Facilities & Training
- Big Bear Performance Center — in development
- 70,000 sq ft athlete-specific buildout
- Private gym, strength & recovery partners
- Lake, trail and ridgeline training venues
National Sports Alliance is a vertically integrated sports operation and performance company, building athlete first camps, events, training environments, brand activations, and storytelling experiences. Headquartered in Big Bear Lake, California with facilities and nationwide execution.
01 — The Destination
Big Bear Lake pairs high altitude, world-class terrain, four-season adventure and a close-knit mountain community two hours from Los Angeles. Every module NSA operates draws directly from what this mountain already offers — the lake, the ridgelines, the trails, the town. We don't rent a venue here. We operate the campus.
Athletes don't just need a gym at altitude — they need an entire environment that trains with them. That's what we're building in Big Bear: the facilities, the lake, the mountain, the town — one ecosystem, all pointed at performance. When the world arrives in 2028, this is where they'll say the work was done.
Nicky Newms — Co-Founder, National Sports Alliance02 — The Terrain
Most altitude destinations offer one venue. Big Bear offers a full training geography — and NSA holds the relationships that unlock all of it.
A 2,971-acre alpine lake with room for thousands of uninterrupted meters — rowing, paddle, open-water swim, and on-water recovery, all at 6,742 feet.
Singletrack, fire road and alpine running networks climbing from the shoreline into the treeline — endurance volume without a single closed road permit.
Ridgelines above 8,000 feet put the full adaptation band inside a single training day — live high, train low, without leaving the county.
Four international airports within two hours, sea level within one, and the LA28 Olympic footprint two and a half hours down the mountain.
Established routes and boulder problems on granite across the valley — roadside blocks through to full ridgeline days, minutes from lodging.
Beyond the singletrack — forest service roads, fire roads and backcountry routes running the length of the valley, for load carriage, land navigation, vehicle movement and long-range endurance days without repeating a route.
Alpine forest, rocky ridges, steep mountain slopes, valleys and granite rock outcrops — five distinct environments inside a single valley.
Snow, spring melt, high summer and fall — a full calendar of distinct climates on the same terrain, so a program trains in what it will compete in.
03 — The Altitude Case
Altitude training works — the science has been settled for fifty years. What keeps most programs off the mountain is logistics. No other American destination puts the ideal adaptation band, sea-level training, four international airports and an Olympic host city inside the same two-hour radius.
The Adaptation Band
This specific range is considered “just right” because it balances the physiological stress required to trigger performance enhancements with your body’s ability to recover.
Sustained exposure in this band raises erythropoietin output, and across a three- to four-week block the body answers by building red cell mass and oxygen-carrying capacity. Climb much higher and the arithmetic inverts — sleep quality, appetite and the ability to hold true race-pace intensity all degrade faster than the adaptation accrues.
Big Bear sits inside the window where an athlete can sleep high, train hard and still absorb the work — then drop to sea level inside an hour and race on what the mountain built.
04 — One Town, One Campus
The goal was never to own one building. It's to make an entire destination function like a single high-performance campus — venues, water, terrain, lodging, recovery, transport and civic partners, coordinated through one operator. This is the map visiting teams cannot draw on their own.
05 — Ecosystem Modules
Four operating modules. One accountable relationship. Teams bring their athletes and their training plan — NSA delivers everything else, from wheels-down to departure.
06 — The Connector
Athletes bring the training plan. Brands bring product and budget. Big Bear brings the mountain, the water and the beds. NSA turns six separate negotiations into one accountable relationship — and holds the ecosystem together between camps, not just during them.
07 — The Model
The mountain doesn’t change depending on who booked it. The terrain, the beds, the kitchen, the vans and the permits are the same in April as they are in June. What changes is the plan built on top.
Altitude camps and team basecamps built end to end — training, lodging, movement, nutrition, recovery and permitting under one plan, so coaching staff coach instead of coordinating.
Real access, captured properly. When everything can be generated, the only thing left with any value is what actually happened — and we own the room it happens in, with the crew already on the mountain.
Multi-day field program siting with full life support at altitude — terrain, billeting, messing, ground movement, medical planning and permitting from one accountable operator. Programs are delivered by the visiting organization’s own personnel.
08 — Proof, Not Projection
The category NSA is building doesn't exist yet — so the only honest way to sell it is with what has already happened here. These are delivered programs, not renderings.
Won by USRowing athletes across the World Cup campaign that followed their high-altitude camp in Big Bear — including overall gold.
ResultMarlon "Chito" Vera, Khamzat Chimaev and Arman Tsarukyan trusted NSA with fight camps — the most detail-intolerant environments in sport.
DeliveredCalifornia Legion Rugby built altitude into their season plan and finished the campaign second in the league.
ResultAustralia's national governing body for track and field toured Big Bear with its high-performance leadership to evaluate it as an LA28 altitude base.
Hosted VisitNSA removes operational friction from athletic performance and handles the full ecosystem behind the scenes: travel, lodging, facilities, nutrition, recovery, permitting, hospitality, content coordination, sponsorship development, and event operations.
Johnny Burnham — Co-Founder, National Sports Alliance09 — The Alliance
An ecosystem is only as real as the relationships holding it together. Here is exactly where each one stands.
10 — The Operators
NSA is not a broker running the mountain from a distance. Both founders live and work in Big Bear — which is why the relationships behind this ecosystem exist at all.
Twenty-five years in competitive athletics, sponsored by age ten. Moved to Big Bear in 2018 and coached ranked freestyle snowboarding at Big Bear Mountain Resort, developing multiple national champions — then built and ran the mountain's 16,000 sq ft high-altitude performance facility. Runs NSA camp operations from wheels-down to departure.
LinkedInCreative director, producer and adventure athlete — multiple hockey national titles, collegiate academic All-American, and a professional freeride ski career. Founder of NEWMS BROS., a creative studio producing multimedia tours, branded experiences and films. Leads NSA's brand, partnerships and production division.
LinkedIn11 — What's Next
Between now and July 2028, the world's best-prepared programs are choosing theirs. If you represent a team, federation or governing body, the best windows on the 2026–2028 calendar are still open. If you're a destination, government or brand partner, let us show you a hosted camp from the inside.
Economic growth, local hiring, tracked community return.
Elite environments, world-class support, proven outcomes.
Cinematic capture built into the infrastructure, not bolted on.
A replicable model connecting sport, tourism and development.
Thirty minutes is the next step. Tell us who you're bringing, when, and what the training plan needs — we'll come back with what the mountain can do.
Partner With NSA Schedule A MeetingJohnny Burnham · JB@NationalSportsAlliance.com
Nicky Newms · NN@NationalSportsAlliance.com