How to use randori to improve your judo

Randori must be purposeful for it to be useful.

Randori is sometimes translated as "free practice" but I refer to it as sparring because that's basically what it is. You are sparring with your training partner, that is fighting with resistance.

Many people do randori without any game plan or a very simplistic one. They just go in there and try to throw or try not to get thrown. That's the extent of their game plan. But you can't really improve your judo that way.

Randori can be used for two core purposes:
i)  To sharpen your existing skills
ii) To develop new skills


To sharpen new skills means trying to execute your existing moves (a throw or a groundwork move) over and over again against training partners who already know your judo inside out. It will be very hard for you to get those techniques to work precisely because your partners are already familiar with them. They know what you're going to do. Your challenge is to be able to pull off your favourite techniques despite your partners knowing exactly what you are going to do.

For example, one of my favourite throws is ippon-seoi-nage. When I want to sharpen my skills in it, I try that throw over and over again, in randori, against a training partner who knows full well what I am aiming for. They will block it every which way they can, so it's very difficult to get it to work. That's a good challenge.

Of course if all I do is attempt ippon-seoi-nage without anything else, they will be able to successfully block it throughout the four minutes of the randori. If someone is insistent on blocking one particular move and only that move, at all cost, they will be able to block it. But when they are so focused on blocking that move, they open themselves up to other attacks. So I will throw them with other techniques if they focus all their energies on only blocking my seoi-nage. Sooner or later they get tired of being thrown by those other techniques and open up a bit. All I'm looking for is that one bit of opening that allows me to slip my seoi-nage in. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I do. But this exercise really helps to sharpen my seoi-nage.

When it comes to learning new techniques I do something similar in that I will try that technique over and over again. Now, you can't do a throw half-heartedly or be defensive at the same time as trying a throw. It just won't work. You have to go all out. Of course when you do that you are liable to be countered. You must be prepared to accept that if you want to learn a new throw.

I remember when I was learning ura-nage for the first time, what I did was position myself in a vulnerable situation where I'd allow my training partner to have a dominant high grip on me. From that position, I could easily be thrown by uchimata -- and on many occasions I did get thrown. Each time my ura-nage failed I tried to analyze what went wrong and how I could have done it better. Then, I'd open myself up to be thrown for uchimata again, just so I could get a chance to try ura-nage. I did this over and over again until finally I got my breakthrough and managed to pick up and throw my training partner. Over time, I became good at stopping uchimata and countering with ura-nage.

No amount of uchikomi or nagekomi will help to sharpen my ippon-seoi-nage. I have to do it during randori when things are unpredictable and my opponent is resisting my attacks. Similarly, no amount of uchikomi or nagekomi will help me develop my ura-nage. I have to try it against a resisting training partner who is in turn trying to throw me with uchimata.

So, whether you want to sharpen an existing technique or develop a new one, you have to go into randori with a sense of purpose. Randori should not be just a mindless sparring session but a golden opportunity to improve your skill sets. That can only be done if you have a game plan and you do randori purposefully.