#86: The Ecological Approach, Drilling, Drills, and Positional Parameters for Wresting/Grappling
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- čas přidán 10. 09. 2024
- Over the past year, numerous people have asked me what I thought about the ecological approach. I had to learn about it a lot and I think it is very useful. It takes time to learn the terminology, but the application is certainly useful for training. Greg Souders is a good messenger for this approach to a grappling context-don’t kill the messenger but listen and try to learn something. While I disagree that drilling is useless, I agree that setting parameters on training is extremely useful.
Another insight of Souders that really hit me: every sport has perceptual information that the athlete needs to learn to attune to. In grappling sports, it's the RESISTANCE your opponent is giving you. You know it's time to attempt the Duck-Under because you can feel the push-pull dynamic that's been created by your opponent giving you full resistance. When you switch from Scarf-Hold to North-South, you probably did so because you felt a shift in the opponent's resistance.
When you do high-repetition drilling or old-school BJJ practice, these perceptual inputs are missing, and you're learning to act off the wrong sets of information.
It's a very solid argument to always have some sort of 'aliveness' in training.
Thanks for keeping it real, Joe. Outside of your wealth of knowledge on grappling, your authenticity is why I keep returning to your content.
Also, I'm not 8 years old!! I'm 8,5 and am already learning ashy grammies!😤
Lol
Absolutely agree it's not always intuitive. And it's a lot easier to play the games when you have some semblance of what the basic moves are.
I find rob cole explains the ecological stuff in a lot simpler terms. Neutral Bottom Top that he explains has helped me simplify my intentions when grappling.
In wrestling, we want the athletes to be on autopilot and not think too much. Too much thinking is a problem out there. Paralysis through overanalysis.
12:00 Yes not all behaviour will come about naturally, but that's why there's a coach.
Excellent coverage on this topic! I’ve been running a fundamentals course in bjj for a year now.(currently purple belt) I’m trying to evolve out of the traditional Brazilian approach of yelling at them until they get the specific sequence/technique down. (😂). I’ve been attuning the class to let the students explore and feel what’s there for them (Creating and closing space to move to where they feel inclined to move into. ) The problem is that there are so many permutations and possibilities that the new students get overwhelmed and shut down. Looking to find tips and pointers of teaching white and blue belts that might not know that keeping position/control is good enough (thus avoiding them from trying a half hearted technique and feeling incompetent). Curious how this is handled in other sports.
Yeah unfortunately, I don’t have the best answer for you, because wrestling is like being thrown into the lion’s den. You end up learning by the trial by fire. In some ways, I think it’s less of an issue than in BJJ, because wrestling is a scholastic sport so there’s some student peer pressure to keep coming. And then they keep coming and start to make improvements.
When I get wrestlers who are scared. I just really work on them with their stance and tell them their objective is simple-don’t let them get past your head or hands. It’s not easy, but the idea is simple and I will give you the tools to have a strong stance. Don’t worry, everyone goes through this. And then let them know they are doing a good job. Encouragement goes a super long way
Definitely agree with you on Greg's use of language. It seems like he communicates without the listener in mind and that does him a disservice. I think thats a result of lifetime/pro grapplers not having to exist much outside of the gyms haha. Also I always enjoy the Danaher jabs 😆.
The one thing about CLA that I would bring up is that in its application, when the right movement that the coach wants is not coming up in an athlete, they should be further constraining the exercises until the athlete does the movement the way the coach wants. I think this is the biggest challenge with CLA, is that it requires A TON of individual attention from coaches. This creates very real challenges for coaching a whole team/room of 20-30 grapplers or so. I think in theory, you could be full CLA with grappling, but the realities of coaching make it very difficult to be fully on the spectrum of "no demonstration, only CLA". That's why your point of the spectrum is a good one. Theory needs to reconcile with practical reality. Science needs to become engineering.
Yeah, I think the language thing is jargon from that specific field. But like I was saying, it isn’t a good way to communicate with the masses. If you go to publish in a high end journal, they tell you to write clearly, concisely, and to a wide audience by avoiding jargon.
What Danaher jab? Lol
I like Danaher. I seek him out for his opinion. We’ve had conversations on this topic. There are no jabs. There’s only your misinformed view on things you’re unable to grasp. Danaher and I aren’t as dissimilar as people try to make it seem.
Yeah, he takes too much pride in being "accurate" to the terminology used in the field. But real experts who are good communicators understand that in order to effectively communicate to non-experts, you have to be looser. You don't see theoretical physicists trying to communicate topics to the masses by using constant field jargon, instead they give constant examples that in a very nuanced way could be slightly wrong, but that's not the point.
@derschutz4737 it’s why everyone loved Carl Sagan. Dude was at the top of his field but could communicate big ideas to children and inspire them to learn and grow
Interesting video.
Greg Souders will eventually be forced to vulgarize his vocabulary. I have a U. degree in Philosophy and non one knows where I roll, cause I've adapted. Not vulgarizing isn't smart when meeting regular people, its disconnecting from people.
Now here's my thought, its really how to roll open grappling, free grappling as opposed to positionals or ecological grappling. We all spired to roll free, but what is free rolling ? Put a dozen positional situations in a 5 min BJJ round, there yo have it.
Now, the faster you work on your pattern recognition, the better you'll become at open free sparring.
That is when positionals are mandatory.
