Full Website, LMS Portal, and Brand Strategy for a Faith-Based BJJ Program

What Rick Had

Rick Koenig is a second-degree BJJ black belt under the Carlson Gracie lineage. Twenty years teaching. Former fighter, celebrity security, law enforcement. He was featured on a Discovery Australia TV series. His redemption story is real and it’s documented.

He runs Training Day out of Maxfield Gym in Hollister, Missouri. The program is built on a specific idea: the mat teaches submission the same way faith does. You stop pretending you have it together and you start doing the work. The target audience is men in transition, divorce, addiction, lost, purposeless, people who would never walk into a church but will walk into a gym.

What he had digitally: a Wix site with placeholder testimonials, pricing that contradicted itself ($49.99 on the homepage, $600 on the membership page), unfilled legal page templates, and a contact form configured with the previous developer’s email domain. Every contact submission was landing in spam.

No analytics. No member system. No way for someone outside Hollister to participate in anything Rick teaches.

Before Writing Any Code

I ran a full architecture session before touching the codebase. The output was an 867-line spec covering 8 database tables, 26 Row Level Security policies, 27 application routes, and a 7-phase build plan.

The spec review caught a significant design flaw. The original auth flow collected a password at application time, then had a separate set-password page for after approval. That’s contradictory: you can’t have someone create a password before their account exists. The redesign separated applying from becoming a member entirely. When an admin approves an applicant, the system creates the auth user and sends an invite link in a single API call. Clean separation.

Other issues caught before a line of code was written: missing package dependencies, a lesson progress RLS policy that needed SECURITY DEFINER to handle a three-table join chain, and a column restriction on admin profile updates so admins couldn’t modify each other’s emails.

The Portal Build

All seven phases executed in a single long session.

Phase 1 stood up the full database: 5 enums, 8 tables, 8 indexes, 34 RLS policies, triggers, and helper functions. Two things broke that I didn’t expect. shadcn v4 had removed the asChild prop from the Button component, a breaking change from what my training data knew. Next.js 16 deprecated the middleware.ts naming convention in favor of proxy.ts. Both required tracking down before anything else could proceed.

Phase 2 built the application form and confirmation flow. Phase 3 built the admin side: application queue with tabs, approve and deny actions, members page with search and status filters, and a dashboard with real aggregate stats.

Phases 4 and 5 built the course system. Full CRUD for programs, modules, and lessons. TipTap rich text editor for lesson content. Progress tracking with sequential locking: lesson N+1 is locked until N is marked complete, and the next module is locked until all lessons in the current one are done. YouTube embeds for video lessons.

Phase 6 added announcements with a publish toggle and admin analytics. Phase 7 was polish: profile editing, error and loading states, breadcrumbs, and a seed script.

Roughly 48 commits across the seven phases.

A second session backported five features from a parallel project: a native community message board replacing a Discord embed, a mobile-responsive sidebar, admin password reset, and an expanded dashboard (3 stats to 8 plus 6 quick-action cards).

Security

Two subagents ran a security audit after the core build. Three issues found and fixed: a member could theoretically update their own role field via RLS (fixed with a Postgres trigger), no Content Security Policy header existed (added), and the change password form didn’t require the current password (fixed). HTML names were escaped in email templates to prevent injection.

Security audit as a built-in phase, not something done after a client asks for it.

The Content

The portal needed actual lesson content. I wrote all of it.

6 programs, 24 modules, 99 lessons. Every word written for veterans and people in transition specifically, not adapted from generic material.

The programs: BJJ Fundamentals (positions, submissions, guard, defense). Strength Training (barbell compounds plus a bodyweight module added later). Health and Fitness (nutrition, sleep, mobility, stress management). Addiction Recovery (triggers, accountability, HALT framework, relapse prevention). Finding Community (vulnerability, mentorship, conflict, belonging). Spiritual Growth (prayer, scripture, doubt, purpose).

28 lessons are video plus supporting text. The rest are text-only. 13 real YouTube video URLs mapped to appropriate topics.

Every draft went through a full copy audit before going into the database. 30 fixes applied across the programs. The goal was copy that reads like a knowledgeable friend who has been through the same transition, not a self-help brochure.

After the initial build, I ran a full audit across all 99 lessons checking three dimensions: brand voice, content depth, and video relevance. 17 lessons had gendered language fixes. 3 dead YouTube videos were replaced. 7 weak video matches were swapped for better fits. All fixes pushed directly to Supabase.

The Training Day Rebrand

The original portal launched under the Strength 4:13 name. When Rick sent over his Training Day brand PDF, the visual identity needed a complete rebuild.

