How to teach BJJ without drilling (ecological game design with Greg Souders)
Вставка
- Опубліковано 17 тра 2024
- Greg Souders teaches me how to implement the Constraints-Led Approach for jiu jitsu, a coaching methodology that's part of the theory of ecological dynamics. Watch me iterate LIVE on game design for myself and for 2 other athletes to see if we can get skills to emerge...
With the frequent use of technical jargon being commonplace in this training niche, I wanted to find out firsthand what the actual practical design of these types of training games looks like.
This took place at Standard Jiu Jitsu at the beginning of April, a no-gi BJJ gym where students (like Deandre Corbe who just won 2024 ADCC West Coast Trials) learn jiu jitsu not by statically drilling techniques, but by taking part in games that look quite like situational sparring... but with some nuance.
Thank you Greg for hosting me and being so generous with your time! It was an absolute pleasure, and I hope all of you watching this video get the opportunity to train at Standard Jiu Jitsu.
00:00 Intro
00:10 Who I am
00:32 Context
01:14 The main problem
01:27 Agenda
01:42 Disclaimer
01:54 Why we did this
02:08 What you'll learn
02:14 Greg's motivation
02:34 Designing game 1
07:15 Playing game 1, iteration 1
08:56 Debrief game 1, iteration 1
11:28 Playing game 1, iteration 2
13:02 Debrief game 1, iteration 2
14:41 Playing game 1, iteration 3
15:32 Debrief game 1, iteration 3
16:14 Why you shouldn't focus on techniques
16:59 How intention influences design
17:29 How task focus fosters creativity
17:53 Aesthetics vs. function
19:12 Designing game 2 for other people
22:16 Playing game 2, iteration 1
25:23 Debrief game 2, iteration 1
27:32 Playing game 2, iteration 2
29:12 Debrief game 2, iteration 2
32:12 Playing game 2, iteration 3
34:01 Debrief game 2, iteration 3
ALL MY DISCOUNT CODES & LINKS👇
linktr.ee/joshbeambjj
#bjj #jiujitsu #bjjmotivation #brazilianjiujitsu #ecological #cla #ecologicalapproach - Спорт
Game design is super hard. I really admire that you posted your struggle as you went through it. It's important to show how much thought and effort goes into game design. Great work, brother. Very impressed by this.
Thanks a lot! I agree, it's super important to understand that there's a lot more nuance to training this way than people might think at first glance. Appreciate you watching and for the feedback!
Game design really is difficult. I find myself referring back to Greg’s games as a template for how to structure games and how to break up (or introduce) certain concepts. It’s been helpful so far but it definitely takes a lot of time and effort. But the great thing about it is that once you build out a few staple games you can always refer back to it to revisit those concepts and change things around to learn new ones. I’m not an expert but have been building these games and training with them and seeing impressive results. Hope it helps!
If you study Motor development and motor control (mostly sports science field) you can understand this very easy.. It’s a way to learn through exploring “affordance” (what he calls constrain to us is affordance). The problem is that in sports when in competition you need to have your skills more and more specialised. And ecological approach does not provide skills specialisation as other methods. That’s the reason most school / clubs/ academies… doesn’t teach it. it’s not like no one thought about it before, it’s just not the methodology for specialisation. We use Ecological approach with kids so understand and develop skills but then you need a more methodical approach for specialisation of that same skill. You can also teach any newbe with ecological approach so they can get the general ideia of the sport. But once they understood it…
My only complaint is that this isn’t 8 hours long covering many positions. Please call Greg and redo
I think a lot of people got a misconstrued idea when Greg first started coming to the forefront of this idea, and got stuck on the semantics of “we don’t teach techniques” when in reality they do just in a more realistic way where techniques aren’t this static idea for everyone.
This video is an amazing illustration on this process and how patient and in-tune a coach has to be to implement it correctly. Greg is phenomenal.
Of all the Greg videos, and there are many, this is the best. That's a pretty high bar.
This is probably the single best piece of content I've seen for showing people how CLA is different than positional sparring. Brilliant, brilliant piece of content. Well done to you for thinking to film it and bring it to the public!
