On Learning Jiu-Jitsu with 100% Live Training and No Formal Technical Instruction, with Greg Souders
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- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
- To say that Greg Souders is a huge believer in drilling and gamification is actually an understatement; he believes that BJJ training methods have not kept up with the science of learning, and runs Standard Jiu-Jitsu in Rockville, Maryland (www.standardji...) without teaching any techniques. And black belt medalist students at the Pan Ams and the World Championships suggest that he's onto something!
I really enjoyed this conversation, and did my best to ask the questions you'll be hearing in your own head as you listen to this!
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Cheers,
Stephan Kesting
Greg is taking the ecological approach to communicating with interviewers in podcast form.
The ecological approach is legitimate. Greg’s way of presenting it can be cloudy at times, but the constraints led approach, when implemented effectively, really does turn technique chasers into problem solvers. I bought both of Rob Gray’s books and deep dove into it and applied myself. Between my passion for kinesiology and biomechanics, that material from Gray, and Biernacki’s conceptual teaching on BJJ concepts, my game went up sevenfold.
When I first started bjj, I played a lot of half guard. After a time, I discovered some really effective ways of tying up my opponents legs. I later found out that my favorite method of this is "the lockdown" which was invented by eddie bravo. Like you guys talked about, I wasn't taught this, but found it from facing problems.
Lockdown was done in judo in the early 1900s… lol
Lockdown is also from wrestling and sambo, eddie invented nothing, he only brought stuff to jiu jitsu that was not there before.
Been training exactly like this since 2023 started off and the way I play Jiu Jitsu has increased so well, I do more of what I want to do
I think Stephan was a good honest interlocuter here. He was really trying to investigate and understand what Greg was talking about. He just seemed bemused at how radically at odds Eco D is with how most approach the sport.
Most traditionalists scoff at the Ecological approach as it undermines much of how they approach coaching. (Coaches matter, but they are not that important!). I'd love to hear these two talk again in 6 months or a year if Stephan gets through some of the reading material Greg suggested. Good convo lads. Fair play Coach Stephan.
I think the people that scoff are those who see themselves as coaches. The average player already sees it as a game and I think these ideas are a natural extension of jiu jitsu. Most major jiujitsu competitors have some phase where they live in the gym. They clearly get opportunities to benefit from this kind of stuff. All the guys known for innovation are playful and it applies across martial arts. I think there are always contrarians but this will def catch on. Coaches don't decide where the game develops, players decide.
Basically coaching has now become the role of teaching your students how to learn and problem solve as it relates to grappling/fighting as it should be.
I'm listening to this the second time through, something I rarely do with podcasts. I recall from the first pass that the method seems to be a combination of two different approaches: 1) Timothy Galloway's inner game of tennis and 2) fundamental biomechanics.
I read Galloway's book 3 times in my life, as a teenage tennis player struggling with an instructor who was all about generating private lesson fees, as a college student, and as an old fart engineer who had experienced a lot of learning methodologies. What Galloway never says is that all of those Mind 1/Mind 2 uses apply to players who already knew all their basic strokes. None of that stuff applied to the student who didn't know how to hold a racquet, what the basic forehand, backhand, volley and serve motions were. They were all folks who had been taught the basics in a step by step fashion and now had to internalize them, to put them together to play. For them, the cacophony of the conscious mind interfered with what they visualized. (But they never would have known what to visualize without the basic lessons.)
Most tennis instructors (and maybe a few martial arts experts) are not skilled in biomechanics. Very few of the former might tell you that an Eastern forehand grip is out of style now (compared to 40 years ago) because the balls bounce higher, the racquet faces are much larger (bigger sweet spot), the racquet materials are far better (no more wood or tubular steel), etc. which has fundamentally changed the interaction of the ball on the strings, and made the path the ball should take over the net very different. (Dick Gould, who led Stanford to generations of tennis championships, did in his book.) (They don't play serve-and-volley at Wimbledon for Pete's sake.) Most instructors will tell you -- without explanation -- hold it this way. I see parallels with much martial arts instruction and so I find this idea of having a fundamental understanding of biomechanics refreshing.
