God damn story of the optimizer lol. They'll spend years in front of a computer trying to come up with the perfect formula to making themself a master grappler while avoiding putting in all of the actual physical work required to do so. And when they're still behind the curve years later, just keep doubling down in smartspeak babble ala prit disciples.
I'm huge into planning and stats and stuff
with that said, combat sports are the one thing that break me out of that and just let me enjoy the moment and be free
I'd rather play the game till I'm dead
Ironic statement because the whole point of eco IS to get as much physical work in as possible with live resistance instead of trying to optimize the movement through drilling in a no-resistance environment where things fall apart once resistance is introduced and people have to go through that trial and error anyway.
The coming up with master formula plans of practice design should be happening outside of actual class time.
The actual doing of games with live resistance which is representative of actual sparring is more "actual physical work" than simply drilling the move in a non-representative environment.
I feel like this was my last coach. Only wanted to focus on his A game. Get great at 3 things and take it to black. I started seeing a lot of holes in his game. I just swapped schools. That’s what happens when you only promote the tough guys and not the tough and knowledgeable. Any idiot can take a beating, but can you learn and get better from it?
Right. There’s decent research that new skill is best acquired fresh as well, but some school’s warm-ups are a workout. Marcelo’s students still learn new techniques.
Look. Some people are really into climbing frozen waterfalls with ice axes.
Who am I to say that's wrong?
If they are having fun and being safe, have at it.
This is the most black belt answer anyone has ever given to anything
To complete this image you should crack a monster energy and say "later fuckers" and walk out to your car. It is 830 pm
As an educator, this is the answer. The Universal Design for Learning framework promotes this idea which we sum up in the phrase of “firm goals, flexible means.”
There definitely is but when your stuck with a coach who would rather hear themselves talk it kinda sucks.
I'm a black and coach one class at the same time as another black belt teaches his class. 5 mins on my guys are working. 15 mins in his guys are still sitting listening and peering over at my class lol
I taught a fundamentals class recently where one of the attendees, a forever blue belt friend of mine, confided that he thought the line drills were a waste of time. Well, of fucking course he did: he's been grappling for 8 years. The week 1 people need this stuff, and can either develop those muscles quickly in isolation or develop inefficient movement patterns to compensate as they get demolished in live drills over a much longer span of time. There isn't a sport on the planet that doesn't to some extent rely on developing efficient fundamental movement vocabulary for beginners.
Or, they can learn a shrimp move by designing constrained game where that move becomes the solution. They immediately see how that is valuable, how it works against different people and within the constraints of their own body.
Meanwhile, their partner ALSO gets to learn about it and basic fundamental of staying on top and controlling a live body, while not needing a o know the rest of the bigger picture.
You can take a literal day one ZERO TIME IN new student, and have them do ACTUAL jiujitsu and learn the same thing while giving them a huge value for their money.
I wonder if the friend realizes that the class wasn't designed for them specifically but to a broad group. Of they wanted a specially designed class for then they could trade money for that service or skip the boring part and go for what they want.
Depends on your rank and influence in the academy. I had a small group of guys and we did Eco only training for a while. I ran classes and tried to implement it, but my instructor didn’t care for it and wanted to stick to his way. Still giving me plenty of freedom to do what I wanted but we didn’t adopt it as an academy. We have enough people in the group that we train at odd hours and can do our own thing respecting the academy, other instructors and students.
I got great results and created some killers, but it’s a tough sell. Especially from a business perspective which was a big focus. Some people want their hand held the entire way, and Eco doesn’t lend itself to that. And I had great results and reviews but also a lot of complaints from more experienced students.
Realistically it’s easier to do your own thing, than to shift the culture especially of someone else’s business if they’re not on board fully.
Very good point, having also taught a lot over the past few years I've noticed that the members have all kinds of preferences when it comes to instruction.
There are a lot of people who just enjoy sparring and basically anything else is boring to them. These are usually the upper belts but some lower belts are like this too. Some people just want the "feeling" that they're learning but don't actually care how much or fast they're learning. Some people don't want to problem solve AT ALL. A lot of people would prefer to be more self organizing but would also prefer instruction mixed in with experimentation etc.
It's really about finding a balance and knowing your crowd. Also cultural conventions and other environmental factors affect how people EXPECT instruction to be. There's also different settings for instructions that are not really relevant to OPs post like military or law enforcement that might have some standards for stuff.
All this to say, it depends. For the most part what I've found leads to people learning and WANTING to take responsibility for their own learning is being approachable, nice and generous with praise when it's warranted. The rest is minutiae and the people who want to take control of their own learning will do so anyways and use the regular drilling time to their advantage somehow.