Ecological could take place when you need to address very prices specicif things, like, each time your partner want to pass your guard, the bottom guy needs to attack his leg, or go underhook and nullify his gard passing raging rush. This is one example.
I've done ecological grappling since 2016, I'm surprised is coming up now.
There are bjj instructors who used Greg's approach but don't feel concert to expose their method to youtube cause its a part of their natural usual BJJ.
I would not discard positionals.
I would not discard drilling.
I would not discard eco grappling.
Each have their place in the grand scheme of the grappling game. Each must be taken care of in a temporary set up, cause you don't want and go need one approach on a permanent basis.
Lots of awesome stuff here, man. I agree!
Very well put. Glad you made a video about this.
Thank you so much for this, Joe! I occupy the same space as you on the continuum. The point you made about certain things not being intuitive really resonated. For example; how often do you hear wrestling coaches have to tell their newer wrestlers to not reach back for a headlock? That’s what’s intuitive to a kid, but it’s a Hail Mary move you have to train to hit (and it rarely works).
You totally read my mind, because I was just thinking about making a video on that. And it’s because I saw a jiu-jitsu person teaching that you should reach back for a whizzer in the standing position. The rule sets, of course matter because wrestling that put you to your back whereas in jiu-jitsu that’s not as big of a deal as someone being on your back-but it still bad technique. And you’re right that is what every newbie does.
That selling stolen systems stuff quote was definitely danahers remineder easteregg 😂
Phd clin psych and black belt in bjj. I agree with your critique on the ecological approach.
There was no critique here. The approach wasn’t even discussed. The implications of assuming direct perception wasn’t even brought to light.
Totally agree that no critism was given towards the eco approach.
I myself utilized it after reading into it deeply with my BJJ and rugby practice.
But I totally agree with no es critism regarding the esotheric speech. I haven't meet greg and would never make a judgment about character...
But that way of speech is way to overblown and like Joe said as an foreigner extremely annoying and taking (got an masters degree in computer science and it was completely in English... So I think I know my way kinda around english)
I would love Greg to bring a little more clarity and simplicity in his way if talking. Then I would gladly consume more of his content.
Just as a feedback @Mr souders
And thanks for introducing me to the approach it worked well for me after understanding the bits and bytes
@kaniran1 when I said that sentence, I was more making fun of the people online who are now completely overdoing it…in another take, I made it clear that I was making fun of those hardcore followers and not him. In seminars, he speaks in a more common language. But on podcasts he does seem to use it a bit more. That is how I was introduced to him. It’s jargon from the field. I was only making a bit of comic relief. It is best to speak in a clear and concise language though. As expected, the hardcore followers have bastardized it, just like how the practically speak with Danaher’s accent as well, lol
When losing the Single I've been coming up to a Pinch-Headlock rather than the Side-Bodylock.
It feels very strong, but I know there must be a reason I don't see it taught. Where is the flaw?
That’s legit bro! I can’t believe I haven’t shown that, because the mechanics for how I do the inside position with the bodylock are the same.
Remember where I have said that if he pulls his leg back to go back up to the underhook? It is the same thing essentially.
Would you like for me to make a video on that?
@@josephbreza-grappling9459 For real? Absolutely.
I've been using it when I get to an Outside-Single and the REAL wrestlers in my gym hop on one leg and pry my face away with the double-palm stiff-arm.
Over the past few months I've added the Pinch-Headlock, John Smith Elbow-Tie series and the Half-Nelson and now the beast wrestlers I teach Jiu-Jitsu to are telling me I have 'wrestling strength'.
I take the flattery as confirmation that the new skills are being successfully implemented. You should take it as one more confirmation that your channel and course with Jordan are making a real impact.
@@josephbreza-grappling9459 Yes! Would be awesome
"humans didnt evolve to wrestle" It seems like the development of most mammals and their play as youngsters disputes this.
L O L!! Tell me you don’t understand evolution without telling me you don’t understand evolution. Genetic traits that are passed on as a consequence of being able to find food is what I am talking about. Play behavior is not a genetic trait that is directly applicable to hunting or gathering food or finding mates. Your comment is exactly what I have referred to in other videos about how people like to argue outside their wheelhouse. You are literally arguing with a full professor who studies neuroscience and evolution of receptors to behavior.
Animals aren’t setting up scoring systems, wearing spats, Gi, belts, jackets, or any other system of wrestling that has been designed for sport
Yes because snapdown to double is totally something every person can do intuitively.
Yes, the snap down to a double-leg gets all the chicks and thus was passed on through gametes.
@@josephbreza-grappling9459 I don't want to be mean about this, but you aren't exactly the only person with an advanced degree. I'm a microbiologist. Now it's been a while since I took an evo bio class, but we do have to use a lot of evolutionary thinking in immunology research. To say that play behavior that is conserved across the entirety of the mammal class isn't selected for by evolution is just silly man (im sure there are field biologists that will yell at me about not including animals from other classes too). It obviously has a roll in our development. It could be used to wire neuromuscular connections at an early age. It could be used to practice hunting/fighting or general locomotion skills at an early age safely ect. I'm sure there are all kind of reasons for it that benefit animals. I think your understanding of evolution might be a bit off. Another thing, trying to imply that by wrestling, I mean a scoring system ect, is kind of lowbrow and obviously what the kids on reddit would refer to as a straw man argument. You know that's not what I meant. Sure we "sportified" a basic human behavior, but it's kind of hard to argue that wrestling (as a generic activity, not sport) is common to all primates, especially when young.