What I am not in agreement with -- and I'm a person who has spent a lot of time reworking how to explain my obscure corner of engineering -- is the notion that you can learn quickly "technique free". I get a unified flow to engineering stuff only after having beaten my way through the basics enough to see some fundamental commonalities. If I try to hand a first grader Maxwell's equations and tell them everything is some particular solution off that, they can learn nothing. Algebra emerges from trying to abstract stuff that we see when we do arithmetic. You don't teach nonlinear, multivariable differential equations first.
On my second pass of the podcast now, but while I think what they do is probably highly enlightening to folks who have some technique without reason under their belt, all my educational analogies tell me that the full beginner would likely be lost without a uniquely expert instructor. (I'm not sure if his method translates to folks who are not as skilled at teaching and deep thinking as he is trying to teach it.) Will go further with the second pass, but this "how we think and how we learn" issue is both deep in jujitsu and the martial arts in general, and in other aspects of life.
One thing that has become very apparent in engineering (and martial arts and tennis) is that no matter how much you train some technique, if you do not get into the lab and test it on real world (stuff that resists), then it will likely fail you. When you do test it, it will fail you and you will see tweaks and adjustments made obviously necessary by the real world feedback. No disagreement there. If you never go live, you are likely in for a rude awakening.
Tomoe Nage fails when the off-balance isn't right, but if I never practice it against a cooperative partner, I doubt that I will ever get to an "emergent behavior" sacrifice throw. Yin and Yang. Best way to take a bridge: both sides at once. Or as Bruce Lee told Bolo Yeung in "Enter the Dragon", boards don't hit back. But if I never practice on a bag or a board, can I ever focus on aligning my wrist and getting my knuckles square? Is there really an emergent behavior for that that doesn't involve the folks who didn't get it dying in battle?
This is where I am right now. Still working on my emergent understanding.
One of the best comments I've read in a while on this fuzzy thing we call the internet. BJJ definitely attracts a spectrum of IQs and personalities. I appreciate your response!
As a former college tennis player and current BJJ practitioner who read the inner game of tennis and had similar experiences with coaches only wanting to generate money from private lessons as opposed to actually working to get me better I agree with what you said. Much of tennis training is “game” focused these days however you have to put it in context of the overall system and not just get good at the game itself and not be able to implement its principles into a match.
A lot of assumptions in this post.
Thank you for your comment, I really enjoy your curiosity and attempt at understanding ED.
I became very interested in ED when I first heard about it last winter. I listened to a lot of podcasts on the subject, and it took me a good while to get a small grip on it. There is still a lot I don't understand about it, but the foundational stuff I think I got by now.
I teach a beginner's class, and started playing with ED in my classes. I often felt a bit unsure when teaching, but my students said they liked it and the ideas behind it. They also seemed to progress at the same or better speed as with traditional teaching methods (that being said, I'm the only instructor at my gym that uses this method, and I only teach one class a week, so most of them learn from both methods). Today, starting up after the holidays, I had a big class with many new people, and they impressed me with what they managed to do. For the first time I truly felt I found an effective way of teaching using ED, and I'm so stoked to see what the training will be like this fall!
@@hkon89 Thanks. In this context, what is ED? I'm guessing "Emergent", but the D is missing me.
A primary purpose of teaching beginners techniques is to use them as a tool to teach them fundamental principles.
Base, connection, position, control, pressure, submission is a chain I have been taught.
Ideas like keep knees and elbows in front, turn toward and face pressure, four points of contact, control and move your own body first in order to ultimately control and move your opponents body in a way that leads to submission etc.
Techniques should demonstrate these fundamentals in a way where beginners can experience what they feel like and internalize them until automatic, without much thinking.
When I'm under pressure, running out of gas and focus, these fundamental concepts often save me when I can't execute or even remember a specific technique or sequence.
Create games that teach fundamental principles. No technique required.
Great podcast on many levels, fantastic communication skills from both, really enjoyed this. Appreciated
kayaker here- I'm quite advanced, I am comfortable running class IV white water. The strokes I take when kayaking have an incredible amount of variation. There frequently isnt even a clear line between a forward stroke and a back stroke. A draw turns into a brace turns into a rudder, but in reality, being shown the strokes was relatively or completely unnecessary for the tasks we were presented. A kayaker who executes paddle strokes deliberately will never be safe beyond class 2, and my mom paddles like this. I learned when I was very young and I think the neuroplasticity of youth aids tremendously in athleticism.
Why hasn’t souders and eddy bravo talked yet?
Really interesting! I love how you interrogate the ideas being presented. Thanks, coach!
