Randori or chaos dance, is the judo terminology to describe sparring or rolling. The word written in Japanese, 乱取り, takes two Chinese characters (kanji). The first meaning chaos and the second to take. While in judo, most of the chaos takes place on the feet, in the form of a dance, in jiujitsu rolling, most of the chaos exists on the ground. Feet flying left and right to retain guard. Knees dropping on the thigh or ribs. Elbows to the brow. Impact to the jaw or nose. A black eye. The eyes get poked. Shit happens. So, how do we maintain harmony in the heat of chaos?

Not all of jiujitsu training should or needs to look like a chaos dance. In fact, the blows described above doesn’t happen all that much. Jiujitsu is unique in that it can be practiced at varying speeds, resistance, and intensity. In fact, with the gi, the grips tend to slow things down and prevent the misfortunes of chaotic accidents. Some people complain out “spazzy white belts” but I think being able to subdue, control and manipulate the “spazzy white belt” is the perfect ground to measure your applied self defense skills.

The spazzy white belt is another point of discussion, so I don’t want to get distracted by that today. Instead, I want to think about the significance of how we react to situations.

How we react to these accidents matter. We are in control of our reactions and it’s important to understand that our reactions are just as much a part of the training as learning different techniques.

• Do you scream and make a scene?
• Do you walk out the door and leave?
• Do you yell at your partner like you’ve never been guilty of doing the same to someone else?

OR

• Do you shrug it off and keep going?
• Do you take a quick recovery and resume? What is your reaction?

On the other side, what do you do when you are the one that causes the damage?

• Do you stop and apologize?
• Do you notice but keep going?

I’ve been guilty of throwing a hip too hard to land on a parter in the wrong place at times. The more intense, competitive, and chaotic the dance becomes it’s inevitable. One time, I was training with Tanner Rice and after I let up and quickly apologized he said to me, “No I like it, let’s keep going.” In the moment he understood that I had no malicious intent, we were both trying for technically sound movements and shit just happened. His response to my apology sustained the harmony we had established in training. While the harmony was unbalanced by my actions, my training partner quickly brought it back into balance where we could get back to training hard again. What’s done is done, but how we react is up to us.

If you never train hard in the chaos dance, you will still get the many benefits of jiujitsu. However, you will also miss out on the opportunity to train how you react to situation in the heat of pressure and stress. I would even argue that the true training that takes place in jiujitsu is more your reaction to an annoying (and sometimes urgent care requiring) elbow to the brow or knee to the stomach. So think about how you react to these situations and react in a way that preserves the harmony of training.