Then again, weren't you psychology major? Neuroscience is one of those "multidisciplinary" fields that let non scientists get some of that sweet STEM money without having to take the full gambit of Chemistry, physics, math, bio and stats courses. Perhaps that was a bit mean. I might be making assumptions about you, just like you made them about me :-). Either way, I dig your (sport) wrestling content.
@xkidmidnightx dude, LOL! To get into a PhD program for neuroscience you need chemistry, biology, statistics, etc. I teach membrane biophysics in my advanced neuroscience course and am an electrophysiologist-feel free to look at my google scholar. So I have a lot of STEM background.
You can posture all you want about your academic background but you aren’t making a compelling argument about the purpose of play as it pertains to transferring it to a survival trait.
Mammals playing doesn’t equate the sports we are talking about. I used Grey’s example, because visual processing in a person and chasing after a fly ball is just a good example of using our highly developed visual system to carry out a task. We didn’t evolve to catch a fly ball but are damn good at processing movement and distance on a visual scene.
The problem with evolutionary psychology is that one can speculate some pretty fun ideas, but they cannot be tested like how changes in genetics modify the structure of receptors to carry out particular tasks. For example, there are genetic changes in bitter taste receptors in rodents that make them very sensitive to detection of certain plant alkaloids and toxins from bacteria, as their environmental pressures have selected for those traits. This is more or less what I mean about evolution for a purpose of survival. Being able to detect plant or bacterial toxins is extremely beneficial to an organism that lives in dens and scavenges.
In my laboratory we use transgenes to control certain cell types or neuron types, record from those neurons that are in the circuit, and determine how they impact behavior. It’s very straightforward and addresses evolutionary pressures of neural circuitry in ways that cannot be determined using a posthoc evolutionary psychology approach. I literally moved away from psychology as I couldn’t directly address certain mechanisms that control behavior. Not to say you can’t set up some nice behavioral experiments without transgenic or pharmacological manipulation, but it’s certainly more direct and inferences about how changes in genes for changing neural wiring and perception can be more concrete.
Anyhow, me bringing up evolution here was a little playful on using ecology as it pertains to grappling. Courses on ecology and evolution are common in biology, and chemical ecology (like what I described above) is part of what I do.
Excellent take on this one Joe. I have listened to a lot of Greg Souders and Rob Gray myself and Rob says that he likes to use this arcane language because it better connects his language to other scientific disciplines. I don't agree with his take on it, but that's what he says and so I assume that's why Greg prefers to speak like that. Great content as always. Hope you are healing up 🤙
Yes, I was teaching out of a book for my Experimental Psychology book and it said that Jargon is used so that people within the discipline can understand it quickly. However, if you read the guidelines for publishing in high end journals, they specifically state to speak in a common language that everyone can understand. So the premier research outlets tell you to do that because the goal is to reach the globe.
I actually had another take where I said that I bet this is jargon of the field, but on my retake, I didn’t remember to say it
I agree. Everyone acting like they are inventing moves. The right thing to do would be to give credit where credit is due.
Do you have any connection/insight into how PSU/Chael are running their practices? I heard tidbits here and there but found it quite hard to find concrete information. From what I could find, they might be doing a lot of live drills (somewhat between what would be called positional sparring and drilling in grappling circles). Would love to hear you speak on that, if you have any inside scoop.
I don’t, because I am older than him so he wasn’t running camps until he was older. Wrestlers usually learn from camps. I bet it’s not too different than what just about every collegiate wrestling practice is like. Collegiate practice is very efficient, because everyone is already so good. So coach can just say “ok pick a partner and drill shots.” Then after a few minutes he can yell out pick up the intensity, pick up the resistance, stop his first, second and third attacks. Etc etc, and because we are so knowledgeable, the first 20 mins are just so frickin good for getting you warm. Then you learn something, practice it, practice it with resistance, then situational train with that technique and others you’ve been working on, then live train.
@@josephbreza-grappling9459 Thanks, that's close to what I imagined. I only heard a few people (mainly Dake and DT) talk about it and it was along the lines of "there's a focus and we just freely play around that". I think that the depth of their room, both on the coaches and athletes side, is doing a major of part of the lifting as well. Hard to imagine for anyone not to develop amazingly with some of the best guys around + general positive and helpful vibe.
Cael and PSU are really helping to popularize the practice of "play wrestling" as a recognized training method. It is closer to the ecological approach than to straight drilling, but still quite different than what I've seen Greg Souders use in his practices.
Check this video with All-American Bryan Pearsall talking about Cael needing to show all the PSU wrestlers how to play wrestle as a training method (start around 6:52 and again at 8:58) czcams.com/video/fR0WIkTF57M/video.htmlsi=XN2S1A29PMQWUQ7i
I think play wrestling will benefit all wrestlers once they know how, but you have to be pretty advanced/elite for it to be your primary method of mat training (like Dake and Taylor have said). Most of us, depending on our skill and needs, will benefit from incorporating smart drilling, situational sparring, and well designed constraints-based games/tasks a la Souders.
@TheElThomaso one thing that I know of which separates him from the old Midwest approach is that he is good at talking to his athletes about this being a game and not everything in your life.