It's tough to interrogate without much of an understanding of the underpinning science. Would like to hear these two talk again when Kesting has done a little more digging into ecology.
@@mcnoodles76 Minor complaint: I wish the term 'ecology' wasn't being used. Ecology is its own field, and it's confusing to use it in this context. It would be as if I took Crossfit (say) and started calling it Quantum Physics Fitness. NO! Quantum Physics already means something, and to use it in this new context isn't helpful, find a new word to describe what you have.
@@thestrenuouslifepodcast4282 Isnt that more of lack of preparation for your guest and his background on your part rather than a deficiency in the terminology?
The terminology makes sense and accurately describes the subject matter
@thestrenuouslifepodcast4282 as I commented before. I think you were a very fair and honest player in the discussion. I can get your point about the wording. However 'ecological dynamics' is a growing area of scientific study. It's the proper term to use. (ecological) psychology and system (dynamics) hence ecological dynamics. That's what the Egg-heads have coined it. Not Greg.
I also wasn't being snarky. I'd love to hear you guys talk again once you'd read some of the material. As an ecology graduate I'm sure you'd find it all fascinating.
Can we have a list of books? There are two books on the introduction to ecological psychology, don't know who the author of the series recommended for the first is.
Learning to optimise movement - Rob Gray
Make sure we are listening and staying open minded!
Very interesting. And if you simplify it enough, BJJ is just weight shifting and angle changes.
This seems like learning centers in elementary education. Where you find out what the class needs to learn and have different games according to the skill they need to learn and have the children rotate and experiment in finding solutions to the games. The only thing I have a problem with this is that there are certain techniques or solutions that need to be memorized and also taught by the instructor. Or the most basic solution to the concept.
Amazing episode! I'm interested in your approach, but don't live in Maryland (I live in Israel). How can I find out more?
Interesting episode! Keep up the good work!
This is BRILLIANT. It's Hegel's dialectical method applied to Jiu Jitsu. If Danaher is modern jiu-jitsu, this is post-modern jiu-jitsu.
Dude no, post modern as it plays out in real life is actually nothing like the ecological approach, you see the ecological approach is scientifically sound and actually works without damaging society.
He really knows how to find the counterintuitive inversion to conventional beliefs. Good stuff.
Thesis antithesis synthesis dense German book with a whole lot of nothing
Ew
Heavy cope replies
How to make something simple, as complicated as possible.
When talking at the overview level, maybe. In practice the opposite is true.
Bernstiens hammer!
Im applying the ecological approach de n the classes o give, and its scary effective
scary effective is a good way to put it lol.
The ecological approach is just more fun and productive. Drilling and warm ups are a expensive waste of time. The old way of teaching is more about making a effective business.
All techniques in Jiu-jitsu were developed using a problem solving approach. The people who solved them have passed them down to us to minimize time figuring it out on our own. Repetition (with resistance), aka positional sparring allows us to test these techniques and adapt them to our own physicality and skill set.
The issue is students are given solutions without context or without being immersed in the problem. When you straight away you give the solutions, you rob the student of being able to problem solve. The other issue is that everything is variable and the solution may not always be the correct solution as the environment is always changing - opponent's body type, skill level, reaction...even your conditioning, strength etc. All these play a part whether the solution prescribed by your coach will even work. Anyway, there is more to this and I learned a lot from reading Rob Gray's book.
That's a lot of words to just say, "knee cut" this whole "ecology" thing just sounds like someone trying to hard to be original. Positional and objective based sparring aren't new. He just has big fancy words to describe what other people have already been doing. Then he controls the conversational frame by insisting on his arcane vocabulary to have the discussion. I think this is marketing.
Great video. I didn't know who Greg Souders was until last night. I've been trying to scoop up as much content on him now because he seems to be onto something. Were all build different and he's helping melt science with Jiu Jitsu/ Grappling. He's beyond smart in his domain and can really see this emphasized in this video.
The interviewer is doing great with letting Greg speak as well as asking the right questions. I really enjoyed this video and will watch it two maybe three times back to really get an understanding on Greg's thought process.
