Sensei Jimmy Akiyama

Jimmy took his first judo class in Japan at seven years old. He competed across the United States as a kid, fought his first international tournament in Canada before he was a teenager, and competed overseas as an adult. He earned his black belt at eighteen. He trained at the Olympic Training Center here in Colorado Springs as a member of the USA Judo National Team, and was a volunteer coach at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

That's the résumé. What matters more is what he's done with it.

Over more than ten years of coaching, Jimmy has taught three-year-olds taking their first steps on a mat, young adults with autism, and students past sixty. He's a father himself. He knows how to get a nervous kid to try a throw, and he knows how to push an athlete preparing for competition — and he can tell which one is standing in front of him.

He also holds a brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and trains toward his black belt. He teaches as someone still learning, because he is.

What we're building

Akiyama Judo is named for a family, and it's run like one.

Judo has a way of keeping people honest. You'll learn to fall on day one and you'll throw someone on day one. You'll also be thrown by someone smaller than you. And every round, no matter how it went, ends with a bow.

That's not ceremony for its own sake. It's the sport teaching you that the person across from you made you better, and that there's always more to learn — from a coach, from a training partner, from a white belt who caught you with something you didn't see coming. The best judoka we know are the easiest people to talk to.

So you'll find competitors on our mat and people who have never grappled in their lives, often in the same class. Both belong. Nobody here is above sweeping the mat or helping a beginner tie their belt.

Come see for yourself.