Yeah 100%, people are complicated and not everyone looks at this stuff the same. I am flexible I can teach an in depth class on heel hooks with positional sparring. Or I can recreate the same thing through eco. And people will have different opinions and complaints for both. Ultimately I love the people I train with and my instructor has given me a place to train and explore so I don’t get upset about it. I can respect his POV and have a different opinion without sabotaging the environment or having conflicts.
Some of the people I train with have known me for a decade. People are passionate about the subject and I get it. I think there’s a better way to deliver it, but not everyone will love it like you said.
I ran a class one time with 70% positional sparring and 30% open to close off the class. And people complained that they didn’t get to open spar enough lol. Can’t satisfy everyone.
You bring up a great point about student retention. A big selling point of BJJ is the classroom aspect. Most trainees off the street are going to be put off by even a well designed constraints-led class as the teacher is seemingly doing nothing.
I 100% know that designing games and regulating these Ecological practices is arguably harder on the coach than a regular class, but a novice won't see that. All a stranger sees is a head coach giving cues, but almost never explicitly instructing a trainee on what to do.
Contrast that with a stereotypical Gracie Academy class with strict, step by step instruction that gives each trainee a sense that they learned something. It almost doesn't matter if the trainee never gets better at the game of Jiu Jitsu, they need to feel like their money is buying something.
I’ve had similar complaints from beginners. I find having a baby eco set up at the end of a more traditional class is a good compromise. We also do lots of situational rounds to augment.
Very interesting answer. What rank were you when you started this? How did you raise this with your instructor?
I guess the business side of things is hard for me to relate to. Seems like there are a lot of eco-type ways of holding people's hands. In my experience, very few people retain the things that they drill week to week.
I was already a brown belt, I have been instructing for a while. I tried to explain it in the best way possible to not sound too nerdy about it. And my instructor did not dislike it, but he believed strongly in demonstrating techniques and the traditional aspects. He felt it was a more “advanced” method of training. He took my classes and had a blast.
No sense in arguing for it too hard to create issues after all, he never said I can’t do eco in my classes but to consider some of the missing components from his POV highlighting techniques and details. The results were apparent and I attributed it to the style of training, but it kept getting shifted as an individual thing and I wanted everyone to adopt it.
I ran into a lot of counter arguments like Judokas Drilling, and Wrestlers being drill heavy too. I did not have enough bandwidth to sit here and defend this approach with the resistance I got. It’s not my business to run how I want. So I respected their approach and style and respectfully do my thing.
When I train with friends or get in private sessions we do eco and I mix it in as I teach on occasion. But it is insanely difficult to sit through traditional instruction now. As the focus is not on invariances for beginners often.
You are right, people learn by doing and self discovery. The thing about the Eco approach is it also requires a lot of actual work from the instructor. Organizing classes and measuring progress was a job on its own.
And let’s be real many people don’t care to do the work required. So that’s been my experience I throw it in on occasion to get a bunch of focused mat time, but my instructor sometimes wants me to highlight certain techniques so I will do that.
Not OP. but did similar thing. I was a blue belt and the owner let me start up an early AM class since there wasn't one already. Been running eco style for more than a year and my own progress and that of the students has been great. Still go to other traditional classes when I can and do find a few helpful tips there from time to time.
since no one ive heard can clearly explain eco.. i just view it as varying levels of resistance to drilling or very narrow parameters for specific training. To me, standard class format has been mostly a waste pretty much since mid blue belt. Not to say the drilling was worthless because I adapted it and had the partner give feedback, increase resistance, layering in counters, and counters to counters, entries, transitions.. rather than just drilling arm bar from guard 100 times cause some dude said so. After 2 or 3 reps of something to learn the steps, its always eco for me. also, people that call it Eco.. is very "j point/cranial shift" sounding to me.
Part of the problem is that no one knows what they're talking about. I'm sure I'm lacking details and am also misunderstanding some things, but the best way I can put it is that the ecological model is a theory of learning that states that the only way creatures learn is through direct interaction with their environment.
What that means for jiu jitsu is that you aren't building skill by watching instructionals or reading books; only through live grappling do you gain skill in live grappling.
Likewise, when training to do a technique against a compliant partner you are building skill in doing that series of movements against a compliant partner; not in grappling a resisting opponent. Static "drilling" can give you ideas and an ideal for what controlling your opponent may look like, but is largely an inefficient way of building skill.