So, I don't ever hear Greg claim that his students don't watch videos or learn moves on their own. He is just saying that if you want to get good fast you spend class time playing games and doing live situational rounds. Honestly, drilling was useless to me until I was 6 - 7 years in. I can bang out a few static reps now and usually take it to live rounds and play. I would rather not spend 20 minutes static drilling. The idea here I think is to give people all the little nuts and bolts and they will seek out other resources if/when they need them. This is basically how I have learned for the last 8 years and I had no idea there was an "ecological approach."
I really dislike it when people teach a technique as if it is some type of sequential move. Step 1, step 2... Especially counters to a counter, to a counter and so on. The permutations & combinations are endless, based on a doubtful starting point, & frankly it just becomes stupid. I have always tried to look for the underlying principal. I guess Greg is taking that to its logical conclusion. Hopefully not a logical fallacy.
Bro dropped a PEMDAS bar, certified genius in my book
Yes there is a knee cut. Jesus this dude is so impressed with his own self and wants to sound overly complicated when he doesnt have much of a grasp on the ecological approach and dynamic systems. I dont think he truly understands the work of bersteins or how to coach. The knee cut is an attractor in a chaotic enviroment. Greg has to be the most arrogant and overly try hard revolutionary coach i ever seen.
He might be on to something but makes this way to convoluted. Like politicians, many words but zero substance
Its actually extremely simple. Efficient behavior emerges according to the tasks the organism is tasked with. If you drill all the time you will be amazing at drilling. But you didn't learn to access center mass from drilling. You learned from sparring. All he is doing is focusing the tasks to make them much more efficient to aid in emerging the behavior. What makes it complicated is the prejudices of the listeners. Go research how the Gracies learned BJJ. They never drilled. They just rolled. They learned this way.
I would argue the invention of drilling was primarily motivated by marketing. Few people will pay for classes to be given a set of problems within a set of parameters. People want to know "moves". So they sold moves.
@jedsanford7879 Hmmm, well I appreciate your explanation. Maybe the reason I wasn't impressed with his explanation is the fact that this form of presenting BJJ is still new and lacks linguistic form of expression, but I did understand your points and
I thank you for that.
@@rethinkyourself1 Yeah of course! Greg should hire me to be his PR man lol. It was hard for me to grasp at first as well, but Ive delved pretty deep into it and been experimenting with it. When I focus on the tasks instead of the technique I start doing passes and counters I have never seen or learned before. I just instinctively know, this could lead to back exposure, or this will help me attain chest to chest pressure. Its pretty cool stuff.
@@jedsanford7879 Awesome. Keep at it ✌🏼👍🏼👏
This dude did not learn bjj this way but he decided to teach his students in this way .. hmm
Apparently his students are performing very well. But as he constantly states, this is backed by science, its not because he came up with the ideas himself.
I think Greg needs to simplify, he isnt explaining this so we can all properly understand him. Pity.
I think Stephan was smarter before his 4th booster.
Visual Learning isn’t a thing.
Greg’s approach is very sound because u definitely learn more during rolls than dead drilling, but he loses people when he’s so dogmatic about certain things. It seems like he’s so resistant to use the names. A shared vocabulary is a good thing. He’s trying to reinvent the wheel when it just needs some tweaking.
A shared vocabulary loses beginners. You have to explain things literally. Otherwise you must first teach the language, which is fractured af, then they can start learning. Terribly inefficient.
Would kill for a conversation between Souders and Rob Biernacki
i would bet on one
@rollinOnCode haven't seen it yet.
The way this guy explains it, makes me feel like I could never learn from him.
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
Dude I feel the same. Way too complicated.
@@oozieligusI agree
@@oozieligusthats stupid. What he is doing is a praxiology which means you will understand what he says by doing the the things he does. Also this is a conversation by experts. Of course they talk in terms you don't understand. Nothing worth doing comes easy.
Greg Souders is the Deepak Chopra of jiu-jitsu.
I think Bruce Lee said that the ultimate technique is no technique
Aren't there certain "behavior" that produces better results?
How do you teach those "behavior" which some would refer to as technique?
Greg is trying to be smarter than he is. He is over complicating it. His method is a tool, but it doesn’t replace the alternative, it merely can be used in conjunction with it.
Surely it's a matter of balance. In putting forward his method I think Greg is slightly mischaracterizing a lot of teaching, which are rarely pure theory. The tradiation class does have a degree of theory AND 'ecological' training (sparring + positional sparring).
But to take the position that extreme practice (rejecting theory completely) is the way forward seems risky.
