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Thread: Randori Competition!

  1. #46
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    Default You only live thrice

    Hello all,

    I was going to start a new thread on this topic, but as I suspected it's been done before, in this very interesting thread. However, since the last signficant input on this subject (in this thread, at least) was six years ago, I'm interested to know what people think now.

    I began thinking about the subject again recently upon hearing that the upcoming BSKF Taikai may include a randori competition. My thoughts largely mirror the excellent contributions from George-Sensei earlier in the thread, and I'm not convinced his arguments were answered in the thread; nevertheless to spur even more discussion I had a few more thoughts.

    Suppose you enter, you take part, and during the randori you strike someone in the face and break their nose. How do you feel? Is it simply their fault for entering, part of the expected risk? Should you have pulled it? If you'd pulled it, would you have got the point? Would you have pulled it if you thought you wouldn't get a point for doing so? Were you just striking while out of control? Maybe you think you did everything right that you should have done; nevertheless someone's going home with a bloody nose and it's your actions that caused it. Does this reconcile with your reasons for practice? Have you trained half for yourself and half for your injured opponent? Now suppose, as has happened before, that the person falls backwards, hits their head and dies. All you did was jodan zuki. Still feel your actions are inscrutable?
    John Ryan
    Shorinji Kempo
    Imperial Dojo

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  3. #47
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    Injuries can happen in any form of training in SK. i have had my nose broken in randori practice, my AC joint dislocated during pair form practice and a finger dislocated during warm up (from hitting the ground doing windmills!!).

    I am not averse to randori competition in SK but on the other hand, randori is not what attracted me to SK and even in my hayday, I probably would not have entered such a competition. However, I can think of many who would have.

    With regards to the 2 examples you give,the 2nd example is easy, it is a freak accident and could have happened anytime, anywhere. Yes, I would feel terrible about it but I would have felt the same iif it had happened practicing kaishin zuki or keri ten san or it I was leading warm-up and he had slipped and hit his head practicing gyaku geri.

    With regards to the first example, my reaction would depend on my intent. It my intent was to break his nose then I might feel that I have achieved my goal. However, I would be very aware that my action was not in the spirit of SK and therefore carry some guilt. Conversely if it was an accident, I would feel some guilt but depending on circumstance, I might think that he could have dodged better. In fact getting a broken nose might make him alert of a weakness and help him improve. I guess, what does not kill us, makes us stronger.

    I cannot see anything wrong with randori competition in SK if it is done in the right spirit and helps the competitors improve. One suggestion is that such acompetition should be run as a round robin and not an elimination. This would give every competitor the chance to have a fair go.
    Robert Gassin
    Melbourne ShorinjiKempo Branch
    Australia

    "Never fight an idiot. He'll bring you down to his level and then beat you with experience"

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    Default my tuppenceworth..

    We have been here before, I think..

    As I understand it, the proposed randori element at the forthcoming BSKF Taikai will NOT involve teams representing dojos, but will involve weight categories to avoid severe mismatches (wouldn't help me much, being a dwarf made of neutronium, and not being allowed to hit the vulnerable parts I can actually reach..) Participants in randori will also be obliged to present embu.

    I think the former is a commendable effort at discouraging the kind of stuff I've seen before - it's not so much the cheering for your guy, it's the implication that you want to see the 'enemy' pulverised I find unacceptable. I doubt it'll work, but it'll be interesting to see in practice. I can only imagine insisting that randori competitors also do embu is aimed at preventing the emergence of a randori competition fixated minority.

    I do occaisionally do randori practice in a tournament style in the dojo - it is a useful way of getting students to sharpen up in their delivery of atemi, both in attack and defence, with my function as referee being to make sure this stays under control. If (fairly big if in my view) randori competition is taken in the same light I don't see the harm.

    Unfortunately I think the likelier consequence is that the more there is a culture of competition, the more more the ego comes into play. I for one am progressively becoming less interested in watching athletics for example because of the probability that the feats I am watching are chemically enhanced. Where there is competition, there will be cheating, because there will always be people who care more about winning than anything else. At the moment, cheating is simply not a concept which is relevant to Shorinji Kempo as an activity. If competition were to be the predominant motivation for even a minority of kenshi practising, I'd bet a large sum of money this wouldn't be true for long.

    Tony leith

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    Quote Originally Posted by tony leith
    At the moment, cheating is simply not a concept which is relevant to Shorinji Kempo as an activity. If competition were to be the predominant motivation for even a minority of kenshi practising, I'd bet a large sum of money this wouldn't be true for long.