The old style of the Midwest is just to immerse every fiber of your existence into it. It’s like an abusive relationship. It’s never good enough, you don’t train hard enough, etc. It’s why we were taught to run off the mat and do victory (or defeat) sprints, to tell yourself you could always do more, you can always dig deeper. No doubt that it works, but it burns people out. I don’t think this generation of students allow themselves to get abused like we did and they are gravitating towards coaches like Sanderson, because he is super positive.
@a0kca1p when I was a young man, I trained for a week with the Ukrainian national team. They practiced without us and it was a lot of fun playful wrestling. They could turn it up when they wanted, but it was like flo rolling in BJJ.
I will check this out and see whether we did anything like this…I didn’t go down the rabbit hole of my collegiate training. My coach didn’t become head coach of the greco world and olympic teams because he was average. He did a lot of cool shit with us, but that would take forever to explain and I don’t want to make hour long videos.
Also, I agree that you can do more types of training with high level guys. We were able to do a lot of advanced types of stuff because we were knowledgeable. I coached highschool for a long time and I was good at getting them competent quickly so that I could pair them up with advanced partners and super charge their learning. You learn to keep up with your partner in that type of environment.
Will someone define "drilling" . Greg hasn't responded. And I think Joe and Greg would make for an interesting cast.
Stirring the pot, Frank…lol
I talked on the tatami talk judo podcast how it’s funny they call it the ecological approach because it’s such a small aspect of ecology. Also I really think greg’s use of jargon is to be a pseudo intellectual and get on the level of the kami John danaher
I think Danaher has worked diligently on that kind of verbal communication. I regularly communicate with some of the brightest minds in the world and they don’t talk that way. Having a Master’s degree in Philosophy from Auckland is not like being a doctor of Neuroscience and Professor at Yale-my friend is a professor at Yale and he speaks in a very common language.
As far as I've seen, Souders is using the common terminology of eco approach advocates in the field of exercise science (and before that, the field of psychology. I've heard Souders reference JJ Gibson).
I won't speak for Greg, but in the same way that you give credit to John Smith or Andy Seras for a given technique, he might see using the established terminology as a type of attribution and credit that establishes where he comes from in coaching philosophy.
But thats when talking to others about coaching/pedagogy. When talking to students about BJJ, it's been said by others that he uses less jargon.
@a0kca1p yes, I actually recorded another take on this video but it was too long and I didn’t want to chop it up. I like single takes if I can pull it off.
In that I said how I gather this lingo/jargon is from those fields and as an academic I know we are definitely very bad at that. I try not to do it in my writing, because it cannot be read easily by the masses.
Someone sent me a video of him teaching and it wasn’t like the way he sounds on podcasts. I speak the same way no matter who I am talking to. I just don’t have the brain capacity or whatever it is to have multiple personas. This is me-100%. I am the same way in person, in the practice room, in the classroom, lab, whatever. And I know some people don’t like that. There’s not much I can do about people not liking my personality. I can and have made more of an effort to be nicer, but I do feel that often what needs to be said outweighs what people want to hear.
My plan is to just make a library of content for people to improve their wrestling-whether that is for a pure wrestling context or BJJ-then I will stop, because I am not doing this to be a content creator. I am just doing it to pass on the knowledge that helped me to be a successful wrestler and helped others be more successful than I ever was
@@josephbreza-grappling9459 well said 🤙🏽
Definitely with your stance on drilling. I'm not in the BJJ community but I've seen how it can become pretty toxic, like a lot of special interests, tbh.
Yeah it seems like an online thing, where people just blather to start arguments. I actually think a lot of them don’t even train BJJ. It’s like how there’s so many MMA fans who have never trained but talk trash about fighters who would wreck them.
Breza I don't get it the the BJJ coaches that try to cram in science buzzwords. As an engineer, it just sounds pretentious. Effective communication is simple communication.
When I saw someone actually explain what Greg was doing with the "eco" stuff I had the same reaction lol, this is stuff we did in every wrestling room. I guess kudos to Greg for getting people interested in positional sparring by speaking in a language they didn't understand.
You saying that reminds me of the guy in Office Space who says his job is to relay information from the engineers to people and then he yells at the guys saying “I have people skills, what the hell is wrong with you people?” And then gets fired. Lol
I definitely think it’s probably the jargon of that subfield and so he is using that. But any high end journal specifically says in their author guidelines to use clear and concise language and to avoid jargon. This way, people outside the field understand what you are saying without needing to study up the entire subfield (because most people won’t and that drops reads/citations)
Your assessment wasn’t that far off, but I think you missed some points on eco dynamics(whatever people wanna call) method.
An specific wrestling example you used: some kid would use a illegal scaffold, since it wouldn’t have an arm in as well, but if the coach was a good practice designer the game(just using Greg’s therms, i use something different here in Brazil) would be designed to accomplish arm and head hold. That’s why we can’t really compare, and I’ve seen a lot of coaches messing up because of it, to situational sparring.
The designed practiced is way more focused, or we’re supposed to be, on CLA/eco training whatever.
A “wrestling” of a practice I’ve designed and used.
A: begin the drill with a Russian tie, his objective is to get to the back or lift one of his partner legs
B: who is in the Russian tie, got face his opponent and and get at least one underhook.