Positives
- Gamification is a great way to test your theories in live conditions
- Constraining these games gives a valuable way to get comfortable with embodied experiences and opponents reactions that might only - occur sporadically in sparring.
- Reducing the thinking element in training, encouraging intelligent body responses instead.
- To reverse engineer, or work through difference building blocks, of complex sequences (a guard pass can be broken into parts and live tested)
- Understanding your own body reactions (what he calls 'knowledge of')
- more exposure to grip fighting, resistance
Negatives
-Seems like he's marketing a lot of different language that is obscuring rather than illumating the issues. New words for the sake of new words.
- A new technique detail can rapidly fix holes in your game. I've 100% experienced this in my own training and seen it in others. It's not abstract stuff that never works.
- To learn we also benefit from a wide range of theory exposure to stimulate the kinds of risks we can take.
- Existing databases of techniques have been trialed through the experiences of grapplers worldwide that distil better/worse things to do. Why not take on these gems of wisdom?
It's almost comical to hear these conversations to me. It seems so obviously helpful and also clearly not the only way to learn. The only problem I have with it is that he is claiming it to be a revolution.
Let's pretend the world only had ecological-style jiu jitsu training for the last 100+ years, we would celebrate the person who invents technique-based jiu jitsu training. Why waste my time figuring out my own solutions to grappling problems when there's a whole history of resistance-tested techniques I can learn? I believe in efficiency.
You can’t simultaneously say you believe in efficiency and support the idea of learning and memorizing thousands of techniques for every given grappling scenario, instead of learning the things that are invariant in these situations, and using constraints to guide the player to try to complete a task relative to the given situation. Trial and error is necessary for the learning process, regardless of approach.
@@noahshaffner9692 Some details/move would take hundreds of hours to discover. Usualy the instruction from a BJJ coach mostly worthless because they are teaching stuff they are not experts at that you have no use for but the secrets of a wizard like Mikey Musumeci will come in handy (if you drill them and do the positional sparring)
Your statement proves you have not thought this through and don’t actually understand gregs overarching point, you miss the big picture.
My first thought it that every time Greg is talking about "technique", in the sense of there being no technique, he's using semantics to try to make his point. It's also overly complicating the issue. Every reasonable person understands that a technique they drill on a partner is an ideal, and in drilling it their muscle memory and movements become smoother, tighter, more precise etc. Now, you can't just drill forever, you can spar with tons of conditions, you can positionally spar and you can full spar BUT you're always aiming to hit that ideal. People will also notice that drilling moves REALLY helps hit those moves on new people who don't see them coming. The only difference between applying your technique to a dummy, a new student, a semi-experienced student and a more experienced student is the increase in variability, and understanding when NOT to go for said technique, and switch to a counter and continuously do this process. Now, you CAN get there with "freely expressing yourself in conditional games" but, guess what? There are thousands upon thousands of proven TECHNIQUES that will shortcut your process of figuring that out. Just because you have to grab somewhere else, have less limbs available, are at a slightly different angle or dealing with different bodies DOESNT mean you're not in the process of executing said technique, unless you want to play semantic games. And we're pretending humans are like electrons in a super position and the wave function can collapse in this massive variety of ways... at the end of the day humans are pretty predictable, even the "unpredictable" ones, and with enough time and experience these athletes understand this, and that X usually leads to Y usually leads to Z, and if it doesn't we go to A which leads to B which leads to C.
I'm not saying training in ways resembling "ecological" training isn't good, I'm just saying the best system to learn obviously seems to be a combination of oral instruction, drills, conditional sparring, positional sparring and full sparing, NOT JUST any single one of those. And personally, trying to make the case that there are no techniques is like saying colors don't exist. It's not untrue, but it's not a useful argument for human creatures.
He is making learning jiu Jitsu way too complicated 😵💫
Yes exactly! It’s really not that hard.
actually it is the opposite. greg distilled it into a very personal journey of exploration, training and growth ans learning. each person has his own strengths weaknesses, capacities and limitations. it is absolutely nonsense to mindlessly push forth and force everyone to try to mimic 1 single technique done a single way all the time dogmatically.
instead greg is putting forth the very simple and powerful idea of play essentially. let the students play and discover for themselves different solutions to problems. it is a lot more meaningful and personal and memorable rather than try to remember a million random nonsensical "techniques"
Souders approach is fascinating. He is definitely onto something big.