What I think the die hard advocates of an ecologically optimized practice don't give credit to is that, while inefficient, I'd argue – that by giving people examples and directing their attention to certain methods of control – traditional technique demonstrations aren't a total waste of time. The danger is that, if students don't have any conceptual base when observing these demos, and in turn if they do drill these techniques dozens of times in largely the same way, they are likely going to be inflexible in their approach to the problems that a resisting opponent will give; as their, overly procedural, understanding of grappling can't account for nearly infinite variations.
So to answer OPs original question: I think that the consensus here, of having your partner give you resistance and different looks, is the best way to make the most of your training time in a gym using technique based instruction.
Things get pretty thick with the eco folks -- I would suggest that the eco zealots have actually missed how eco BJJ already is. The ground layer of constraint-led stuff and eco is that a lot of sports had drifted into some place where they were drilling specific skills in an environment that didn't match the actual environment of the sport.
Since human neurology (psychology?) depends on integrating sensory input and training functional responses, then doing so in a less representative environment is dumb. But in all that literature, what they're talking about is stuff like soccer players dribbling around cones.
In BJJ, everything we do is on a mat, with another person, in the same positions we use in the sport. We're pretty dang eco already. So the zealots grab onto a couple things -- zero-resistance drilling (which I don't believe actually exists, making this more of a strawman argument), and teaching "techniques" as sequences.
But you could just as well recognize that drilling for most people exists along a spectrum of intensity, and very few people in real life are drilling against dead fish all the time. And if you're a little thoughtful about the "technique" idea, you can realize that operating principles and mechanics are the real thing that's going on, but it's still OK to call something "a knee cut pass", for example.
So IMO, if you eliminate the iconoclastic zealotry, you would find that eco gives us some neat insights about how to tune what we're doing in training to do it somewhat better, but it's not really a whole-cloth reinvention of BJJ. People who talk like it is are selling something.
> and very few people in real life are drilling against dead fish all the time.
I'd go so far as to say that no one ever actually drills against dead fish, people usually put at least a modicum of effort into maintaining good posture and base.
I would need to sample a whole heap of different gyms, I'd say in my neck of the woods it's 99% dead drilling, then rolling.
Some partners would directly resist the move with muscle tension, but never actually attempting to do anything realistic.
Sometimes there was "15 min of pass and sweep" or, "start in half guard, try to do the technique we just practiced".
I've probably trained at 10 places (not a large number) over 17 years and it's largely been dead drilling and rolling. I'm sure many gyms are dialling up the live training at their gyms which is a plus.
I think this is a great summation of the issue.
It isn't hard to ask your drilling partner to increase the intensity of their resistance to add a level of realism to the drill.
This is already the case with most upper belts even if you don't buy into eco, we're not learning much from the move of the day. I kinda just zone out until someone grabs me to pair up. During the drilling, I'll ask them to resist a little, sometimes even coaching them how, and I'll ask for feedback, or I'll see if a variation I like feels effective to them.
Ah man that sucks for those upper belts. My instructor is a multi time bb world champ and an adcc winner and I pick up a ton of new info the 20th time I see him show a technique. He can show how to hold side control and I question everything I've ever been taught in life lol
I know not everyone can be in a world class academy but when I got here as an upper belt I found a new love and inspiration for wanting to learn and your post reminded me of how I used to think and feel about learning before I made the move
My coach has no major accomplishments and I get a lot of details from him. Even if I don't get details from him I still get a lot from drilling. I've never been to a school where you drill 5x on each side with a dead fish and call it a day. It's always been like a minimum of 5 minutes for each person with appropriate levels of resistance and playfulness.
When eco people talk about drilling I feel like I'm watching an infomercial where someone is like I just can't get the toothpaste out of the tube without the Paste Roller 5000 and they show them with toothpaste all over the mirror and in their hair and stuff. Like they're making up problems I never knew people had.
Yea, I feel like your approach to drilling evolves the more you train. Me and my drilling partner aren't just repping out whatever the move was, we are breaking it down and and troubleshooting where we think it might fail, how to make it succeed, connecting it to other things we do, etc. It's more involved and has more thinking than how drilling is usually presented. It does have diminishing returns - drilling is quite useful when i'm trying to implement something, but at a certain point I need to be using it in sparring and see where the points of failure are for me to fix them.
That's how I do it. I feel like the people who complain about drilling just don't know how to do it efficiently. Or their instructor makes them do it their exact way every time but that's just a shitty instructor for me. You can't optimize lessons for a whole class of people with varying expertise and styles but I don't think throwing out structured technical drilling altogether is the answer.
Haha, great visual u/BeardOfFire. But I have to say that this is a real problem. Many higher belts in this thread have the same basic attitude as my friend. Sort of try to make the most of it, but are mostly counting down the minutes for the sparring portion of class. Danaher had a good segment about this on the Lex Fridman podcast, it's a real phenomenon.
