Multiple Attackers - Randori

As we finish up the month of January and all of the Ushiro Tekubi-tori arts that we worked on, we look forward to the month of February where we will look at what occurs when you have multiple attackers.  Randori, Jiyu waza, or taninzu-gake is described as the practice of defending against multiple attackers without knowing how they will attack or in what order, all of this happening in quick succession.

​As I think about Randori, I try and look at it from the attackers prospective first. Then what do I think would work as an attack. First, I would make an assumption that the person being attacked by multiple people would likely not stay in the same place. So if they are moving, me being an attacker and I didn’t have a weapon, I would more than likely need to perform some type of grab as part of my attack to make sure I was actually going to hit them instead missing them entirely. So this narrows down the attacks to things like Kata-tori Men-uchi, Ryo-kata-tori, Kata-tori, or even wrist grabs. 

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Randori via Ryo-kata-tori

So starting this weekend we will begin looking at Ryo-kata-tori, two hand grab to two shoulders and then we will progress from there to get us to Randori. 

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Definition
Ryo-kata-tori are Arts that start with the Uke grabbing both shoulders of the Nage. 
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Breakdown
Ryo - Both 
Kata - Shoulders
Tori - to grab, hold, take, pick. 

Pronunciation
ree-oh-kah-tah-doh-ree