Great question

Key takeaways:
- Treat shido and time as tactical variables. Stay visibly active, pressure the opponent into appearing passive, and try to avoid exhausting golden-score matches.
- Use safe, credible attacks against stronger grippers. Small attacks from controlled distance can demonstrate initiative without overcommitting and exposing you to a counter.
- Don’t remain trapped in a defensive grip. Break the opponent’s control, reset your position, and immediately recover the initiative.
- Avoid repeated fake attacks or defensive collapses. One ambiguous action might escape a penalty, but repetition becomes obvious and can earn you a shido.
- Maintain a legitimate grip while escaping pressure. Simply dropping or disengaging without control is more likely to look defensive.
- Continue every standing exchange into groundwork. A throw that doesn’t end the match should flow immediately into a pin or submission attempt.
- Specifically practice freeing an entangled leg and completing osaekomi. In judo, securing the pin may be a more efficient finish than pursuing a submission.
- Make randori competition-specific: rehearse the clock, penalties, strong gripping situations, and immediate tachi-waza-to-ne-waza transitions.
Bottom line: winning more matches requires practicing complete competitive sequences—grip, attack, manage the referee, and finish on the ground—rather than treating the throw as the end of the exchange.