DALTON, Ga. — At the recently opened Bob Byrd judo academy in Dalton, people from all different backgrounds are finding a place that serves a wide range of functions for them.

They’re finding a place to workout and get in shape. They’re finding accolades and awards coming from success in competitions. They’re also finding second homes and a family atmosphere.

“It’s been an honor to even come here,” student Jesse Wright said. “It’s really a home away from home. Somewhere I feel comfortable around everybody. It’s leading me down a better path than I probably could’ve ended up in.”

The instructor, Byrd, has been involved in judo since the 1950s. He’s traveled the world competing and won gold medals at world masters competitions over the past two decades. Last month at the world masters championship in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., he brought home a bronze medal.

At the academy, located at 616 S. Hamilton St., Byrd works with students, male and female, of all ages. “We have people working out here 5 years to 77-years-old,” Byrd said.

According to Byrd, the form of martial arts taught at his academy isn’t the same type of fighting one might see in organizations such as UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championships).

“We teach sport judo. We focus on conditioning and health and movement,” Byrd said. “We don’t punch. It’s not MMA-type things. Sport judo is throwing and holding. We do ground fighting but we don’t hold anybody down and beat on them. We do joint locks, but not for kids. Once they’re 17 we do elbow locks and all the things involved in judo.”

Judo is a form of martial arts that differs from others such as karate or jiu-jitsu as it focuses on throws and takedowns, joint locks and chokes as opposed to striking techniques.

“There’s a book of 40 throws, the Nage-waza. It’s an off-shoot from jiu-jitsu, but they took the harmful stuff out of it,” Byrd explained. “The only joint we lock in judo is the elbow, it’s strong enough to stand it. Knees break too easily, ankles break too easily, wrists break too easily. There are strangles are blood chokes against carotid artery, kids don’t do those until they’re old enough, advanced teenagers. We teach in safety. One thing we have here and hardly in any other judo school, I spring my mats. … When you finish working out here, you get a good long, hard workout, take a lot of falls, but you’re not sore when you get up to go to work the next day. I don’t allow people to get really rambunctious who have to make a living. The kids, I want them healthy and happy when they go to school, and everybody leaving feeling better than when they came.”

The building opened up in late October, but Byrd has been working with local students for a while now. Emily Rushing and Bre D’Arienzo are two that have trained under Byrd for a while. They began doing judo to get a workout, and soon starting bringing their families with them to classes.

“I’ve been doing this almost a year. It was a birthday present from my stepdad to get me started,” Rushing said. “I could tell after my first class I was absolutely hooked. I left out of here feeling like a little kid that just won a million dollars and got to spend it in a toy store.

“I can feel myself stronger in my upper body. I notice muscles I never had before.”

“I’ve been here about eight months. I came here just for general health and weight loss,” D’Arienzo added. “Since I’ve been doing this I’ve lost just over 50 pounds. I’ve been to a few competitions. I have two second place medals and a third place medal.”

Students from Byrd’s academy have traveled to local competitions and found a great deal of success at events such as the Georgia Games this past June, and the semi-annual Ippon Open held in Peachtree City.

“We’ve really only been competitive for the last year or so. It takes time to build the base up,” Byrd said. “We go up against competitors that a lot of times have more experience than ours do, but ours do very well. We usually bring home more than our fair share of medals.”

Many of the students look at the competitions in different ways.

Tanner Patterson and Tyler Smith are both students at Northwest Whitfield High School and are two of Byrd’s student that had successful outings at competitions. Smith won a gold at the Georgia Games and silver at the Ippon Open. Patterson won silvers at both events.

“I come here every Tuesday and Thursday night to workout and do competition classes on Mondays,” Patterson said. “We all train really hard.”

The two said they work together to make each other better competitors. They also try to take what they’ve learned at competitions to make themselves better for the next one.

“Going to the competitions for me isn’t just to go fight,” Patterson said. “It’s to go and get more skilled and work with more power levels.”

“I’ve been observing the throws other people do at tournaments and see how they incorporate them and what they do to set them up,” Smith said. “First of all I learn the throw, then I learn counters to the throw. I learn ways I can move around them.”

D’Arienzo added that a competition is an ideal proving ground.

“Competitions are a good way to test your skill level, see where you fit in with other people,” she said. “That’s when you know what to work on. When you go into competitions you see where your weak parts were or where you excelled. That’s when you can come back here and fix it and fine tune it to move forward.”

Joe Nesper, and adult student at the academy, mentioned that one of the things that impressed him the most was the sportsmanship level of the competitors in judo.

“My first (competition) was in October, at the Ippon Open Peachtree City,” he said. “Even people that defeated me came up and said, ‘Hey, that was really well fought.’ There were a lot of people conversing after, just a lot of good sportsmanship all the way around. It made for a pretty enjoyable experience. Years ago I did some other types of martial arts, some striking arts and stuff. A lot of times you get folks that get a little excitable at that. I’m not saying everyone’s not competitive, but at the same time there’s an overall, general rule of total sportsmanship.”

Training is underway at Byrd’s Academy for competitions in 2017 including nationals in April held in Salt Lake City, Utah. Byrd offers classes on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“When you go (to competitions) you go out and try your best to win. When you’re training here, you move and you try new stuff,” he said. “You don’t go 100 percent and bang enough other up. You learn the subtleties of the art and work on your conditioning. If you allow your stronger players to just beat the heck out of everybody, you won’t have a school. You’ll just have a few meatheads walking around.”

A lot of the training consists of working with a partner in simulated competitions.

“We do a lot of randori which means sparring,” Smith said. “We do that to simulate fighting. It makes it a lot easier to understand how to put yourself in the right positions.”

While there is a great deal of training with the instructors, and the sport itself is individual in nature, members say everybody at the school works with each other trying to push everyone to be their best.

“Judo gives you a lot of self-betterment really,” Nesper said. “At the same time with the group we have here, it’s a collective thing. Everybody helps each other out, everybody trains with each other.”

The work each member of the academy puts in with other has helped created a sense of team, and family.

“It’s like a completely different family,” Rushing said. “On Thanksgiving I sent Bob a text message ‘I got a whole new family to be thankful for and it’s all because of you.'”