That's great to hear! Really great feedback, thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Can't thank you enough for this. Really demonstrates there is a lot more to the constraint approach than "positional sparring". It goes deep into analysis. Without a doubt the single best content on the constraint led approach I have ever seen!
Teaching how to create is so much harder than teaching how to recite something. Great video.
Please create more content like this, this was incredibly helpful. I have been wanting to incorporate the CLA into my own practice. I watched the Greg critique games video which made me realise just how nuanced this style of learning is.
Im about half way through this and i have to say its one of the, if not the best video about grappling that i have seen in a loooong time.
Excellent and so helpful. Many thanks!
Learning something new is hard. Big ups to you for 1, trying to learn and 2, putting that process out there for us to experience. Learning can be awkward and make you feel dumb at times and it takes guts to do it in public.
Thanks for the great content
Thank you both of you! Slowly implementing the teaching method. This is great - definitely succeeded with your goals for the video!
Your vids are well put. Love em!
This is really much needed content and I hope you and Greg both know how well this illuminates the realities of the learning he is talking about
Fantastic video, Josh. Thank you for sharing this process.
The multi-angle camera was extremely helpful and clever for this particular filming. Great content brother 🤙🏽
Awesome, glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching.
Such an awesome video to see the thought process behind all of this! It’s such a scientific method type of approach. It’s gonna be fun taking these insights to creating and observing our own game design. Such great work Josh!!! Was great watching Greg be a patient and Socratic tutor 🔥🔥🔥
Thanks bro, had a great time making this, glad you got something from it! Greg's the man! Hopefully you and I can do some more of this together.
Great video, and a someone else stated, this is one of the best videos I've seen regarding the eco method with bjj. I learned a lot.
Side note: the multiple angles and visuals are fantastic. Great editing!
thank you for filming this.
Very insightful. Thanks for sharing!
awesome video! thanks for doing it!
Thank you for posting this! This helps me tremendously as I’ve been having similar struggles designing practices.
Amazing content. Thank you for doing this.
this was an awesome video josh
Fantastic video keep it up seriously this is the only way to train Jiujitsu it’s a lot more fun and gives you a lot more to think about and let you as a person explore well done . Ever in the uk pop up the north east in Middlesborough we happy to have you as we only teach CLA
Awesome!
Out of all the Greg videos I’ve watched this is one of the best easily. Also I really appreciate your broll footage showing definitions or resources it was really awesome. It’s huge cause most jujitsu channels while informative can be confusing with their jargon this was super easy to understand.
love this
This was amazing. I just want a million of these kinds of videos.
great watch
Great job brother! Solid work 🤙🏻
Fantastic video, so informative and well structured! (is there any possibility of doing another one on CLA for takedowns? It would be nice!)
Excellent
Definitely the best piece of content on the ACTUAL IMPLEMENTATION of the CLA. The perspective of a starting coach/learner is also very refreshing and helpful. The multi-angle setup was a cherry on top, I hope you continue documenting and publishing your journey as it is very beneficial to others. I can only hope more content from Standard is coming, a second podcast with Greg would also be nice 👏
I love the task focused games and learning with some type of resistance vs a static partner. Has Greg released any online videos on BJJ Fantics or other distributors on different games he’s developed based on skill level? I’m sure many of us who teach and coach would buy to get ideas. Thanks for the video!
Greg is a very good a patient instructor
Yeah, Greg is awesome. Definitely one of the best coaches I've been around!
Great video on the CLA.
Love the light bulb moments I had watching too 👌🏽
This is excellent!
Thanks for watching!
have to admit this is good work Josh congrats
Beautiful piece of work. You put yourself at the coalface where vision gets blurred and you cant see the wood for the trees and you were looking and couldnt see and then arrived. You must have been so stoked after this. Once you looked at his performance in achieving the tasks you set everything fell into place. Inspiring!
2 weeks in on this training style. Tore my pec lol.
Beautiful production and presentation.
Thank you!
