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Old 06-18-2012, 11:18 AM   #40
Gerardo Torres
Location: SF Bay Area
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 197
United_States
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Re: Randori...we don't do enough of it

Like the OP, I feel we don't practice aikido randori enough to improve it significantly. I suck at it

FWIW, the best randori training and performance I have seen, is from Haruo Matsuoka Sensei and his students. His dojo put out some videos showing footage of their randori practice. They are very, very demanding when training randori. The uke attack and chase the nage close to 100% speed and commitment -- they really want to pile up on nage. They are humble and mature enough to show failures on video, analyze it, and try to fix it. They keep training this way, and I believe they don't get Dan grades until they can pull it off; but when they do get it right, it's fantastic. I have not seen anybody else do this kind of work, at least at this level and with such quality of results.
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