The Best BJJ Gyms in Portland, Oregon

In Portland, the letters in a street address do a lot of work. Each address carries its part of the city (SE, NE, NW and the rest), so you can tell at a glance which side of the Willamette a gym is on and roughly how many bridges stand between you and it.

You'll be reading SE a lot. Southeast Portland leads comfortably, with several gyms close together in the inner southeast, and the page dips past the city line to Happy Valley. North and Northeast Portland, out to St. Johns, have a handful more. West of the river, there's a small group in Northwest and a few downtown and in the southwest. Farther south, Salem gets a page to itself.

Renzo Gracie, 10th Planet and Straight Blast Gym all have academies in the city, as does Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. On Google, the most-reviewed gym is Northwest Fighting Arts, followed by Industrial Strength Gym in St. Johns and Tigerstyle Combat Sports. That first one is a good test of the address habit: despite the name, Northwest Fighting Arts is in Southeast.