Benjamin Metzger blends yoga, martial arts and music at Ninja Noir Academy

A hybrid studio with a real use case

Benjamin Metzger’s Ninja Noir Academy is not trying to be another polished yoga room with a few borrowed martial-arts props. It is built as a hybrid practice space, one where yoga sits beside taekwondo, tai chi, stretching and music instruction, and that combination is exactly what makes it interesting. In Long Beach, where Metzger already runs Studio Noir at 1028 West Beech St., the new academy feels less like a side project than a working answer to a broader wellness need.

The clearest signal is Metzger himself. He says he lost more than 50 pounds through yoga, martial arts and dietary changes, and he has recently recommitted to sobriety. That matters because Ninja Noir Academy is presented not as a branding exercise but as the outgrowth of a personal reset, one centered on health, discipline and rebuilding from the inside out. For yoga readers, that is the story: yoga is not isolated here as a sequence of poses, but folded into a larger system of movement and recovery.

What the classes actually look like

Students at Ninja Noir Academy have already taken classes in taekwondo, yoga, tai chi and stretching, and the tone described by participants is welcoming rather than intimidating. That combination tells you a lot about who the program is built for. This is not a hard-edged combat school that happens to tolerate yoga; it is a flexible studio model that uses yoga to soften, balance and support the rest of the work.

Ivy Landsman-Slevin said she was drawn in by Metzger’s own weight-loss progress and wanted to improve her physical recovery after breaking her kneecap in November 2025. That is the kind of entry point yoga programs often miss: not a perfect athlete looking for another challenge, but someone trying to get her body back. Michael Gittleson described the classes as playful, educational and welcoming, and he said he learned the güiro in one session. That detail is small but revealing. It shows the academy is not treating movement and music as separate tracks. They are part of the same learning environment.

Why yoga belongs in this mix

Yoga often gets framed as a standalone wellness lane, but the academy makes a stronger case for yoga as connective tissue. It can support mobility, relaxation and body awareness while sitting comfortably next to martial arts and rhythmic work. Johns Hopkins Medicine notes yoga’s benefits for physical and mental health, including improved relaxation and mobility, while the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health says yoga may help improve general wellness, relieve stress, improve sleep and balance, and may help with certain pain conditions, including knee osteoarthritis.

That is exactly why the yoga piece of Ninja Noir Academy feels relevant rather than decorative. For someone like Landsman-Slevin, who is rebuilding after a knee injury, yoga can sit in the middle of a recovery plan. For someone like Gittleson, it becomes part of a playful, low-pressure way into disciplined movement. The program suggests a practical lesson conventional studios sometimes miss: people do not always want a pure yoga class. Sometimes they want yoga wrapped into something more social, more expressive and less self-serious.

Metzger’s background explains the mash-up

Metzger did not arrive at this idea out of nowhere. He grew up in the Sachem school district, started on baritone horn in middle school and switched to alto saxophone at Sachem High School. Later he studied jazz guitar and studio music at the University of Miami, performed internationally and then settled in Long Beach in 2007. He also founded Studio Noir, giving him an established base before Ninja Noir Academy entered the picture.

His life in music helps explain why this academy sounds different from a typical fitness studio. The Herald notes that he was recognized for organizing post-Hurricane Sandy fundraising concerts held on Sunday nights for five months, which suggests a community-minded organizer as much as a teacher. He has also said that watching Bruce Lee films as a child shaped his interest in discipline, which makes the martial-arts element feel personal rather than trendy. The result is a program that borrows from several traditions but still reflects one very specific local personality.

A local model with room to expand

Ninja Noir Academy currently operates out of SOL House of Healing Arts and Metzger’s West Beech Street studio, with additional outdoor community sessions planned. That matters because it gives the project two useful forms of reach: a fixed home base and the possibility of neighborhood-level outreach. A studio model rooted only in a private room can stay small by design; this one already points outward.

The broader Studio Noir ecosystem reinforces that point. The Long Beach Chamber says the music school offers private and group classes in person and virtually, serves students ages 3 to 73, and is home to the Long Beach Ukulele Orchestra. That range suggests Metzger is comfortable teaching across generations and across formats, which is exactly the kind of flexibility a hybrid yoga-adjacent program needs if it wants to last. It is not only about adults who want a novel workout. It is about families, recovering bodies, older students and people who may enter through music before they ever come to yoga.

The real test for Ninja Noir Academy

The value of Ninja Noir Academy is not that it invents a new wellness philosophy. It is that it takes yoga out of a narrow studio lane and places it where many real people already live: between recovery and performance, between discipline and play, between movement and music. Metzger’s own turnaround gives the project credibility, but the stronger argument is in the class structure itself, where yoga is not isolated but made useful.

That is what makes this feel like more than a passion project. It is a workable model for the kind of student conventional studios often overlook, and it shows how yoga can still matter when it is asked to share space with taekwondo, tai chi and a güiro.