Honestly, single handedly one of the most helpful videos on actual application of Ecological Dynamics I’ve seen. Holy shii
My Takeaways:
- was good to see how much coaching Greg provides to the students in the end of the second game and the type of coaching. It looks more familiar than not. But It’s what he’s not doing or saying that is the interesting part to me. Also allowing Josh to implement the game he designed without trying to “correct” him was perfect. He let him learn to design vs handing it to him. Similarly like how he’d run a class. That was fun to see that crossover
- Josh referred to Deandre’s private lesson, curious how that looks like. Not everything has to be ECO but in that context it’d be interesting how much of ECO is applied, if at all. In that format which I’d assume isn’t conducive to CLA, so I’m def curious
- right now, I feel I can’t afford to *not* tell a student what they are missing like Greg did (when he said that I was like wooow). When Josh was asking for help with an issue (ie butterfly half), as of now, I can’t afford to say, “you’re missing this one thing.” We all know handing someone something isn’t nearly effective as them learning it themselves but without an effective tool to make them figure it out themselves, coaches are sort of left with straight up telling them (in this context). A Student with a specific problem that they want to solve, it makes a world of difference as far as my advice sticking but more often than not, even a hungry student isn’t enough. Might take months before it finally sticks for the student after lots of experimenting. Whats sort of wild is that ECO affords the coach to drop hints and let them figure it out themselves fairly quickly via game design and iteration. It feels like I just witnessed a technology that’d allow me to apply more coaching techniques or present things in more interesting way. That’s sort of incredible…
Shoutout to Josh, Greg, and his students for making this video happen! So good
I teach historical fencing,not grappling so take what I say with a pinch of salt.
However, what I do in my private lessons is largely very similar to my general classes, just focused on the specific issues my student has asked me to help them with.
You still design a game but you play one of the roles and your student another.
It also allows you to be more specific with game design to really focus on a particular issue they;re dealing with.
And you can tweak it as you go.
Sometimes what the student needs however isnt necessarily skill development but rather confidence building or emotional endurance practice or expanding stress capacity or increasing intensity.
For such things you may want an asymetric game of a particular sort.
A student recently wanted to focus on using thrusts as opening actions and landing them as often as possible.
Once we felt that was good we added certain opening conditions to make the game more representative to the end game(a particular tournament he was to attend). Then we also added particular follow up responses on my end and misdirections I could throw his way.
If you had a student that needed to work on for example blast doubles as opening actions you'd first focus on a game that rewards blast doubles(having the opponents back touch the mat being a win condition for example,and having a cue to tap the backs of the opponents knees as you run your shoulder through them, giving them some cues on timing and potentially arm clearance tips)
then you might want to add a goal of attaining side control from top position, for which you might give cues and tips similar to what was going on in the first half of the video
etc. etc.
You'd just be playing the other side, while they're working on those objectives,and you'd have your own win conditions too
If you wanted to focus on building confidence you might make a game asymetric in their favor, if you wanted to make it a pressure test you could make it asymetric in your favor, etc.
Asymetric as in,one side has easier win conditions to achieve, in fencing that could be something like one side having only shallow targets count(arms,legs when closer than the torso), and the other side having only deep targets count(head,torso,legs when at the same distance as the torso), cause you can hit the shallow targets from further away and tend to have at least a small advantage
In grappling that could be like one person having to achieve a closed guard or side control, while the other might have to achieve a submission of some sort
Within a private lesson you can also more easily more often change the game than in a big class with lots of folks.
You can always constrain the game to something more specific if that's what your student requires.
You just dont want to lose too much representativeness of the general game (bjj/judo/greco-roman/freestyle/whatever grappling style) they're interested in learning
Or even if you go super-specific with one game,to have other specific games for other aspects of the general combat sport/martial art.
This was helpful even just from a students perspective.. Thanks!
Awesome, glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching!
Awesome video as always. This is for everyone that thinks game design is easy and the Ecological Approach is just a "lazy way"of teaching...It's super hard and the coach needs to really understand Jiu-Jitsu on a deeper level. Great Job Josh!
Thank you! Yeah that's definitely one of the criticisms I've seen a lot lately, that people think coaches just hang back and let students try to magically figure stuff out, lol. The key is the game design, which takes a lot of work.
I liked this video more than I thought I would have😂
great video, designing is easily the hardest part of this approach imo
Amazing work thank you. Do u plan on doing another video with greg?
Thanks for watching! I have a few more in the pipeline to edit, stay tuned!
What as that map you show at 1:12? Tried googling and searching Aaron Parham, no luck.