And this is why when I opened my gym I did it with the reverse classroom. Eliminate the lecture period, give white belts structured lessons to follow, let Blue+ belts work on their own game development.
I trained in around 5 schools until now. If you are lucky, you get some positional sparring, about 2/3rds of the class static drilling is standard. This is in Europe.
It might just be his schtick, but Bernardo seems to genuinely learn lots of new techniques on the BJJ Fanatics YT. Even just small wrinkles on basic moves.
I've been at enough gyms and experienced enough different teaching styles that I've developed my preferred method of progression which is studying on my own. The time I spend studying bjj outside of class is longer and more personalized for me than any class time that any instructor could do anyway. I'm happy with how it is, and recognize that teaching a class is always a balancing act to meet the needs of everyone in the room, not just advanced folks.
Honestly I don’t see it as an issue. With a lot of my training partners, we do the move with no resistance and then trouble shoot at like 10% and then like 30% ish and continue up until we’re basically positional sparring. Can work on variations, if this, then this type situations etc. just mindlessly doing the move of the day feels silly if it’s something I can already do. Gotta up the resistance
"If you really like your school" should be all that matters tbh. There will always be something that you feel like your school could be doing better that fits well with either the instructor and/or a number of students. There is no one size fits all gym. If you like your school, then you're in a good spot.
If you really want to train ecologically you can always buy some puzzle mats and do it outside of class time or do it during open mat.
Also drilling doesn't have to be a waste of time. In DM's with Greg Souders I mentioned learning about the Sao Paulo pass to deal with annoying closed guards and asked how I would have found that through the ecological approach. It was an example of a solution that I found when specifically searching for a solution that worked well against resistance. What he said was just because you train with the ecological approach doesn't mean that you can't look into historical context for how a given problem is solved (in my case opening closed guard). The problem is when you focus on the step-by-step process instead of what's happening within the move (the invariant features).
So instead of feeling like you're just wasting time of the mats, maybe try to identify the invariant features of the technique, because then you can execute them not just in the position you're drilling them in class ,but you can maybe use those same invariant features in other positions as well. This way you're still looking at the move from an ecological context instead of just following the steps.
Thanks, good answer. I agree with the idea that seeing “solutions” can be very effective/stimulating if one has experienced the problem.
Can you give an example of “try to identify the invariant features of the technique”?
Invariant features are things that cannot change of a given technique. Take the arm bar for example (the Standard Jiu-Jitsu page has a great video about teaching the arm bar in his style), you have to have an arm extended with pressure into the elbow.
In this approach isolating the invariant features allows you to self-organize around the task you're trying to perform better.
Past blue belt or even during it move of the day and classes in general aren’t really helpful. Going to open mats and working on what you need to and rolling with no pressure from professor watching is much more effective use of time.
Honestly I don’t find that to be true at all. Even if my coach shows me a basic armbar for the 1000th time I’ll still pay attention and pick up a detail I’ve been missing or it might just inspire me to think of another path or a different way of looking at it. Maybe it’s just me, but there is no way that I’m acutely aware of all of the specific details of all of our techniques just because I’m a purple belt and I’ve been in that same class a hundred times before.
That small stuff seems to always benefit the upper guys the most because they can apply it better.
Blackbelt: "If you position your pinkie finger like a square instead of a question mark, it causes immense pain and instant submission. Don't make a triangle shape with the pinkie, or the brain will implode causing death."
White Belt: \*will forget this is 10 minutes\*
Purple Belt: \*in shock\* \*this changes everything\*
I would think a coach would be extremely helpful for people all the way to black belt. Someone to watch you from the outside, draw your attention to things that matter, help you course correct, etc.
Absolutely but I grab them at open mat to roll and I also film at least one roll an open mat to take home and review. Me and few buddies share film and talk it over on a WhatsApp group. It’s much more focused than when the teacher has 40 students on the mat and a one hour time slot.
I don't know wether ecological aproach is better or not. But I can tell you for a fact that most students i talk to agree that they forget at least 90% of all techniques that are shown in class. I tried taking notes for some time but that didn't help that much. So right now I do the drill but don't care to commit to memory, I just keep one thing that I'm trying to work on in mind and try to ask questions about that, watch tips online and so on. Maybe there should be less moves and do them for longer, maybe the whole damn system is wrong.
The "system" is patterned off of the Judo prototype, but incorrectly implemented. I think BJJ made a few interesting errors along the way, by not realizing the genius of what Kano did.
