What if you came to judo class and found that the only other players in attendance were three girls weighing around 55kg and one guy weighing around 60kg, while you are 120kg?
There's obviously a mismatch in size here. Does that mean you, as the big guy, need to sit out the session?
It all depends on your attitude and mindset. Are you committed to having a good session despite not having the right-sized training partner?
If both players (big and small) decide to adopt the right mindset, they can both have a good session.
Scott, our 120kg heavyweight, found himself exactly in that situation last night. All of his heavyweight training partners were not available, so he was stuck with four lightweights (1 guy and 3 girls).
The only way for him to get some training was to partner up with one of the lightweights and it's obvious which one that would be. But the lightweight guy, Sai, is exactly half the weight and size of Scott!
Didn't matter because both wanted to have a good session.
I reminded Scott once, that his partner was half his size, and didn't have to remind him again for the rest of the session.
He was very mindful that he could easily squash his partner if he was not careful. Then he'd have no one to train with!
Since we were doing groundwork, it was very viable for them to work together because size makes less of a difference with certain kinds of groundwork.
When it came time to do standing randori, they did nine rounds together (about 3 minutes each). At first, I told Scott only to defend. Later, I allowed him to do ashiwaza.
Believe it or not, they had good randoris. For Scott, it was a lesson in learning how to defend against relentless attacks. It was also a chance to work on his foot techniques. At his own initiative, he also worked on his gripping during the randori.
In other words, knowing that he was way bigger than his training partner, Scott turned to other things than pure power to do his judo. He told me he got hiza-guruma to work on Sai. He also told me he did the Korean Shake.
In the end, Scott had a good workout because he got to try many things. Sai also had a helluva workout attacking and trying to move a guy twice his size.
They say that if you really want to do something, you will find ways to make it happen. But if you don't want to do something, you will find lots of excuses. In Scott and Sai's case, they were determined to have a good workout. And they did!