Great work and great job! This was such a helpful video for those trying to figure it out for themselves.
Thank you for watching! I'm glad it's helpful. Greg's the man!
Where is the framed picture of Helio? Who do they bow to instead?
This is beautiful! Thanks a lot Josh for sharing this with the community.
Fascinating. Looks like drilling. What is your definition of drilling?
Appreciate your humility as you worked through this challenge. Props to Greg for guiding you along, letting you figure things out instead of just handing over the answers. And kudos to Rod and Noah for playing along, within the constraints and giving thoughtful feedback. All around, great stuff!
Incredible!
Thanks for watching! More to come soon from my trip to Standard
I'm just curious about how they proceed with people that are absolute new to the sport.
You can see how much harder Greg is having to work when you start driving in more during the 3rd iteration.
Good vídeo, a small experiment for the public to understand how it works. Not easy.
Thank you! I'll be posting more soon from my trip there!
What is the name of the book/books Greg based his approach on? Thank you!
I’ll let Greg add his additional reading list, but some good ones so far that I’ve read:
- How We Learn to Move by Rob Gray
- Learning to Optimize Movement by Rob Gray
- Constraints Led Approach by Ian Renshaw et al
@@joshbeambjj appreciate it Josh!
5:18 - paint me like one of your French girls
the noise of your beard stroking 😂
Finally, someone addresses the most important aspect of the video 🤌😂
@@joshbeambjj 😂😂😂 keep it up josh this was a great video!
Yo Josh - Come teach your boy.
It seems like the skill of the instructor has to be very high level in order to create games with appropriate constraints in order to reach a learning goal. If the instructor can not at least give detailed instruction on finishing mechanics, it would take new students quite a while to discover the proper way to finish recognizable submissions. This is only an example. It seemed that Josh had a difficult time constructing the game for the "new" students because of his own limitations in skill as a coach. (I really don't mean to offend Josh, especially if he does coach BJJ regularly✌️) What i am trying to say is that Greg presents the ecological method almost as a way to learn by self-discovery, when, really, the coach has to create constraints that will lead to the coach's desired outcome. Unless the constraints are perfect in each game, which they are not expected to be according to the methods in this video, it could take a long time for the student/class to go all the way from point A to point B in their learning. I can hear the argument that maybe the goal is not to teach a skill, but to allow the student to learn their own way through a problem and discover their own solution. It just seems like, without tight constraints from a highly skilled coach, this endless "play" would result in a pretty slow progression in technique but a greater development of strength and conditioning.
More than anything, this is kind of a testimony of my own journey. I actually have a membership and regularly attend two BJJ gyms. One uses the ecological approach and the other is more traditional. So all this to say that i love both of them. Lol. This was a great video and i definitely plan on sharing it. Thank you! 🤙
I agree with this for specific types of learners, but ultimately anyone trying to apply this approach kind of ignores the context of the video. For one DeAndre competed three years before working with Greg and two the guy had four years of wrestling with over 100 wins the way this was phrased in the video was a little misleading.
Deandre isn’t even in this video 🤣
This is just positional sparing.
Why do you say that?
Most likely cause they didn't actually watch the video
dont like this approach, you spend time training bad habbits that arent necessarily the best option in that position could told the bloke to use a near side underhook in 5 seconds not wasted 15 minutes this approach aint it just show them some good options and drill 100 reps then tell the partner to try harder, that will present the degrees of new problems. i bet john danaher wouldnt fool with this but maybe he would idk
Congratulations bro! You’ve done it! You’ve solved the problem of cognition in motor control, the problem of transfer, and helped us understand the true nature of specificity all in one run-on-sentence. It’s nice to know that we can all now halt our efforts. Thank you sir.
woke jutsu
It gives the vibe that it produces weak Bjj practitioners. “Coach, why didn’t you just tell me NOT to leave my foot in his armpit? I’ve been doing that in your class for years!”
Ahh okay now I get it. This looks like shirt. No thank you haha. 👎🏼👎🏼
You don't..
Because drilling and Gi are the base of Jiu-jitsu. You guys are are just grappling
Fantastic video. Essential learning piece for anyone in the early stages of CLA. Thank you for the content Josh!