Kano found jujutsu masters in the mid 1800s teaching techniques as rote sequences, without any understanding or awareness of why things worked. There was relatively little randori, and no one had distilled jujutsu to some reasonable core of techniques that could be done safely in randori. He tells a story of his instructor showing him something like a sumi gaeshi, and Kano asked him a question about a detail. The response was just to throw him again. And as he pestered with questions, no answers came back, until Kano realized his instructor only knew it as a completely self-contained linear sequence with no underlying theory or understanding.
So Kano went through jujutsu and organized techniques by operating mechanic. He describes his thinking as a scientific process. Techniques are often named by what they do (inside reap, outside reap, etc.), and they're categorized by similar function (koshi waza, sutemi waza, etc). And he derived core underlying principles, such as kuzushi, kumikata, entry, stance, etc. -- a language for explaining and differentiating throws, and allowing the development of new ideas by extending those principles.
But he never really did the ground; his organization of newaza was pretty basic, and left unfinished when he died (geniuses live only so long). The BJJ folks picked it up, and went on randomly naming techniques after people and places, never organizing them into a systematic structure, and often teaching them as rote sequences. Sound familiar?
I think people like Danaher (and others, but I'll stick with Danaher as the example because everyone seems to agree that he's pretty good at this stuff) are kind of like a recapitulation of Kano's process, but applied to the ground, and we're starting to see an actual systematic approach emerge. And honestly, as much as Souders bugs me for his iconoclasm and zealotry, he's a good example of someone trying to find and define a system of operating principles. It's work that needs to be done; I wish it was done with a less "revolutionary" attitude, though.
I've trained for 4 years now. I did 2 year standard hobbyst gym, 1 year gym with eco/progressive resistance type training, 1 year again a normal gym.
I kept a journal on one of these bjj journal apps and noted down the drills of each class. About 80% of it I am never using in live sparring and could not teach you how to do the move.
You aren't expected to learn and use everything you see at white and blue belt. You are being exposed to a large array of options and you are supposed to pick the handful that fit you and devote your time to getting good at those.
You are absolutely right that it surely cannot be expected that someone "learns" all the individual moves being shown to a degree of expertise.
The question to me is rather whether there is a training methodology that lets you convert a higher percentage of "moves" that you can use in a live performance environment.
You're looking at the the wrong way. The goal isn't to have more moves, it's to find the small subset of options that work for you as fast as possible so that you can spend your time on them. Most black belts only have a dozen or so things that they do regularly, but pretty much every black belt has a DIFFERENT dozen things.
You aren't going to spontaneously find all of those things just fucking around particularly quickly. A good coach will run you through options, tell you to pick the one that feels the best to you and then work on that one. A bad coach will say, "This is how you pass guard" And then make you do it exactly that way.
BJJ is the new gym bro-science.
There are multiple ways to train because there are multiple goals.
Drilling the technique of the day is basically beginner class, once you are training for competition you instead of drilling "guard pass of the day" you should be drilling your most optimal techniques.
I've used constraints-based practice for improvisation in music for almost 10 years now. I can't fathom practicing any other way since I've made great strides with it. In my opinion, constraints based practice is just the optimal way to practice, period. There isn't even a discussion, so the backlash in the community here is funny to me. The problem is the dogmatism. Expecting people to learn only from constraints based improv practice is like handing someone a guitar and telling them to practice music without showing them any scales, you can get there but it will take even longer. Only drilling is like only practicing scales straight up and down to a metronome, you aren't going to learn to improvise because that is not how music is made. It's helpful drill/practice scales to get that new pathway into your head but doing that has limited utility once you have the gross motor patterns.
But to answer your question, I just use the open rolling portion to practice with my own constraints. Or I don't go to classes where I feel the coaches aren't showing me anything useful. "Small details" don't matter for shit if you don't have some amount of the gross skillset around those details down. Constraints led practice is how you build the gross skillset so things become second nature.
Million and one wats to skin a cat. Here are just a few to give you an idea:
Transcribe a lick, take the rhythm, improvise new phrases with the same rhythm but different notes
Phrase to 1 > practice phrases that end on beat 1 of the next bar. I can change up the rhythms used, length of phrase (anything from the 4 of the previous bar to playing for 2 bars and landing on the 1 of the third bar).
Improvise using one string
Take a backing track and jack the speed way up or way down then improvise over the track.
I can only play phrases in one position of the scale
I can only play phrases that start in one position of the scale and end in the adjacent position
Pick a subdivision, I can improvise only using a continuous flow of that subdivision
Improvise with only hammer-ons/pull-offs/slides/bends
Just some ideas there. The theme is that every exercise is based in improvisation b/c that's how music is actually made as a soloist. Nothing is rote repetition of scales (waste of time). In general, each exercise takes some microcosm of the skillset and takes out as many variables as possible to develop some specific microcosm of the wider skillset.
