When Should You Start Randori?

Author: Bret Gordon

There's no question that randori is an integral part of Judo. However, when should a new student first begin randori? 

In my school, we do randori fairly early in the student's journey. In the first or second class, students are at least guided through the randori process by senior classmates in light freestyle sparring, and it's often a few months before they're doing full randori. Of course, when they're working with senior classmates no one is trying to slam them for quite some time. 

However, this excerpt from a podcast between Shintaro Higashi and Jimmy Pedro (two extremely high level Judoka) shares a different perspective. For those who don't know, Jimmy Pedro is a former Olympic judoka with numerous world championship titles, so to hear his perspective that students should wait at least two years before engaging in randori at all is certainly surprising, but his reasoning is sound and valid.

No one questions the necessity of randori training as part of Judo, but maybe we should revisit the priority of its importance...

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A post shared by Shintaro Higashi (@judoshintaronyc)