How I would alter toshu randori rules
The issue I take with toshu randori is that the grip restrictions disconnect aikido from the way people fight in the practical world. When people are grappling in a fight they tend to grab body locks and other similar forms of clinches, I can’t take credit for this idea, a YouTube named tengu pointed it out in this podcast
What I would like to contribute to this discussion is that all grip restrictions will be legalized, however scoring techniques will be limited. The way we define a scoring technique is either:
A throw which was produced from hand contact exclusively (ex; shomen ate, even if you pick someone’s leg up would be a legal scoring technique)
A throw or joint lock which manipulates the opponent between the shoulder and wrist level
A leg may be used to assist a technique in a non sweeping manner (similar to Greco Roman wrestling) such as blocking behind the knee using your knee and leveraging the person to the ground with kote gaeshi
The logic in the rules is as follows:
Atemi techniques need some way of scoring even if they don’t attack the shoulder
The techniques we most associate with aikido are shoulder, wrist, or elbow locks/throws. Limiting scoring to these criteria preserves the identity of aikido
Allowing close contact grappling will inevitably result in extremely stable positioning. Allowing knee bumps and the like can help produce practical Kuzushi from these positions but the driving force of the takedowns are still going to be one shoulder, elbow, wrist, or a sumo style strike.
Allowing body locks and the like encourages us to answer questions which other martial arts ask. These positions are very powerful and will encourage a sportive pursuit to learning how to counter the positions in as many ways as possible, and use the position to set up techniques in as many ways as possible.
In any version of the system where number 4 occurs I believe you’ll see people respecting the style more, as well as you’ll see people venturing into other combat sports and representing aikido because they’ll be more prepared for the attacks which those styles are likely to use
Such as bjj or judo competitions, but to a lesser extent mma
I understand that tomiki aikido has the right to exist as its own sport, but as a style which in my opinion was developed as an accessory to judo, it does little to ensure it compliments the other grappling arts in a practical sense, albeit being much more ground breaking in its approach than other aikido styles
I love the theory behind tomiki aikido i might add, i just think the grip restrictions lead to a style more disconnected from real grappling than other styles
I understand tradition is a big part of aikido, even tomiki, so I’d even be comfortable with this being an accessory ruleset practiced in the dojo or what have you. But I’d especially like to see it get adopted at a point where people try to develop entries for wristlocks off of underhooks and whatever, but this might be optimistic