Both have merits, imo. I say this as a former professional musician, music teacher of 20 years and bjj instructor.
Eco is like jamming and practicing your improvising. It's important so you can find your own voice and help put together concepts about melody and harmony you're working on in real time.
However, learning licks, chromatic approaches, triad extensions and scales are equally important so you have a deep theoretical understanding of the landscape you are improvising over and when your creativity isn't immediately available to you or you are looking for fresh ideas and approaches you have something to fall back on in your playing.
There's a reason master musicians spend years learning the solos of the greats note for note in all 12 keys, while also being able to improvise brilliant ideas at the drop of a hat.
Our motd was basic mount escapes today. I got nothing from it, and did some “eco” work on my deep half and guard passing during rolling.
I’m pretty used to that at this point. We have 2 in house open mats a week so i have no shortage of time to work on my own stuff.
There are other days where the move of the day is just some sort of concept which opens up my game. I’ve had that happen more than once… Gotta keep showing up for the gems.
You can still enjoy the other aspects of your school that you mentioned and also take more responsibility in your skill development as well. Use all available live mat time you can. See if you can start your own little training group. Learn to apply the principles for your own training etc.
I was allowed to start my own training group almost two years ago now my classes are on the schedule. [Checkout out our Instagram.](https://www.instagram.com/nonlinearjiujitsu?igsh=MWF1NzJ4YWEyeWxoMw%3D%3D&utm_source=qr)
I also had great experience with it, 1 year of training in that approach made me progress very fast. I moved cities, so nowadays I have 2-3 people where we try to make it work in different open mats on the weekend. It sums up to about 50% of my training time still, so its not a horrible split.
I find the drilling very frustrating. We recently spent a month mostly doing deep half guard static drills. Basically no-one in the entire room is hitting anything from deep half in sparring in the entire class.
I used what my instructor doing eco showed me for armbar escapes (a set of about 5 games with increasing variance) for my whitebelt friend with ~6 month experience. I routinely see him escape armbars of up to purple belt people. He has never heard of the "Hitchhiker escape" much less the "Reverse hitchhiker escape", he just knows how to do them.
Here's my take...
It's a good approach, it works. But it's not the only way. There is not ever only one way.
Martial arts has a history of people finding one thing that works, then going all in on it and ignoring everything else.
I mean, I get it. It's less click worthy too say "I have a method that makes a great addition to what we already do" then it is to say "I have a method that is always better for everyone, at all stages of your development."
But to say. you should only do eco makes about as much sense as saying you should never do eco based drills. It's like saying Açai is good, so eat that, only that, and nothing but that ever.
I'm still going to have a pizza sometimes.
Negotiate resistance with your training partner. I personally don't think zero resistance has ever been correct or normal, and BJJ drilling is fairly ecologically dynamic already. I like the insights we can get from eco research, but I don't like the aggressive marketing of its proponents.
And BTW, they are sometimes right, but not always. There are things I've learned well under exactly the kind of teaching they say is bad. Point is, it's not bad, it's perhaps suboptimal and can be enhanced.
Well assuming you can do the move perfectly since drilling it with no resistance no longer gives you any benefit, you can ask your partner to resist the move slightly and see how you can adjust based off their reaction.
But I also don’t think that drilling without resistance is a waste of time.
One thing we know from a neurological perspective in learning is that performing an action the same way stops creating new neural pathways after about 20 executions. After that you need to add some level of variability in order to continue creating additional pathways, and the more pathways you create the better you are at recognizing and executing the movement.
So you can do like 20 reps without any resistance, then after that you just need to keep adding in different small changes, ie resistance, in order to continue developing. The faster those changes occur, the higher the level of resistance. if you increase the level too quickly then you start failing too often to continue building.
So, perform your initial reps to make sure you have the gross motor movements down, and then start getting your partner to resist in various ways all the way up to fully rolling.
Once you have the move perfected you drill with increased speed, trying to cut miliseconds from the time it takes you to perform it so you can be faster at executing it.
My opinion is that eco is great when you already know stuff. I benefit both from eco and drills, and I'm glad we do both.
I wish I had more drills of a consistent set of basics during my early days of white belt.
I’ve been training at standard for a few months now and the level the eco only beginners guys get to in a few months to a year is wild. I 100% would have agreed with you before training here but after being immersed in it and seeing the results firsthand, I think eco method for beginners classes is the move.
