We use the TRIG method at my school. Training, Repetition, Isolation, Grappling.
Teach it, have them drill it, isolate it through positional/isolation sparring, and them live rolling.
It seems like the ecological method skips the TR and G parts.
Seems dumb.
IMO, any drilling is worthless, but even just having goals is also a crutch, of sorts.
That’s where these guys go wrong.
I put my students on the mat with no techniques, no drills and, most of all, no goals.
Sometimes, a new student will ask, “Sooo… like what do I do…?”
“You tell me. I’m not here to control your journey.” I tell them. “Just be on the mat and see what happens!”
I call it “Organic Evolutionary Jiu jitsu”. Whatever happens, happens… or maybe nothing happens and that’s cool too. We use the power of nature to let jiu jitsu evolve on its own geologic time scale with no outside interference, whatsoever.
So far, no one has figured out anything close to even a single technique. BUT, like I tell my students, “That’s proof it’s probably working. Evolution takes time… A LONG time.”
(BTW, I’m doing a 5-day camp in Juarez, Mexico in May, in case anyone’s interested in learning this approach.)
This is revolutionary thinking Mestre. I have long thought of instructors like you taking this concept to the ultimate level and actually closing the doors of your physical facility. Why should the student be restrained by having to go to a specific location, at a certain time and listen to an instructor who would just tell them to do things their way? Why not give them the freedom to train wherever and with whomever they would like? This would be the final step to really allow them to create and grow on their own. No physical academy, no instructor telling them what to do, no boundaries.
I would also not shackle them to the idea that some authoritarian needs to promote them. They are more than capable of knowing when to promote themselves. It’s their journey.
Our only role would be to stay out of their way, and to of course collect $250/mo in tuition for allowing them this freedom to reach their goals……or not reach them. It’s really up to them to figure out.
The way of the Shendokan is that there is no way. Mind blown once again grand master.
All of the best grapplers are largely self taught and learned “ecologically”, hence why so many successful autists in jiu jitsu. However, trying to get your average student to think and train that way is a fool’s errand. Only the savants can do it.
You know, I don’t even tell them what to wear. Half the class is in street clothes, one guy is dressed in motorcycles leathers, the rest are wearing sweats or kung fu outfits.
We’ll get there… eventually.
I watched the second and third videos in the op. I am no longer a complete sceptic. For beginners I think there is great value in understanding the gross objectives of any given positions. But at some stage those broad understandings become narrowed down and superseded by actual techniques. There is a reason dlr guard is what it is. Hundreds of thousands of hours of refinement have resulted in it and the movements surrounding it. For the blue belts and up I believe the more typical training methods we see are more beneficial.
Another thing about I liked about the second video posted in the op: When doing an armbar from top mount he has the students start the game in the final armbar control position. That is, legs across the head and the chest and with an elbow deep control of the target arm. Then in the next game he has them move back a step so the leg is not yet across the face, then in the next game he has them in high mount control.
What I’m getting at is I think starting beginners in the goal position is a superior method of teaching new submissions/positions. Having them understand the goal as the first step just makes sense. Rather than starting in some seemingly random spot and finally at the end of it all realising what they are trying to achieve.
I don’t think this has anything to do with eco training.
Ecological training is silly in my opinion.
It only exists because the understanding of BJJ is so poor by most coaches. And yes, retention rates will be higher if everything is a silly game. They don’t want to be told to drill a movement until they actually do it correctly or listen to their coach when they tell them what the optimal thing to do from a position is.
If you have shitty coaches, the ecological approach is better than cultishly following them. But if you want to be world class, you find a coach who is extremely smart, ask them what the right thing to do in every position is, and do it.
White/blue/purple belts should never be figuring out for themselves what to do. They should be memorizing transitions and patterns of movement someone smarter than them already figured out. Then positional sparring to get repetitions of that movement on a progressively resisting opponent.
I swear, people will try absolutely anything other than learning from smart people and training consistently with a focus on improvement.
Casinos and lottery tickets exist for a reason.
Right.
Part of it is also the almost pathological need BJJ teachers & influencers have to be “original” and continuously do things differently.
In BJJ, novelty is overly valued; everyone is trying to show a new way to do everything.
Admittedly, some of these things are valuable, but most are just new for the sake of being new.
And as BJJ drifts father and farther from the tether of reality (I.e. being useful in an actual fight between humans) it gets more and more bizarre.
50/50, lapel guard, rubber guard, etc turned out to be parlor tricks used by people who cared more about tricking their opponents with things they hadn’t seen before than learning and applying actual jiu jitsu.
Didn’t Keenan finally admit that he wasted his time focusing too much on the lapel fuckery?
The ecological bullshit is the next gay ass fad the dweebs who don’t want to sweat and hate authority have glommed onto
Well, we will see how this turns out.
Disclaimer: I am still learning the fundamental theory, so please don’t take my word as if I am a source of authority on the theory.
To me, the ecological dynamics approach to skill acquisition parallels the concept of “total immersion” when learning a new language. I don’t know the references to back this up, but I do believe that most people will argue that total immersion is the fastest way to learn a new language (Danaher also said as such in a video; about learning language).