    Tony leith
    Hey Tony, have faith man!
    Sean Dixie

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    I recently got to do some nothing-barred goho randori at my shodan exam (non-competitive, but its still something). Face protector, do, kinteki-protector, and optional gloves, shinguards etc (didn't have them, don't like them). Some other people I noticed were using mouthguards.

    Basically we geared up, having all the gear we were told that we were to use as much as we knew and to stop when told to stop. We only did this with our partner (normally someone from the same dojo) not rotate around.

    One person is kosha (attacker), one person is shusha (defender). Hajime!

    For me it was the first time using the "new" faceguard and kinteki so I avoided striking the head. My partner had no qualms and to say I had my butt kicked would be an understatement. Generally they stop the sparring when the first strike is made, but this makes for bad randori (and made me sad because I got a lovely sokutogeri in and had to follow it up with rentenkan). The idea is to keep the attacks flowing and for the defender to use shushukoju correctly - I think they waited for the 3rd strike and then called it.

    Overall I thought it was pretty good and its apparent my application of kihon and waza needs some work
    Leon Appleby (Tokyo Ouji)
    半ばは自己の幸せを、半ばは他人の幸せを
    SK Blog at http://www.leonjp.com

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    Default re my last post

    Sean

    Hey Tony, have faith man!
    Faith is irrelevant to judgement. What I am saying is that if competition were a prominent aspect of what we do, then inevitably some - I'm not saying all, or even more than a small minority - of the people attracted to our activity by the prospect of winning competitions would resort to whatever means might be necessary to do so.

    The evidence is strongly in favour of this proposition in almost every sporting competition. A parent of a tennis pro in the making was prosecuted recently for inadvertanly killing one of his progeny's prospective competitors (seemingly he only meant to debilitate rather than actually kill).

    Hell, the activity doesn't even have to be formally competitive, All it requires is that ego is on the line. I've spent a fair amount of time in weights rooms, and I've been offered steroids quite casually by people I know. If your goal is simply self improvement, using drugs is in some senses clearly irrational - surely your maximal development is determined by your natural genetic capacity.

    I've got to be honest, I have never personally understood the point of competitive sports. I don't mind watching them, but I resented being made to participate in them to the extent of consistently getting 'D's for Physical Education at school ( probably not helped by describing rugby to a PE teacher's face as 'one of the most moronic activities known to man'). As soon as I was liberated from this idiocy, physical activity and training became a consistently important part of my life, and has remained so ever since.

    I'm a libertarian, if competitive sports, or climbing mountains, or jumping off them for that matter, is your thing, then as long as I'm not going to be conscripted into it I don't much care. Unless the kind of culture which is pervasive in (especially professional) competitive sport might threaten to contaminate an activity I am involved in. Then I have to take an interest.

    Tony leith

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    If it makes any difference, any randori in a "competitive" sense that I've seen in Japan was purely done - there was no tournament-like progression with winners knocking out losers and continuing, simply people rotating partners and doing randori until the shinpan (referee) said it was over. No scores were taken, no special recognition was given to anyone.

    On the other hand, what about embu? Embu is scored, we name winners, that makes it competitive right?
    Leon Appleby (Tokyo Ouji)
    半ばは自己の幸せを、半ばは他人の幸せを
    SK Blog at http://www.leonjp.com

  9. #53
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ewok
    On the other hand, what about embu? Embu is scored, we name winners, that makes it competitive right?
    Yes, embu is competitive. But who's competing against who?

    In embu, the competition is internal. By developing, practising, refining and eventually performing an embu, you necessarily practise technical skills and philosophical skills. Not only do you improve your techniques, but you improve your partner's. You learn together as a pair. In randori the competition is destructive - the aim is to win, to conquer the other person. You do not aim to teach them or to help them. If you see a fault of theirs, you do not try to correct it but you try to exploit it. Quite how this relates to any Shorinji Kempo I've been taught is beyond me.

    The person (pair) winning an embu competition may be just as happy as the person winning a randori competition; the difference is that the embu competition has done nothing but develop people, whereas the randori competition has probably done the opposite.

