The Academy
Byron Bay’s home of jiu-jitsu.
Thalison Soares brought a World Championship pedigree to a town with no elite jiu-jitsu scene at all and built one from nothing. Six years on, The Academy is home to over 700 students, from first class nerves to world-championship mats, and a reason people fly in from across Australia and around the world to train here.
This was never just about medals. It’s about what showing up does to a person — the discipline, the community, the version of yourself that only shows up when you keep training long after it stops being easy.
Coaching that meets you where you are, not a one-size lesson plan. From your first class to your hundredth, our coaches teach to the person in front of them.
Kids, adults, competitors, NoGi specialists every level has its own path here, not a one-size funnel. We take kids from their very first class through to high-level competitors, home-grown. Adults get the same standard — a real foundation built for the lifestyle and the community, with Pro Training there for anyone who wants to compete. NoGi isn’t a side option it’s its own program, built for the sport it actually is.
VISITING TA
The Academy has become one of those Byron Bay places people build a trip around training partners fly in from across Australia and all over the world. Here for a week or a season, the mats are open.
Multiple times a year we bring world champions and elite coaches onto our mats for camps and seminars open to every level, the kind of instruction you’d otherwise have to fly to Brazil, the US, or Europe to get.
This isn’t a jiu-jitsu school that happens to be in a beach town Byron Bay is part of the pitch. Beaches, hinterland, a slower place to live and a faster place to train. Local or visiting, you’re training somewhere people plan holidays around, with coaching that holds up anywhere in the world.