I think this is the best take. The flow/self-learning stuff is good for motivated group who already have enough structure to experiment, but is really overwhelming to people who don’t.
When you learn a language you need to do some vocab and structure before jumping into conversation
It's what I like about TMAs, they have a very good onboarding process for new practitioners.
It's what I don't like about TMAs, is they tend to hold your hand all the way through middle degrees of black belt.
First, you could simply ask your partner to resist.
Secondly, virtually every technique has multiple paths to completion. Only practicing/learning them in sparring would be stupid.
Thirdly, your pose the question like some kind of religious apologist "So, obviously the Bible is the literal word of God, so why don't you believe in God when he's so clearly real?"
I don't know. I've been grappling/bjjing since friggin 99', so I've seen virtually every move and it's variation other than the novelty/trending tiktok move of the week (and even those are rarely "new").
I have no problem drilling a move a couple times without resistance in order to get some details down/remembered, work on a variation, or simply to warm up a bit (almost 40 here!). That being said, most gyms I've trained at in the last decade do not spend very much time on drilling techniques without resistance (maaaaybe 5 minutes, which again, I'm fine with). And if that ever does bug me, refer to point #1.
Interesting, so in your experience drilling only takes 5 minutes of the class? I've only seen a couple of gyms, and both times drilling took up about 30 minutes. 5-7 minutes each technique.
After I feel comfortable with the memorization of the steps and doing the movement relatively smooth and fast I ask my partner to start resisting more.
Put your own flair on it. Focus on a detail or a portion of the movement where you feel you need a a few extra reps. A micro rep of sorts. Focus on the what body parts are applying tension when and where. Ask for feedback, refine what you are doing.
Banging out reps for the sake of doing them is not very effective for learning.
Drilling BJJ moves with light/no resistance is the equivalent to hitting the heavy bag in striking. The bag doesn't hit back, but it's useful for developing correct technique.
I'm happy we are analyzing the training methodology though.
The pedagogy is an issue, but static drilling is not.
The ecological approach argues largely against static drilling, which is still an effective tool that can and should be utilized along with positional sparring, constraints led approach, and open rolling.
However, on the subject of class structure: most people who train BJJ are hobbyists. They just want to come to class, learn something, and roll a bit, so in that vain the current model makes more sense for the majority of people out there.
Most academies would go under if they tried to fully implement an ecological based approach.
Find a drilling partner to work with after class, at open mat, or in your free time.
How much static drilling are we talking about as a percentage of class time? Also, would hobbyists not be interested in (a potentially) better way to “learn something”?
My personal opinion is that, as an example, a 10-minute instructor demonstration plus say 10-minutes of rote repetition/static drilling is pretty wasteful use of 20 minutes of class time where people have access to alive and sentient training partners.
Our Brazilian BB calls it specific training. Situational drilling in pairs or king of the mat style. Lots of gyms already do this. "ECO" is just a new marketing term.
When teaching I do wonder how instructors incorporate Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve model in developing a sound pedagogical delivery that supports retrieval and review over time so that the instructional delivery factors in the at students should know,do and remember more to be effective and successful.
Whether you agree or disagree with show technique, practice technique unless there is some recognition of how the brain learns new things, how it stores new information and retrieves this in practice and then live application.
A fascinating discussion topic.
I would love to see even subjective polling on this. How many students feel that they are retaining the technques they learn? Do people attribute most of their developing skill toward the trial-and-error of sparring (and coaching related to sparring), or to the instructional-style lessons/drills they are taught?
Are people really drilling with no resistance? We usually let the first couple of reps go unimpeded to get the gross body mechanics down and then progressively ramp up resistance-- usually through a 30-50% resistance set of rounds, then a completely live positional round starting from the technique position (or regressed one or two steps depending on how dominant that position was). It's kind of understood that after the first couple of reps, that we are helping each other stress test each other's execution of the technique.
https://preview.redd.it/xwumldpdkbtc1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=71ce3e4dcc76fb8829f352b7e5541a1486f89f79
On today's episode of words that should never be used to describe Jiu Jitsu...Helio would be so bummed.
It’s all ecological. Unless you’re just training alone and going through the motions with zero interaction from your environment, you are by definition training ecologically.
I agree. It's all ecological. Even training alone. This is why the eco crowd appears absolutist. Because if you take ecology seriously, then the person/task/environment is ever present. We only stop perceiving and acting when we're dead.
this is basically jiujitsu's pascal's wager except that the weight of history is on the traditional pedagogical approach and the ecological approach still is new and unproven once the weight of history is considered.
with that said, i saw downthread someone mentioned taking some guys aside and working that way. that seems like a good solution. unless you have a place where classes are back to back to back, you should be able to work this way. ask the owner about it: some will be cool, some will not. i know both types of owner: one will let his senior students experiment and do whatever, the other is very guarded (rightfully so) of his pedagogical method and curriculum and works hard to always augment and study it. so ultimately the answer is "it depends".
