Re: Terry Ezra Sensei and Seidokan
Well, taller than 4 feet, but certainly not very tall.
We still have the tradition of not practicing randori very often. The tradition was to have a solid class or two devoted to randori before dan exams so everyone could practice, but no more than that. The way it was explained to me years ago was that he wanted to use randori (multiple attacker) as a "stress test" of their overall skill level to help board members better evaluate the person being tested. So it was sort of a "diagnostic tool" especially at the initial dan levels to see how well they adapted to a higher stress and intensity. So he didn't want people to spend time practicing the randori extensively right before a test because he wanted to see people pushed outside of their comfort zone.
Once out of the "tested" dan ranks it wasn't an issue. But my impression that the goal was to keep randori rare so it could be used to assess overall progress in the newer yudansha.
Just my understanding... Your mileage may vary and I could easily be wrong...
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