Ninjutsu Sparring or Randori

Ninjutsu Alive training, in my opinion just what does that mean. Martial arts training is essentially about learning new skills, some skills you can practice by yourself and for others you may need a training partner or even several training partners to develop the skill being taught by your instructor.

So lets look at a few things we can do by ourselves and then others that we may need a training partner to complete the exercise.

• Solo Training:- Exercise, Rolling, Kicking,  Punching and Footwork can all be practiced at home or in a park without a training partner.Martial Arts Like Kung Fu, Karate and Taekwondo do a lot of training like this. In a class people line up and might do 100 punches in the air or 100 back kicks in order to practice the technique.

• Partnered Training:- Locks, Chokes, Controls, Throws and Self Defence scenarios all come to mind easily enough, to practice these you need a willing partner. Jujutsu, Ninjutsu, Judo, Aikido, BJJ and Wrestling all rely on these methods and need partners to practice their training.

When we start to approach a more realistic form of self defence, there is a nominated attacker and defender and the teacher might say something like ” Ok the attacker grabs my right lapel and throw a left punch towards my head” and then they show you what to do in order to defend yourself successfully. It might involve a wrist lock or striking etc.. .according to what technique the instructor is teaching in that class.

Your training partner should be relaxed and compliant i.e. go with your technique in order to help you learn how to apply a lock for example, it’s partnered so it’s a lot closer to real life . They allow you the time you need to apply the lock or do the throw etc without interfering …..But is that alive.

Sparring is a lot closer to reality, in that instead of being a rehearsed training drill each person is more free with their responses, for example a training drill might start with a lapel grab and strike to the head and then after that the training partner is (in a responsible way) able to continue on with any attack that they see fit to use, it might be more punches or maybe a kick , they might try to throw you to the ground or get around behind you to apply a constriction. With more spirit and conviction, and resistance to your techniques if they choose.

Their goal is still to help you learn what to do, just under more real to life circumstances.

So why not jut train like that from day one I hear you ask.

Good question, the reason is that in order to learn how to apply a technique first you must learn the technique itself. This is best done by repetition on a compliant training partner, the more techniques then the longer it takes you to get your skill set together.

At Ninjutsu Melbourne around half way (2 years ish) to black belt  we invite the student to participate

in what we call pressure testing and sparring, although to my mind it’s not typical sparring. There is still a nominated attacker and defender it’s just that the attacks are not nominated.

Having developed the basic building blocks (Kihon Happo etc) of their training they are able to start to learn how to apply it under pressure.  The partner’s goal is to push the students hard enough with resistance so that they succeed 80% of the time and just as importantly fail 20% of the time. At first it’s fairly slow and awkward but over a period of time it improves and after about 6 months they really are up and running with it.


This shows us where the student might be in relation to being able to apply a technique in real life. Over time keeping the 80/20 scenario going they build speed until eventually they can apply most techniques at real time in a safe and controlled way.

In the past we have introduced this type of training a lot earlier but what we have noticed is that the student goes back to brawling and abandons their techniques, so it defeats the purpose which is to help them learn how to apply their training in a real life situation. If the student starts to abandon technique then we make them slow it down so that as they improve and get faster they can take technique with them, 80/20 remember. Attacker too fast, student brawls and abandons their  technique in order to win , attacker too slow student doesn’t learn anything about being under pressure.

80% success 20% fail is about right.

So in order to see the progression from basic dojo training right through to real life I’ve put together a simple number of steps.

1. In The Air to practice the technique
2. With a Partner, no resistance, to learn the technique against a planned attack
3. With a partner, with resistance, in a planned attack and defence training drill
4. With a partner, with resistance, and an attacker that is free to do what they like but who’s role is still to help you learn
5. Real life they just want to hurt you and have no regard for your safety

This is just a really quick overview and I might write more about it at a later date.

The great thing about this type of training is that you don’t need to do it very often, we only train this way once a week for about 15 minutes and it’s not compulsory.

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www.ninjutsumelbourne.com.au