The Kakure Judo Club

A Judo club that believes in and practices the full martial arts range of Judo

Kakure Judo Club History | Typical Judo Class | Club Mottos/Common Sayings | Club Downloads

The Kakure Judo Club evolved from Dalewood Judo Academy in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

The Dalewood club was non-profit and operated out of a city-run recreation center in one of the middle schools. It had been around for quite a long time under other instructors, but when I first started there, it was run by Cliff Burke (Nidan).

Cliff's emphasis was on the traditional Gokyo of standing throws (in which we were well-drilled), with some ground work and some Aikido joint locks added to the mix.

When Cliff retired from active instructing, the day-to-day operation of the club passed to Gary Fleming (Ikkyu), who, while being good at the standing aspect of the game, was outstanding at ground work, and gave us an excellent foundation, upon which we have continuously built  - probably to the detriment of our standing game!

During those years, Chris and I, along with some others, also spent a lot of time on our own practicing full-contact sparring, Jo staff, and wooden sword (Boken) and knife (Tanto) fighting in a local park, as well as other odd aspects of the martial arts, such as dodging or catching arrows shot at us (we developed our own personal styles for this - Chris preferred to block and deflect, whereas I preferred to catch) - Don't Try This At Home!!. It really is amazing that we never had anyone call the police on us.

While I was still only an Ikkyu (Brown Belt), Gary gradually passed the running of the club over to me, and then retired from active instructing. I continued running the club for some years, eventually finding time to do my Shodan.

When the city starting charging much more money for the rental of the room at Dalewood than we took in from fees, we were forced to close shop there.

With a small, core, group of dedicated, long-time, training partners/friends, we created a mini-dojo (classroom) with makeshift mats and a home-made crash-mat in the basement of the home of one of our members. The house was well over a century old and, in its youth, was a grand place. But these days, it is closer in resemblance to the house in the movie "The 'burbs" - a huge house with a somewhat scary, low-ceilinged, basement (high-amplitude shoulder throws or lifting techniques down there tended to wipe out the lights!).

We were all very thankful to have a place to train, though, and we worked out there several times a week. Eventually we came to affectionately call our training hall, "The Mouse Room", since it was the leavings of those little guys that we had to sweep off the mats before every session!

We decided to register our own Judo club name with Judo Ontario/Judo Canada to make things official, cover our members for insurance, etc.  Since our dojo was in a deep, dungeon-like, basement, hidden from the rest of the Judo world, we called the club Kakure, meaning “underground”, or "hidden".

A couple of years later, the owner of Hamilton School of Martial Arts, Mickey Dimic, twice jiu jitsu world champion, offered to rent us his dojo on Friday nights for a pittance, just so that we could have a decent place to practice and work out. This also enabled his students to participate in our class if they wanted to work on particular throws or other techniques.

Throughout the years at Dalewood Judo Academy and the Kakure Judo Club, we have practiced traditional judo but have always been quite unorthodox in our approach compared to typical sport Judo clubs. In conjunction with our traditional Judo, we've always trained the full martial arts range of Judo (strikes from standing, the clinch, and the ground, as well as locks and holds disallowed in tournaments, and all sorts of self-defense stuff) and really don't focus on the competition rules at all.

I suppose this makes things look closer to MMA than to Olympic Judo, but we do, of course, insist on proficiency in the full Gokyo of Kodokan Judo Techniques, grade to the standard Judo curriculum, and have always proudly considered ourselves Judoka.

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A Typical Kakure Judo Class:

These days, we don't run a formal class. It's more like a group of experienced (everyone in the core group is either brown or black belt level), long-time, friends coming together to work on what suits us. Of course, visitors are always welcome, as are the students from the Hamilton School of Martial Arts' grappling, jiu jitsu, or other classes, and we're lucky to have a really good bunch of people to train with.

Our idea of a warm-up tends to be freestyle submission grappling matches (we generally ignore the 25 second pin = Ippon tournament rule; unless we're doing specific drills/training for it; we're looking primarily for submissions) until the first 45 minutes to an hour is up.

If we come up with an unusual or interesting technique during these matches or if someone has a question or would benefit from formally learning something in particular, we'll stop, look at, drill, or practice it, and then continue with the newaza until we're done.

We then go on to standing techniques, perhaps practicing some throws or other standing techniques, then doing some randori, again looking at anything of interest that came up. We finish the class with some sort of striking practice (pure standing sparring, drills where one person strikes and the other tries to get in and throw, ground work with striking, etc.).

Our classes are not traditional and tend to be free-form. We really only have one regular member at the moment who competes in tournaments (Judo and BJJ/grappling - he's the current Canadian BJJ Champ and the 3rd best groundwork guy in our club); so unless we're doing something to help him train for a tournament, we just do what suits the people that come out, aim to get a good workout, improve our skills, and have a lot of fun.

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Kakure's Club Mottos and Commonly Heard Sayings:

"Pain is an excellent teacher."

"It is better to give than to receive", (injuries, throws, punishment, etc.).

"Oh, it's OK - it's not my blood."

"It's only pain." - meaning, if it's not causing a physical injury, just fight through it - there's no reason to tap.

"That will work OK, but doesn't cause nearly enough pain - it's better to do it like this..."

"If it isn't painful, it isn't Judo" (usually followed up by some comment about the irony of the misnomer "The Gentle Way"!).

This one came up the other day when Chris used one of my own favourite techniques against me, with some success... you've got to say it in your best 1970's era B-level Kung-Fu movie voice: "Ah, I see the tide has turned.  But you realize, it is the Moon that controls the tides... and I am the Moon,...  my Son".  A good laugh was had by all. :)

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