius of open mat space has appeared around him during warm-up laps. Three training partners have developed new reasons to arrive late on Wednesdays. Coach Figueroa has started ending the feelings circle at exactly four minutes and forty-five seconds.
“Marcus is doing great,” Figueroa said. “He’s really leaning into the process.”
Webb was not available to comment. He was drilling.
Stanhope’s ambassador role has also gotten complicated. Several members say he has started integrating emotional check-ins into technical instruction, which has slowed class down. During a recent session on inside heel hooks, Stanhope asked the class to “sit with how it feels to be in a vulnerable position” before demonstrating the finish. A blue belt asked if that was on the syllabus. Stanhope said vulnerability is always on the syllabus.
The class ran nine minutes over. No one received their positional reps.
“I think Derek means well,” said Wirth, who has trained for six years and has, in that time, dislocated a finger, torn a ligament, and trained through a breakup without mentioning it to anyone. “But I came here to get choked, not to discuss my attachment style.”
Figueroa, who called the initiative “an ongoing success,” announced Monday that June will be Nutrition Awareness Month. He has already ordered a banner.
“We’re going to do meal prep tips, macro education, the whole thing,” he said. “This gym is a family. We take care of each other.”
The suggestion box has since been moved to a less visible spot near the gear bins. Whether this was intentional remains unclear.