Productive Newaza Randori

Photo courtesy of Parhessiastes

Today in Judo class we worked on low-resistance newaza randori using the hold-down cycles as a basis. This is essentially randori where the man on top continually shifts from one hold to the next instead of cinching a hold.

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This provides the bottom man many more opportunities to work on escapes and reversals while the top man works on transitions and movement. This is an especially productive form of randori because each partner gets to experience 10-20 groundwork situations per minute as opposed to the 1-2 per minute if the top man is striving to cinch the hold. This way both partners leave with much more knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses on the ground.

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[Update: August 2007 - Here's a great guest post that I wrote for Nathan Teodoro's TDA Training blog, in which I talked about this same kind of ground randori exercise. Check it out!]

[Update: February 2010 - I still agree that this is probably the single most valuable mode of training in judo newaza - and I've read several jiu-jitsu instructors that agree. It is not as valuable to go 100% balls to the wall against every partner during every practice. It's much more productive to play around - to "roll" or "spar" instead of "fighting."]