Those drills can englobe more and get closer to a situational sparring, but they can be very specific to get those parameters you mentioned, and those very focused constraint will be applied to new guys avoiding illegal positions for instance by its own nature
As a competitor and coach, I have been in wrestling rooms that have very specific goals and parameters. The purpose of my video isn’t to define what eco is. There are many podcasts with people talking for hours about it. It’s really not that complicated. I am just giving my perspective from how a good scholastic wrestling room is run in the United States. It’s very similar from school to school or club to club. Nothing special or new about giving athletes specific goals and parameters for which they work.
My point about the headlock from the standing position is that wrestling is not intuitive and you need to learn how to do movement patterns through observational and personal accounts with the help of a coach, because they won’t just figure it out. I could have given another example like how kids will just shoot without getting past the head or hands and will look at the ground and round off their backs. They have to learn the proper set ups and shot mechanics or else it doesn’t work on a skilled opponent. The reason wrestling in BJJ is at a low level is because it’s being taught primarily by people without any formal wrestling training and so these habits emerge from bad coaching. Would you learn piano from a concert pianist or someone who just watched the pianist and says good enough and tries to teach you? I think we all know the answer to that. This shit is not intuitive. Someone with legitimate skill should be teaching it.
I want my students to use techniques that would work in competition. A good coach helps students with their technique to accomplish the objective. As a general rule, BJJ practice is run like shit, so Souders definitely is doing a service to those who will listen. I don’t know where you think our lines are crossed because they sound pretty in alignment to me
@@josephbreza-grappling9459 o understand you, but I stood about my initial assessment, I agree that grappling in general is quite counter intuitive, not just unintuitive, the thing is that even with other exemples you can still teach through proper designed practice without step by step demonstration simply constraining the practice “getting pass the hands and lowering the level without bending you backs before the shot” is a simple enough constraint for your other exemple, failure when doing less effective tries is just part of the process, even with the most detailed step by step movement you’ll face failure in practice, wouldn’t you agree? Just give time to people self organize.
On the wrestling quality for bjj, I agree and the way bjj was taught is quite bad and disconnected and yet it proved a very effective martial arts and the credits doesn’t go to the way it was taught but to the way people self organized trough several daily hours of full resistance sparring (roll)
I believe wrestling can be better in bjjj but will never be as effective as wrestling for wrestling because we simply can’t afford to use all our time on it, you can win adcc without even trying a takedown Gordon Ryan is giving people his leg to be taken down just to submit them for quite sometime already, so it will never be a honest assessment to compare the quality of wrestling in bjj to bjj performance itself.
But great content overall, we can always agree to disagree
@pedrovillelabjj3163 I don’t think we disagree brother. I just think this constraints led approach has always been part of wrestling and a good reason why people get so good at it so quickly with a legitimate wrestling coach. I think the wrestling in bjj is so bad because hardly anyone teaching the wrestling is a wrestler and they don’t know enough on how to direct the constraints. A piano teacher is qualified to teach piano. The person just simply watching the piano player isn’t qualified to run the practice. This is why wrestling in bjj is so slow to progress. The novices are leading the practices and don’t know what they don’t know.
@@josephbreza-grappling9459I don’t disagree that the general wrestling part of bjj is lacking, judo practitioners made the same argument, but honestly BJJ will never be and we don’t have to be as good at wrestle or judo, people got accept is a very different sport when people can just sit on their butts.
The point I was making is that eco dynamics can be used to bypass the step by step you initially made.
On the language issue, Greg could use a simpler language, but he is conveying his message clearly, as someone who’s English is the third language and have Latino rooted first and second language that the scientific, more formal language is easier for us, since English “big words” have Latin roots which is way easier for Latino speaking folk.
I agree that scientific language may sound pedantic, and you don’t have to be a scholar to be a good coach, you’re absolutely right there, but I’m from Rio de Janeiro - Brazil and something I’ve notice on combat sports, martial arts community around here, and BJJ is heavily rooted around our environment, is that most instructor had a very humble background lacking access to good education, so there’s a lot of good intention mixed with mindless repetition, passing on bjj without any real ability to question methodology or research inclination towards finding a better way to coach, and bjj passing through the hands and mind of more research/development oriented people is making it better. Early bjj practice were lacking a lot.
We must remember that the traditional way of practice was a takedown + self defense + ground move with no interconnection between them.
I do feel that bjj is going through a improvement.
I also agree with you that most coaches trying eco dynamics/CLA are not well equipped for proper practice design, but that should be another discussion entirely
I think you need to delve deeper. The emergence of behaviors is guided by the coach using external ques. Sometimes, you might have to give the athlete a suggestion for a movement solution if they keep missing it.