    I've only really seen two different justifications in this thread for randori competitions: that they're fun to take part in and that they improve fighting techniques. I imagine that most of the people who find it fun only think that way if they win enough to satisfy their ego. I doubt there's many people who would enjoy getting battered. And surely the path of budo is about relinquishing these desires to win, to be superficially stronger than another person? As for the other point, I just don't buy it. To think that competition randori is somehow significantly closer to "a real fight" than ordinary randori is fairly delusional. There's still too many constants, too many safeguards. To think that proficiency in randori competition makes you a better streetfighter is to believe that the confines of competition randori extend to the street. For there to be any specific relevance to streetfighting, randori would have to have an arena with obstacles, own clothes, weather, potential multiple attackers, bystanders, fellow fighters, weapons... and that once you're losing, a kindly onlooking will step in and immediately stop things. In short, there's no comparison.

    Alternatively, let's lok at it philosophically. What's the aim of a participant in a randori competition, while he/she is doing randori? To win. I'm struggling to think of any other answer. There may be wider aims such as "to see how good I really am; to see where I should set my confidence level", but these do not apply in the heat of the moment. And how can this aim (to win) be achieved within the realm of Shorinji Kempo? I don't know.
    John Ryan
    Shorinji Kempo
    Imperial Dojo

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  11. #54
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    Default re last post

    I think John makes some cogent points.

    In particular the arguments he makes about 'realism' in fighting competitions is compelling. I suspect that the main reason for having rules, protective equipment, gloves etc. etc. in pro and semi pro combat sports is not so much out of concern for participants, but more of concern that the bout will be over too quickly for spectators to get their money's worth. For self defence purposes, the quicker a situation is over the better.

    This is not to deny that the people who compete in thse sports have signficant advantages over those of us who don't, not least the amount of punishment they are conditioned to withstand and still function. However, no amount of abdominal conditioning will turn aside a knife blade, which is why I'd rather spent my time in class practicing hikimi than doing sit ups.

    Quote from John
    In randori the competition is destructive - the aim is to win, to conquer the other person. You do not aim to teach them or to help them. If you see a fault of theirs, you do not try to correct it but you try to exploit it. Quite how this relates to any Shorinji Kempo I've been taught is beyond me.
    I assume that here John is referring to competition sparring. Randori practice per se need not be any more destructive nor 'zero sum' than any other aspect of Shorinji Kempo practice. Once when training at Hombu I got into randori with a Japanese kenshi. It was supposed to be a limited exercise, but didn't stay that way for long. We were throwing everything we had at each other, but there wasn't any ego involved. Both of us were able to acknowledge successful strikes without reservation, and I think were communicating with each other on a much more profound level than our limited ability in each other's languages might have allowed.

    Tony leith

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    Quote Originally Posted by tony leith
    Both of us were able to acknowledge successful strikes without reservation, and I think were communicating with each other on a much more profound level than our limited ability in each other's languages might have allowed.

    Tony leith
    I've experienced this in a randori session that was part of a taikai. The fact that we had the same language did nothing to warn me of the difference that training under a different Sensei could have on tactics, preferred techniques, sneakiness and skill that I encountered. Anyone who was around when I trained will probably not remember my pathetic attempts at randori, other than as examples of "how not to do it". I knew from the first time in a randori that it would be my weakest element. The opportunity to practice against strangers from other clubs doesn't present itself so often, and I really pushed myself to see it as a chance to learn something new.

    Fun, and they improve fighting techniques... are those two benefits really so easy to dismiss?

    I must have missed out on all those occasions where randori competition descended into something like a barenuckle fight in a lock-up behind a pub, that some of you seem to have seen. My memories (as a complete coward who dreaded randori, but pushed myself to like it as much as possible) of Shorinji Kempo randori - even when performed in a semi-competitive environment - are generally positive.
    David Noble
    Shorinji Kempo (1983 - 1988)
    I'll think of a proper sig when I get a minute...

    For now, I'm just waiting for the smack of the Bo against a hard wooden floor....

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    Quote Originally Posted by John Ryan
    In randori the competition is destructive - the aim is to win, to conquer the other person. You do not aim to teach them or to help them. If you see a fault of theirs, you do not try to correct it but you try to exploit it. Quite how this relates to any Shorinji Kempo I've been taught is beyond me.
    The aim of competition for me is to do my best. If as a result, I win, all the better. Exploiting the other person's weaknesses is not a negative, it is the best way of helping him improve and of giving him a reality check. Even if the aim is not to teach or help the other person, the experience will achieve these ends.
    Robert Gassin
    Melbourne ShorinjiKempo Branch
    Australia

    "Never fight an idiot. He'll bring you down to his level and then beat you with experience"

