Shiai and randori

Randori should not be confused with shiai

The reason we have shiai (mini internal contests) at our club is that there are not a lot of competitions in this country. So the opportunity for our players to experience competition is very limited. But competition is important to a person's judo development. So, we've created our own.

We also have a lot of randori at our club. Sometimes when we are running late because the technical portion has taken a bit longer than expected, we have 45 minutes of randori but we try to have as much as 1 hour, when possible. It is during randori that players get to try our their skills.

Randori and shiai are two different things although they may look the same. In randori, there are no winners and losers. It's a time to try things. You should not be afraid of getting countered. It's a time to experiment. Through the process of experimentation you learn things. Shiai is a time to test your fighting skills. It's about winning. So, it's very different from randori.

A common problem is that players easily fall into the trap of treating every randori like shiai. They don't want to "lose". So they resist all the way and don't give any openings at all. They don't try things for fear of being countered. This is no good.

If a player wants to improve, they need to leave their ego at the doorstep of the dojo and come onto the randori mat to experiment and try different things. Then during shiai, they can go all out and try to defeat their opponents. This is the best way to improve.