I am not teaching how ecological works. There are podcasts about this ad nauseam. I was just saying how the situational drills and situational sparring with goals and parameters are quite similar to wrestling practice and where Souders says he learned it. I am giving the perspective on wrestling practice, which I know well after 33 years of it. If you’re expecting a certain “movement solution” then you’re acknowledging there are indeed techniques that you want done a certain way. I understand the reasoning for having people discover that. I never argued that it wasn’t effective. I am only saying that it’s not the only way, and there are so many people out there now who are enamored with this approach and act like traditional teaching methodology has no place. The burden of proof isn’t on those who use traditional methods, which includes situational sparring with parameters. The burden of proof is on those who say it doesn’t work and that this “new” method is the only way. Most of the people arguing about this don’t train much, suck, or haven’t even read that much about it or trained with it. They just parrot what others are saying online
@josephbreza-grappling9459 great responce. Thanks. My comment was aimed at the emergent behavior. Where you were talking about these behaviors will not just emerge, and you are right, I also think you are right about technique. There are things that things that can be called techniques. We can call them technique, behaviors, movement solutions, who really cares? As long as our room understands the launguage we speak to the room. They don't just emerge they are guided. This is fairly new methodology. Even Greg has only been applying it for 9 years. I've been at it for a little over 2 years. The burden of proof will come with time. I do believe that engagement with the room is way harder than coaching moves. Also believe the engagement at the student level increases. Creativity seems to increase. We have all heard our professors preach that they don't want us to be carbon copies of them. Then when we are drilling they come around to interrupt the exploration by stopping the student and say something like, "move your foot slightly to the left", or "rotate your hand 90° this way", or "grab the gi this way." Usually only because that is the way they were taught. I'm not saying it doesn't work. The sport has gotten to where it is because of the methodologies that have been employed for the last 50+ years. The literature suggests that there may be more effective ways to get better-lasting results. I can tell you weren't trying to disparage the method.
I appreciate your defense of my position and your disagreements with my positions. I would love to have a discussion with you on your channel if you’d be willing. I would like an opportunity to defend my position with you guiding the conversation.
The examples you gave for what you think I’m doing and how I use language to communicate to my students is not even remotely close to accurate. How I speak to a crowd regarding my theoretical framework is not the same as when I’m running a practice. Not to mention that your conceptual understanding of the science that inspired my framework is disappointingly low. I’m surprised that you’re so comfortable and confident speaking on things you don’t seem to understand. However, if you feel that I’m off base for my comment, I think a public discourse will clear things up nicely.
Hi Greg,
I wanted to come out and defend what you are doing, because I said there’s some similarities to what we do in wrestling practice but what you do is more specialized.
I gave specific examples of what we do in wrestling practice, since this is what I know and just using those as examples to describe what we call “drilling, drills, and situational parameters.” I mainly wanted to do this because people in BJJ do a lot of static drilling and I agree that it mostly sucks.
I did not give any specific examples of what you do. I didn’t want to try and define what it is that you do or the science behind it. You have done that already and I am not trying to teach the ecological approach. I am just defending it because I know that it works. I am a bit disappointed that you popped off saying I am poorly representing the science when the science is nothing I even attempted to cover.
In regard to the language usage, that was a joke. It’s more of a joke of people on the internet now who talk this way-like how you made fun of Danaher students saying “like so” when teaching. I recorded this a few times and I actually elaborated on that a bit, saying how as an academic I know that we use jargon in the field-and that the terminology is likely from that field. I also talked about how Danaher’s students sound like him and how internet followers of you are now doing that-which I think you would find laughable/annoying. So when I did this take it got lost-Mea Culpa.
Someone sent a video of you teaching and the language used there is much different than what I heard from you on the podcasts. Again, I was bringing up what haters said online and the followers of you-totally overdoing what was on the podcasts on purpose man.
My channel is about teaching wrestling to people-particularly to grapplers. I am not a podcaster and don’t plan on being one. I appreciate your interest in coming on, but I am not an interviewer, don’t have any beef with you, don’t have any beef with what you are teaching, etc. If anything, I am more than laudable about what you were doing and am simply stating how what we do in wrestling practice, although not the same, has similarities in that we don’t just static drill and then go live.
@@josephbreza-grappling9459 thank you for this response and for clarifying what you were meaning when giving “examples” for how I might do things. I only “popped off” because I have a deep respect for the academic community and because of your position in that space I felt like your analysis of, in either defense or against, my position should have been approached with more rigor. You sit in a unique position by being both an experienced coach and an academic. And though the wrestling community is far ahead in their coaching practices relative to ours, we could gain a strong headway by interacting with each other.
I have a second request then, if you’d be interested, to have a discussion with me on a separate platform than your own. I feel like having a long form discussion could be beneficial for us both.
Greg's language during class is wayyyy simpler than you suggest at around 16:50. This was from a coaching camp that happened in March he has some examples of how he runs training.
czcams.com/video/ADeyiWt_ksw/video.html&pp=ygUOZWNvbG9naWNhbCBiamo%3D
I have several examples from podcasts where he said similar things. Podcasts are obviously different than practice, but I’ve never had a practice with him. It’s also kind of a little comedic liberty to just make a point now that the internet cult followers of him speak in that language (which I am sure he hates ;)
Also, why is it that every podcast and other videos that people send to me of him over an hour long? Lol
I like what he said right in the beginning about a resistant population. Man that shit is accurate. My channel is like 2 years old and when I first started all sorts of people were shitting on “wrestling doesn’t work.” Still so many people who say that. Systems from all grappling are useful, but you have to really work at them for them to be effective. Nothing is simple. After so many years of wrestling I start doing judo and while there are similarities to wrestling, man there are a lot of differences too.
@@josephbreza-grappling9459 I hear you on the majority of content regarding him being a lot of long-format stuff, but that training camp was the most informative out of everything out there.
The best people by a mile in the ED/CLA for Combat Sports space is Greg, Ed Ingamells, Scott Sievewright, and Josh Peacock. Your academic background is a big reason why I value your content so much and I would love to hear a conversation between you and Greg.
@SpiralBJJ I think all of his intentions for Jiu Jitsu are genuine. I think he wants athletes to succeed and he believes in what he is teaching.
all good jiu jitsu programs have been using this method since the beginning of time . this is also the basis of kuzushi.