I researched 8 competing programs in Rick’s space (F3 Nation, Fight Club 414, FaithRXd, Sacred Sons, BetterMan, Kingdom Driven Man, and others) across two research sessions. Key patterns: short punchy hero copy, a named enemy, 3-4 pillar sections, video proof, 3-step pathways, transformation testimonials. Rick’s unfair advantages: the HBO special (no competitor has mainstream media proof), embodied authority, BJJ as a metaphor machine, and “submission” as a dual meaning.

The rebrand executed across 13 commits: new palette (coral #E8735A replacing both gold and red, full OKLCH token system), Cinzel and Oswald typography, 6 brand primitives (Wordmark, Kicker, SectionLabel, SectionHeading, CtaButton, GhostButton), 2 layout primitives, and a complete landing page rewrite in Rick’s actual voice. The v1 copy had overcorrected on avoiding a “safe Christian bubble” and landed somewhere Fight Club-adjacent. The v2 was rewritten from scratch: loaded Rick’s real bio for voice, the Training Day brand doc for content, and competitor research for structure. Then a full copy audit and re-audit before implementation.

Mobile-first design passes across all public pages and the full member dashboard. WCAG AA contrast verification, 44px touch targets, keyboard navigation, focus-visible indicators, scroll-triggered animations with prefers-reduced-motion support. Lighthouse 100/100 on the public pages after fixing contrast, heading hierarchy, link underlines, and hit target sizes.

Two E-Books

The first e-book was “The Foundation,” Rick’s lead magnet for the program. I built a dedicated /foundation page on the portal with a 3D cover render, description copy, and a name/email download form that replaced the old Wix site’s external link. The page went through a full copy audit and mobile accessibility pass before going live.

The second was the 30-Day Challenge workbook, built entirely from scratch. Rick wanted a physical product: a printable PDF for a 30-day transformational challenge. Home-accessible, no gym required, with pushups and prayer as the daily anchor.

I built the entire pipeline from concept to finished product. Brainstormed the structure, wrote a full blueprint, ran a 5-lens swarm audit (16 findings), applied all fixes. Wrote every piece of content: front matter (How This Works, Pushups and Prayer, Meditation and Prayer, Nutrition Foundations, Calculate Your Numbers, Progress Tracker, Sleep Guidance), the cover page, the creed, and all 30 daily entries with scripture, journal prompts, workout progressions, and nutrition guidance. Wrote weekly divider copy for all 4 weeks with escalating workout totals and new habit introductions.

Then designed and built the PDF using WeasyPrint: 63 pages, print-optimized 8.5x11 format with the Training Day brand aesthetic (Cinzel and Oswald typography, dark and coral palette). Key technical problems solved: WeasyPrint crashes on CSS custom properties (replaced all var() references with hex values), calc() in gradients not supported (switched to div-based journal lines), Day 16 overflow (reduced journal lines for longer scripture).

A second revision pass added white page backgrounds for print-friendliness, redesigned the cover, rewrote the creed to 6 lines (one per pillar plus community plus closing), reformatted the Calculate Your Numbers page, added progressive Bible reading times (5, 10, 15 minutes across weeks), rest days on Sundays, and a graduation badge system where everyone who completes gets a badge and perfect streaks earn special distinction.

The Brand Strategy

The expanded brand vision document covers the philosophy, the scaling model, and the business structure.

The core idea: submission as organizing principle. BJJ teaches surrender through the body. Faith teaches the same surrender spiritually. Rick’s life followed that exact arc, and the HBO special documented it. The brand holds the tension: lead with the human and the mat, not the gym or the faith.

The sponsorship model: a percentage of membership revenue funds members who can’t afford the full fee. Sponsored members get the identical experience. No visible distinction. The gym’s culture depends on that equality.

The scaling vision: a licensed gym network (not franchise), a book based on Rick’s arc, speaking engagements leveraging the HBO credential, a podcast, and a potential nonprofit arm. Rick’s long-term target: 1,000 participants across locations.

The growth roadmap synthesized all competitor gaps and identified expansion opportunities: a structured 30-day onboarding arc (built as the workbook), church licensing for the LMS content as men’s ministry curriculum, and a content library accessible to anyone regardless of location.

Where It Stands

The portal is live at strength-413-portal.vercel.app. 6 programs, 24 modules, 99+ lessons, all content written and audited. Community board with reactions and pinned announcements. Media page with Rick’s photos and video appearances. E-book page with download form. The 30-Day Challenge workbook is complete at 63 pages.

12 members enrolled. All programs freely accessible (sequential locking was removed after feedback). The bodyweight training module was added as its own program with 4 modules and 20 lessons built from competitor research (Convict Conditioning, BWF RR, THENX, Hybrid Calisthenics, Athlean-X).

What’s still open: the e-book form needs to be wired to email delivery, the homepage needs a hero photo from Rick, and Rick’s feedback on the brand vision is still pending.

This project is not a traditional client engagement. It’s a partnership with someone whose story and mission I believe in. The work is real. The portal exists. The content holds up.