This is not a common practice in judo clubs. Randori, yes, but shiai, no. But we do it for two very practical reasons.
Firstly, there are not a lot of competitions in this part of the world. We want to give our players more exposure to competitions. Since external competitions are rare, we decided to create our own competition-like segments of the training so they can get that experience.
Secondly, in the past when all we had were only randoris, we noticed that our players tended to treat the randoris as shiai. In other words, instead of sparring and trying out techniques and new moves, they were fighting. In some cases treating the randori as if it were "the final of the World Championships" (to quote one of our instructors commenting about one of our players who was incredibly competitive during randori).
Actually, I myself had been guilty of treating randori as shiai. I recall one particular occasion, many years ago, where that attitude reached ridiculous levels. I used to have a regular training partner (also a former national champion) whom I would randori with all the time. The club that I used to train at used to do randori "motodachi" style where a player would stay out for three rounds of randori before taking a break. During those three rounds he would have different randori partners. On one particular evening, when I was the motodachi, my training partner came up and sparred with me for the first round. Neither one of us managed to get a throw on the other.
Instead of letting another player come in for the second round, my training partner decided to have another randori with me. Great, I thought. I'll get him this time. I'm sure he thought the exact same thing. But both of us were treating it like a shiai and were fighting too conservatively, not giving an inch to the other. No throws for either one.
Third round, he decided to take me on again. Same thing. No throws either side. After the third round, I was supposed to step down as motodachi and let someone else come in to become motodachi. But being that I had no chance to spar with anyone else that session, I decided to stay on for another three rounds (I was quite fit back then).
My training partner came up to me and we had our fourth round. Then fifth. Then sixth. After that the randori was over. For six rounds of randori, we treated each one like it was the final of the World Championships. And neither one of us got in a single throw.
What that episode taught me was that players want to fight. They don't just want to spar, they want to fight. And if you don't give them that opportunity, they will use the sparring session for fighting.
For a long time, I tried to encourage my players to treat randori as an opportunity to try new techniques and to not be so competitive and defensive when doing randori. But to no avail. Everyone kept treating randori as a shiai.
Once we started introducing shiai as part of our training session, all of that changed. Overnight. Suddenly, people were treating randori as randori. They weren't so aggressive anymore and they were actually trying things and getting countered. Why? Because they knew they had shiai to look forward to afterwards. So they used the randori segment for what it is meant to be: a time for experimentation.
At the end of the day, people want to play the sport they signed up for. If you join a badminton club, you want to play badminton. Yes, you can do drills, and you can play hitting the shuttlecock back and forth but ultimately, you want to challenge your partner and play a game of badminton.
And so it is with judo. Judokas want to fight. If you don't give them that outlet through shiai, they will use randori as shiai. So, while it is rather unusual to have shiai with every session, we have found that it works well for our club.
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