We all would really appreciate if you gave us some cla games you would have jiu jitsu guys do that follow in line with your wrestling experience
It's kinda hard to really understand what the "good" cla games are compared to the less effective ones, i saw Greg make a reaction video watching others trying to follow his approach, he said they weren't doing a good job for the most part.
i couldn't tell the difference.
From your wrestling experience we all would appreciate if you talked about some cla style games you would do if you had a class in a jiu jitsu settling, from top and bottom position
Thank you for your time!
I gave some examples here. I also have a drill (“game”) in this video
czcams.com/video/5ZGk7ST-bhg/video.htmlsi=pmQqa-9ONIsSncOj
This was long before I had even heard of Souders or what he has done. I am thinking of making a series of these, but it will take time
@@josephbreza-grappling9459 Thank you so much. really appreciate it. I hope my first comment made sense I was half asleep when I wrote it ahaha.
@tombeans2204 it did, lol
@@josephbreza-grappling9459
I really appreciate your reply,
Gregs cla seems very interesting and i would love to incorporate it in my training, but the terminology is so loud i don't understand what it really even is sadly. Let alone being able to implement it. I don't want to study the terminology deeply, I just want to know what i have to do to develop these skills in the best way.
It sounds very similar to "Kit Dales" style of playing games that isolate specific situations so you can quickly gather experience through controlled failure and force success. sounds similar to that, but Greg explicitly says these are not games so I'm confused.
i would love jiu jitsu specific drills that i don't need to create on my own, ones that we know already work. without worrying if i have created the wrong game or something.
The language he uses is most likely from the field. As an academic, I know that we tend to usr jargon, but I try to avoid it whenever possible. I think it is good what he is doing and it should be incorporated. Just how much of it is dependent on the goals and understanding of the instructor
Bro 😎 I cite all my sources exactly names of where I got it from ❤
It helps people to get another look (if it it’s available) and see some variation, which helps learning
Very good points on what's intuitive and what has to be learned. I agree with a lot of the stuff you said in this video.
Glad you caught that.
Fair take.
Let’s go ❤!
You can drill if you want. Cla is more fun tho. For me at least.
I hated running and weight training at 5:00am in HS and collegiate wrestling-and I hated cutting weight too, but it made me win titles, LOL
That sounds hard. I commend the effort. Rock solid m8
@JOHNTHEBROOTAL I had to do what I had to do back then to win. Wrestling is weird like that…you have to beat everyone in your weight class on your team every single week to be the starter. You wrestle several matches a week in competition. Then you wrestle through the offseason and constantly push to get better. You know that you have limited time as a scholastic sport so the pressure is always on. It actually sucks to be honest, but those who embrace the grind have a better chance of ending up on top.
But those days are long gone. Now I train BJJ and Judo to just make me a better well rounded grappler and student of the arts
What you said is about jiu jitsu culture in the US. It's pretty unbearable. I love the US but the jiu jitsu culture in Brazil and the rest of SA is so much less pretentious
Yes, the keyboard tough guys
I think it would be great if you have Greg on the show.
As far as the “jiu jitsu” community is concerned, I appreciate you distinguishing between it online vs real life. Online can be a toxic, degenerate hell hole. So yeah, don’t pay attention to people there. Haha
Yeah it’s extremely rare that someone runs their mouth in a wrestling room, judo dojo, or Jiu Jitsu academy. It’s because the repercussions are imminent, lol! I honestly think a lot of people leaving argumentative comments have never trained. There was a guy who was shitting on me on Reddit when I first started my channel. He said that most D1 wrestlers suck. Umm lol! Everyone that was recruited onto a D1 team was good enough to be recognized by the coach and offered a scholarship, which are limited. There’s a serious bottleneck because so many programs dropped wrestling due to Title iX. So yeah I am not on Vito Arujau’s level, but then again he is literally a World Champion and 2x NCAA champion. People online have set the bar to an impossible standard. If you earned your blackbelt in BJJ, chances are you know a lot of shit. But online people will say that “lots of Blackbelts suck” because they are comparing them to the highest of levels. They are so ignorant about the levels they haven’t checked themselves and determine where they are. Those who train check themselves all the time, and that is what makes training so important-tame the ape within because anyone on any given day an kick my ass and I am aware of that
@@josephbreza-grappling9459
Oh dude, nothing makes me shake my head more than someone talking shit online about high level grapplers/wrestlers. It’s clear they haven’t trained
Regardless, I think it would be great to have Greg on. I feel you both could definitely glean some good insights into training methods, and Greg doesn’t seem to mind being challenged.
@TheChadavis33 well this really isn’t a podcast and I don’t know how good of an interviewer I would be. He has been interviewed by a number of good podcasters. I am more of a teacher than a CZcamsr. I actually hate this shit and can’t wait until I have made enough of a library of information to feel comfortable with walking away from it. Then people have the content to help themselves in their own grappling journey
@@josephbreza-grappling9459
Fair enough. For what it’s worth, I think you have a lot to contribute to the grappling community.
Thank you!
Souders has explained that he uses the language of ecological psychology when describing his methods of training. His classes are quite accessible. Much like Danager who also doesn't go on diatribes when teaching students. If the language of ecological psychology can seem overly complex, it is a function of the academics working in that field, not Souders.
