Hamptons Jiu Jitsu Finds New Home At Southampton Gym

For the first three years it was open, Hamptons Jiu-Jitsu was like a freight train, leading the Brazilian jiu-jitsu charge on the East End.

After opening up its initial space at 801 County Road 39 in Southampton in February 2017, Hamptons Jiu-Jitsu, just under a year later, needed to find a bigger space after class sizes doubled. Greg Melita, a 37-year-old Islip Terrace resident who is sole owner and professor of Hamptons Jiu-Jitsu, found that space just two doors down from his original storefront.

Things were going strong, even hosting some of the biggest names in martial arts, including Conor McGregor, but when the COVID-19 pandemic came in March 2020, Melita and his business were staring at their first big hurdle. Just like every gym across the world during the pandemic, business basically came to a halt, and to make matters worse, it was those types of businesses that received the least amount of financial assistance. Basically, the best of the best in the fitness world survived, while the rest didn’t.

Then, just as things were opening back up, Melita’s lease at 801 County Road 39 was nearing its end. He was certainly at a crossroads with his business that he built from the ground up, but an opportunity arose.

Southampton Gym, located a little further east at 395 County Road 39A, had a vacant space right in the middle of its confines. Even though it was a significantly bigger space than the previous Hamptons Jiu-Jitsu location, Melita was tentative at first about it.

“In all my years of being involved in the martial arts business, it’s just never worked inside of another location like a gym,” he said. “At all those other types of places, you usually have to take up all of your mats at the end of the classes, put them back down when you’re ready to go again. Then sometimes the gyms want a percentage of your revenue, or they hit you with a per-member fee.”

But after giving it some thought and working through a lot of the details, and not having too many options, needing to be out of his former space, Melita decided to make the move, and in a matter of days, Hamptons Jiu-Jitsu had a new home at Southampton Gym.

“We now have the whole back room at Southampton Gym. We pay a flat-fee for the rent, which is really nice, and we actually have more mat space than we did at any point at the old spot,” Melita explained. “We also have full access to the gym’s locker rooms and showers, so we have four showers in each bathroom as opposed to one small one we had. Overall there are more amenities now.”

Ralph Ruiz runs CrossFit 11968 right across the hall from Hamptons Jiu-Jitsu, and it was Ruiz who initially told Melita about the available space at Southampton Gym. Melita not only trains Ruiz in Brazilian jiu-jitsu but his two daughters as well, Zoe, 10, and Vada, 8.

Clients can now get their workout at the gym and train in both CrossFit and Brazilian jiu-jitsu all in one location.

“The biggest thing for me now is they have the showers,” Ruiz said. “Of course now Greg’s members can become members of the gym — they can do CrossFit now. The parking lot is bigger. Just overall the space is bigger. It’s a great spot. The lighting on the mats is great, there is a little skylight in the middle of the mat. I love it.”

Both Melita and Ruiz plan on taking full advantage of the fact that the Hampton Jitney is located where they are too, so they could attract those coming in from New York City to their businesses as well. Melita has already put one of his signs right next to the entrance to the Jitney and classes have been full, some topping out with 30 adults some nights.

And, of course, Melita needed to get someone to come down and christen the new mats at the new location, so Nick Diaz of Ultimate Fighting Championship came down on April 30 to help lead a class while also checking out the program’s new location.

“This is a much better look than where we were. We were kind of tucked away a little bit in the previous location as well, but we’ve already got a solid member base now,” Melita explained. “Now we’re in the heart of Southampton, we’ve got the Jitney right here and we plan on really picking things up here in the spring and definitely in the summer. Everyone who is in the gym can see through the windows here and see our full classes.”

A positive that came out of the pandemic was that Melita was able to work on his nonprofit, Hamptons Youth Camps, which isn’t necessarily “camps,” but rather a liaison that helps link up local, at-need children with local sports and outdoors businesses.

“It’s not your normal ‘summer camp,’” Melita said. “These are high-end, private lessons in any sport that maybe some local kids would never have the opportunity to try, whether it’s surfing, yoga, paddleboarding, and even Brazilian jiu-jitsu right here. The work of the nonprofit is really just marrying kids with whatever their interest might be. On the flip side of that, the kids might get exposed to something they may otherwise never had an opportunity to see.”

Hamptons Jiu-Jitsu can be found on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and hamptonsjiujitsu.com. Find more information on Hamptons Youth Camps at hamptonsyouthcamps.com.