Area master of jiujitsu locks into self-defense
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WARREN -- The best definition of jiujitsu is "all forms of combat by the most drastic of means," according to Chuck Gouge.
"So there's a karate element to jiujitsu -- striking, kicking stuff. There's an aikido element to it, which is joint locks, evasions, getting out of the way … and then there's the judo element, which is the grappling," Gouge said.
Gouge, 73, of Braceville, a master of martial arts, teaches free self-defense classes at SCOPE Senior Center in Warren. He's developed his own jiujitsu system, which takes after the Japanese samurai of old, as opposed to the more commonly taught Brazilian jiujitsu used for sport.
Gouge grew up in Bristolville until he was about 12, when his family moved to California. In Chula Vista, Calif., at the age of 15, Gouge had his first martial arts training, learning judo from his history teacher. He continues to study martial arts.
"I've been a few years where I didn't train, but I did research and worked on putting a book together and formulated my own style in about '84," Gouge said.
After high school, Gouge came home to Trumbull County before he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served for several years in the late '60s and early '70s.
When he got out, he returned to a job at General Motors and later went back to California to visit his aging mother -- and stayed 15 years, "making too much money to leave," he said.
Gouge was adopted by his biological grandmother, he said. At the time he went back to California, she was running a dog kennel there. He stayed to fix the runs and help her take care of the dogs, then started doing maintenance at the beach, refurbishing apartments.
Gouge often used his good fortune to help others who were down on their luck, replacing bad tires on neighbors' cars or finding ways to manage their rent.
Eventually, he returned to Trumbull County.
"California is the most decadent, amoral place," he said. "That's why I left."
As for jiujitsu, Gouge sees it more in terms of defense than competition, he said.
"The word 'martial' is in there, which means military," Gouge said.
His personal style of jiujitsu isn't good for tournaments but works well for self-defense in a crowded area, Gouge said. He pointed to the way martial artists using Brazilian jiujitsu in tournaments "lock up."
"They get like a couple cats in a big ball. If a third person comes over with a stick or, in the military, a bayonet, you can't get up. Not fast enough to defend yourself."
In the past, Gouge taught at a shotokan school in Austintown, where he often taught women self-defense. At SCOPE, he primarily teaches seniors, focusing on the throwing and grappling elements of jiujitsu.
He caters his lessons to the students.
"Women are usually better at the aikido elements of jiujitsu. It's more flowing. It's more like dancing," Gouge said. "Men are usually better at the punching and kicking -- that kind of stuff. So you try to tailor the curriculum to the student. If one student has got a missing hand, then you have to teach him how to defend himself with one hand."
Of martial arts, Gouge said, "It's something (where) you get a lot of exercise (and) there's a lot of scholastic learning involved in it."
Coming from a musical family, Gouge also plays guitar, attending "jam sessions" when he can.
"Everybody in my family played," Gouge said. "My dad used to compete in the banjo-picking contest back in Tennessee back in the '30s." Gouge said when his older brother and sisters started playing, his father quit because he didn't want to compete with his children.
Music didn't come easily to Gouge, but he eventually learned to play well and sing "not great, but passable," he said.
Gouge now plays Gospel music at a session at the Bristol fire department, where most musicians are from local churches. He said he likes to play Gospel, country and especially bluegrass.
He picked up another unusual skill back in California, when he was in his early 20s selling encyclopedias door-to-door. A fellow salesman taught Gouge how to analyze pictures so he could impress the ladies. He would have women draw pictures then interpret their meaning.
"If they do a tree, if they anchor it to the ground, they like permanency, they like things stable. They put a lot of leaves on it, they like detail …" Gouge said.
Eventually, Gouge stumbled across magazine offering a correspondence course on graphology, which infers character from handwriting, and he "learned how to do it right," he said.
"It doesn't get me any dates anymore," he joked.