It’s not completely accurate that you do not demonstrate certain things in this theory. But the theory does suggest that it is more optimal to design a problem oriented game that queues someone into a specific opportunity(s), which allows the person to get as much repetition as possible with solving that problem in a live setting. The goal being, to connect their actions with the opportunity that is in front of them and solve the problem. The theory wouldn’t suggest that the problem is dynamic and always changing, and is a function of your individuals restrictions and that of your opponent (size, strength etc).
Personally I have experienced the problem of seeing a window of opportunity, but not being able to execute in the timeframe before it disappears. The goal is to help the practitioner focus on the queues needed to solve the problem, instead of focusing on where/how your body needs to be positioned in order to do the technique correctly.
Where I think people struggle the most with this theory is the “lack of technique” being taught. Because no, the theory would suggest that repetition of techniques against a static unresisting opponent is not representative of the actual live scenario that you are training for.
Actually, there are numerous other sports that utilize this approach. It’s definitely not new. Supposedly this games based approach to learning is also used in the Penn State wrestling room, but I have no way to corroborate that. There are several texts that suggest a games based approach to teaching/coaching is actually much better for teaching children. While most will just chalk this up to a child’s limited attention span, I think there is an argument to be made that what is a good method for teaching children, can also possibly be a good method for teaching adults.
I’ll leave it there for now since I am on my phone. Flame away….
Regarding the comments above about this just being good for people who don’t want to sweat. I’ve found that it is actually a more physically demanding way to run the class. It’s basically all live training. Just miniature games that are a slice of the overall game.
I’m curious to hear your results of trying it. But I do want to make clear, my stance isn’t that it’s for people who don’t want to sweat.
Sweating is the easy part in my opinion. Shutting the fuck up, learning things from people smarter than you, and drilling them until you can do them when tired/exhausted/rocked by strikes is the hard part.
It’s probably good for student retention. But I personally don’t care about student retention in this matter, I care about making people as good as they can possibly be at grappling if they stick around and put in the work.
I agree with this whole heartedly.
I think the solution is a coach who knows all of the cues, tells you “when their head is here, your hand goes here” and then makes you drill that. Then the coach says “ok, their head is here, your hand goes here instead, because of x and y”
Name these sports?
Using Penn State as the example but not being sure is not sufficient. And I’m sure that Penn State probably using g positional/situational drilling like 99% of all wrestling and BJJ gyms.
Again, this is a complete misunderstanding of learning and coaching athletics. You drill in either static or non competition scenarios to create muscle memory and refine technical issues. This slowly evolves as the athletes progress in technical mastery, but never really goes away.
Let’s use baseball:
Little kids practice their batting stance. How to hold the bat, feet, head, distance from plate, etc. As they progress they move to a batting tee, then slow pitch drills, the a coach pitches, then live batting practice, then games.
As they get older and more refined they no longer drill their basic batting stance, but drill correcting their swing on the tee, scenarios in the batting cage and during batting practice, live batting practice, scrimmages, games.
The evolution starts with some static and non competition scenarios to create understanding of the technical intricacies and allowing of the coach to make corrections. Then it evolves into application and competition based games and scenarios.
Without the technical understanding, explanations of context, static repetition to create muscle memory and refinement by a coach just putting a bat in a kids hands and telling them “it’s a pitch on the outside corner. Let’s see how you’ll naturally learn to deal with it” would never, ever, work. If it did, it’s how a sport like baseball would be taught and coached.
In BJJ this same formula is how you really develop: static repetition of movements without partner to learn basic concept, context and physical requirement, practice of movement with partner to create muscle memory, repetition of movement to further refine understanding, application in training scenarios with moderate resistance, application in specific training scenarios with full resistance, individual recognition and application with full resistance in organic training.
Happy to try my best to answer some of the questions or address the points above, but like I said, I’m not an authority on the subject. Still learning.
The reference to Penn State was from an interview I listened to with Greg Sauders, so that’s all I got. With respect to other sports, give Rob Greys book “How we learn to move” a read. Or check out his podcast “perception action”. There are quite a few other podcasts out there too now. Primal MMA podcast is great, and he actually will interview people from other sports who are already using this. I’ll just point you this way for the other sport references.
The baseball reference above is interesting, because that is where Rob Grey spends a lot of time (baseball industry).
The other interesting part of the theory is that it kind of dispels the theory of muscle memory. A lot of people seem to think that with muscle memory in place, all you need to do is recieve the signal from the brain in order to produce the needed action when the right opportunity presents itself. Your brain is the computer and it will send the correct technique to the body. But this theory would suggest that the time scale for events like this to occur are so small that it would be impossible for you body to work that way. Rob references baseball pitching vs time needed to recognize the pitch, trajectory etc, and predict where the ball will end up, then to swing accurately to hit it. The time scale is too small for all these events to occur. I haven’t studied this, so I will just have to point you to his work.
Like I said, I’m still researching the subject, so don’t take my word as gospel or being representative of professional. Just what I am learning. I’m not in one camp or the other, just open to learning from different people. Which is what was called out above actually. And which is something that this theory would promote as well. It just doesn’t always have to be a “master/professor”.
I also think that the “proof is in the champions” mindset is a bit of a fallacy. There is more to just the training methodology that counts towards championships. And it takes a long time to develop people to operate at those levels.
For those that are interested, here is a paper that describes the application of this theory to Judo. It’s quite long, but the intro is a way more thorough introduction to the theory.