I have hated Randori since the very beginning, it's just been so hard. I've taken Aikido for a year now and I've started to understanfd the building blocks of the building blocks of the etc, etc of Aikido. My rolling falling striking throwing kokyu and everything else is becoming clearerbecause of effort and time served in practice. Even Sensei's tips are beginning to make sense to me, and then there's been Randori. Frickin' Randori.

Recently I've started to notice the senior students behavior during this practice and I never realized how often they atemi before. So I decided to try it and it changed my attitude from I hate this to I may be able to handle it. I always went into it not wanting to do the same thing twice feeling I want to be the guy to cover a wide spread of techniques, including trying to force a predetermined technique on every attack until I get it. I have more Randori friendly techniques to use practiced to instinct and I willing to use atemi since I see others use it, and it works very well to create desirable openings in the crowd.
Read more at: http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/journal.php?s=&journalid=&action=view#Randori.