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    Quote Originally Posted by John Ryan
    In randori the competition is destructive - the aim is to win, to conquer the other person. You do not aim to teach them or to help them. If you see a fault of theirs, you do not try to correct it but you try to exploit it. Quite how this relates to any Shorinji Kempo I've been taught is beyond me.
    Sounds like some very poor randori. Embu was not always planned out and practiced at length, back in the day it was random and done on-the-spot. When practicing randori you are using kumiteshutai - paired practice - to develop use of hokei. One person is to attack allowing the other person to properly apply shushukoju - defence then counter - and the better the attack, the better the experience is for the defender. Properly applying atemi by using kyojitsu means that if the defender properly creates their own kyo and the attacker uses it they are satisfying more key points of Shorinji Kempo. Proper use of maai (aim is to hit so maai needs to be perfect), developing happomoku (watching the entire body), randori can develop and fulfill just about any part of the key concepts in Shorinji.

    I suspect the competition part is, like my teacher loves to say, simply bait. You don't get "good" at randori until you can properly chain attacks smoothly (key concept), that you can defend then counter properly (key concept), pick maai, exploit kyo or creat jitsu from nothing. If I could do this and apply it in randori, perhaps some time after 2020, I would probably "win".

    Technically you shouldn't be able to "win" a randori competition. Its not a free for all, its attack or defend. The you either fail to defend properly (and "lose") or your opponent fails to defend properly (and "loses"). When I did randori I got punched in the face twice - perfect jodan choku duki, all this means to me is that my uwauke is shocking and I'm grateful that my partner gave it his all to help me understand that.
    Leon Appleby (Tokyo Ouji)
    半ばは自己の幸せを、半ばは他人の幸せを
    SK Blog at http://www.leonjp.com

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    I've been quoted thrice now on the same sentence and only Tony saw the context in which I wrote it. By randori in that context I meant competition randori, not cooperation randori.

    I feel people are confusing hard cooperative randori with competition randori. There's nothing wrong with practising hard training, as long as it's in the spirit of randori (and therefore the spirit of Shorinji Kempo). My contention is when the context of randori is removed from mutually cooperative training and put in the realm of competition and winners and losers and delusions. I've practised hard randori with people; I've been hit, and I've learned from it because the person doing the "winning" has done so with the aim only of teaching me. If the same situation were transmuted to a competition, there would be no teaching (there may be learning, but that's another discussion). Put another way, if you're in a competition randori situation and your thoughts are about teaching, then why did you even enter the competition? In what way would it then be anything like a fight? Wouldn't you be better off teaching cooperative randori? If your mindset was of teaching, then it could be said that you were doing cooperative randori, and the facade of competition had evaporated. Why therefore have competitions?

    At risk of slipping off topic, I endorse Tony's views on exuberant randori being a profound level of communication. When one's mindset is correct, when one's techniques can flow smoothly and gracefully, then randori is a stunning experience, entirely separated from the grime and ego of a fighting competition.
    John Ryan
    Shorinji Kempo
    Imperial Dojo

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    One of the main objections of the anti randori competition lobby is rhe emphasis of winning.

    The truth of the matter is that although everyone likes to win, for most people who enter a competition, it is not an achievable option. Most aim to challenge themselves and perform at their best. They might also feel pride in representing their club, association, state or country. Is there anything wrong with this?

    Yes, there are the bad eggs who have enormous egos or who will cheat to attain their goal. Having a randori competition will not engender these traits in people but it may bring them to the surface. Is this a bad thing? No. It allows the rest of us to become aware of these kenshis' negative personality traits and gives us an opportunity to remind them of the teachings of the Seiku, Seigan and Shinjo.

    With regards to an emphasis on winning, this in itself is not a bad thing. If I got attacked by someone with a knife and could not get out of the situation, an emphasis on winning would be vastly superior to an emphasis on a coorperative approach. And remember under duress, you will revert to what you are used to. If all you are used to is a coorperative approach, I pity you .

    As I have noted in an earlier post, I myself have no interest in competing in a randori competition. Neither do I believe that such competitions should become more than a minor aspect of SK. However, I do not see any reason why such tournaments should be completely discouraged. But, in my opinion, only a token prize should be given to the winner (eg a SK sticker ).
    Robert Gassin
    Melbourne ShorinjiKempo Branch
    Australia

    "Never fight an idiot. He'll bring you down to his level and then beat you with experience"

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    Don't you need BM permission to enter a randori competition?
    Leon Appleby (Tokyo Ouji)
    半ばは自己の幸せを、半ばは他人の幸せを
    SK Blog at http://www.leonjp.com

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