I love your content, and I think everyone can agree that static drilling in jiu-jitsu has to go, but I find the constant dick-measuring contest with regard to degrees and diplomas kind of annoying and petty. Arguments from authority are not convincing. On a side note, English is not my first language and I have no problem with teachers like Danaher and Souders. I find teachers who are precise with their words easier to internally translate than people who adopt an overly simplistic and democratic way of speaking.
Yes I have addressed this in other comments. Briefly, I said that I actually did another take of this and said how as an academic I know that we are notoriously bad at using jargon, and that should be avoided. It is why I talk in a common language (well I do that anyway, but in writing I am careful to define all my terms). Just because they do it and people in my field too do that doesn’t make it right.
I thought I made it clear in what I said that although I am an academic, I kinda don’t act like one. Like when I said having an advanced degree is not a prerequisite for being a coach-quite the opposite. If being a wrestling coach paid my bills, then I would leave academia in a heartbeat.
So that must have been lost in translation because it sounds like you’re calling me pompous, because I am an academic, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I work in academia but I don’t fit in with that crowd-I fit in with blue collar workers and gym rats.
You're very nice, its always good to push against the boring static dead fish drilling.
But the ecolgical nerds just make me think of the paleo/vegan weirdos and ice bath geeks.
Its just repackaged positional sparring imo.
I think you hit the nail on the head about the online people.
People definitely seem to get enamored with anything “new.”
I definitely see it as a specialized positional sparring, and I was careful about how I said that because I didn’t want to go too far down that rabbit hole.
I think it’s because his definition of positional sparring is starting from a position and then whatever happens continues from there.
In my experience, you can set these parameters (he calls them “constraints”) to whatever you like.
A battle of big words! 😅
your leaving comments on my page with your burner account, stop being obsessed with me!
Hahahahahaa!! Yes, any negative comment must be me. Nobody else could possibly disagree with something you say, lol!
As a neuroscientist what do you think of Andrew Huberman? Does he just spout stuff for clicks or is he legit?
As far as ecological, I believe there should be some room to come up with your own creative solutions… but like you said, natural instincts are often times bad for optimal performance.
I taught youth boxing and there’s really only a few things untrained people want to do….
1 - swing like an insane person on meth
2 - close your eyes and turn away
3 - try to be Floyd Mayweather or Tyson
You have to learn some stuff before you can “express yourself”.
Interestingly my trainer differentiated between his guys that were rote learners and intuitive ones. The rote guys, once they learn something they can execute it perfectly under pressure time and time again. The intuitive ones don’t have that consistency but they play and do different things. Further, there are different ways to mentally unravel each.
Cheers, nice video!
Yes, I have essentially the same training as Huberman. Before he got really big he was teaching the fundamentals of neuro…essentially he was teaching out of the textbook “The Principles of Neural Science,” by Kandel and Schwartz. It’s referred to as the neuroscience bible and is basic classical understanding of many principles. That book is used to teach first year graduate students in “cellular and molecular neuroscience,” a required first year course. That and the “Biological Psychology” textbook by Breedlove, an undergraduate textbook.
So all that stuff you hear on hormones, behavior, drug addiction, etc, is like basic undergraduate to graduate level neuroscience. He is good at communicating it, but takes liberties in stepping beyond the data for content creation. He is a pretty good scientific communicator. I don’t really follow him much since I first heard of him years ago and stopped following him when he was talking about testosterone boosters and stuff.
The way that the Jiu-Jitsu community is getting so upset by what Souders is saying is telling. They can dislike him for acting smug or using an esoteric language or whatever, but in their gut they know he's right and the truth hurts.
One common trope in comment sections is "Purple belts are lazy" because they find ways to skip the bullshit warmups or static drills. It's pretty obvious what the truth under the surface is here, the people that have trained for 5+ years are beginning to figure out what type of training is valuable and what isn't, it it certainly isn't jumping jacks and shrimping up and down the mat or 100 armbar swings.
What's going to happen, is Jiu-Jitsu as a whole will slowly shift to this constraint-led-approach and pretend they made it up themselves or have always done it this way. I'm 100% certain because I watched it happen after Danaher released his Enter the System DVD series. Gym owners and head instructors down to blue belt content creators would show the sequences straight off his DVD, use his idiosyncratic terminology, deliver the same key points in a 30 second Instagram reel, and present it as their original idea then plug their channel or academy.
The same is going to happen with what Souders is preaching.
No doubt-they already are!! It’s why I made a little humor about the language piece, because online people have started talking in that language like Trekkie’s speaking Klingon. Lol!
Souders made a comment about how people under Danaher say “like so” while teaching technique. So I gather he is going to eyeroll at people expanding on the language thing, like I did as a joke. It’s more a joke on the followers than him and I made that clear in another take, but I didn’t get that across on this one. I don’t have the time to edit these videos like people might think I do. I am super busy with work and kids. Then I have to train around all that.
But yes, just like how people will take things from wrestlers and pretend they invented it themselves, they will be doing what Souders is doing and he eventually won’t get credit for it. And like I said clearly on purpose in the video, to his credit he gives credit where credit is due
first
😂 wait, the first guy-the one who responds within the first few seconds-should say some off the wall aggressive comment that has nothing to do with the video, but what they think the video might be about and vehemently disagree with it😂
@@josephbreza-grappling9459 Nah man, I love your videos. They've helped me out so much lmao.
@stinkysteve8392 I appreciate that man. I am glad you find it useful