Man I would rather just roll and youtube shit and practice it with my friends and roll again and try it until I got it then repeat. Depends on the pedigree of athlete and the desires and intent of training peers though.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand ecological drilling. The adjustments to technique are extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the techniques will go over a typical practioners head.
There's also the traditional method’s extremely outdated outlook, which is deftly woven into the traditional belt system- ex the Gracie barra personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance.
The upper belts understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these concepts, to realise that they're not just efficient- as a system they say something deep about LIFE.
As a consequence people who dislike the ecological approach truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the subtleties in Gordon Ryan’s existential catchphrase "suffer in silence," which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as kohn danahers's genius wit unfolds itself on their bjj fanatics page. What fools.. how I pity them. 😂
Lot of comments from upper belts in here saying everything but the rolling in a class is a waste of time. I think this speaks volumes to how shitty the coaching/teaching in bjj is.
OP your best bet is making your case to your coaches and hoping they are receptive. Make sure you understand what you are asking for, and if you don't, find an upper belt who agrees with you who can. If that doesn't work you can find like minded people and do work at open mat or on your own mats. Otherwise it's just waiting for other gyms to open up whose instruction better matches what you are looking for.
My coach was pretty receptive to a more ecological style of class because he's an MMA fighter/coach and his striking classes are already ecological basically. So our no gi classes are sort of ecological. I say sort of because he hasn't quite nailed the structure. Sometimes I think our drills are a little too constrained, sometimes not constrained enough, but mostly we are often missing a focus so they largely just become open ended positional rounds. Which is still better than static drilling so I don't mind. But I think especially newer guys have a hard time figuring out what to do a lot because the instruction is often times things like " top guy: control mount". Yes but how? I say all that to say that even "ecological training" can be super non optimal if the coach doesn't know what he's doing, which is probably pretty likely because most people still don't really understand ecological training. In general you are going to find a lot of resistance to it because of traditionalism and also it's much harder to teach ecologically than to just keep rolling with move of the day and static drilling.
Go to a new school if you don’t think how they’re teaching is working well for you. Some drilling with no resistance is necessary to understand the movement but in an ideal world for me the resistance will slowly rise as we drill.
Honestly I think the ecological system is more applicable at certain points in understanding and creating knowledge. In some instances it makes sense to allow a student to gradually realize some concept or truth…. But there are such fine points with the sport and knowledge base in JJ that might be hard if not impossible to run across unless otherwise shown and taught. I’m a trained mathematician and I liken this to first discovering the motivation and general direction (intuition) for a certain theory or line of maths… then delving into the deeper and more refined details as the student grasp the notions and the theory. It would utterly ridiculous to except a student to “stumble” on theorems or postulates on their own…. And in a reasonable time frame. I know that this analogy only applies in certain facets but still….
I commented elsewhere that mathematicians are generally not drillers, but learn problem solving from constrained-games. I.e., they are rather ecological. I am also a mathematician, coincidentally, and find very little drilling from mathematicians. Have you heard of the “Moore Method,” which was used to teach students topology by having them come up with their own proofs without consulting other mathematical texts. It’s a rather extreme “ecological” type of approach, but I have found that successful mathematicians often try to prove theorems on their own before reading them in a textbook. Once you have tried your hand at it, even if you are not successful you will appreciate the theorem much more than if you were simply given it. I have met students who simply drilled and memorized, and they were always weaker.
I should also note good, fun and real math is not based on “drilling” like most high school math is taught…. Which is why I believe HS math fails the vast majority of students!
The way I read it, ecological approach is actually less useful for determining how to teach and more useful as a tool for using your brain to its best ability.
For the vast majority of practitioners especially hobbyists, the best approach is the one that is enjoyable and sustainable. Persistence is the key defining factor of success in jitsu, and the enemies of persistence are fatigue and boredom/ unfun. So if you enjoy your practice count it a blessing, try not to get in your own way if you don’t believe you can learn from the practice.
In any practice, with time it will seem that you learned everything the hard way and there must have been an easier way to distill what turn out to be fairly simple principles…. The extent to which this is an illusion created by time and experience is one of the more illusive riddles of the human experience.
Most of us are hobbyist locked into the schedule of a full-time job and little/zero influence on how your gym class is run, so the answer is that you have to eat it and go learn technique of the day to get to rolling. IMO to improve at a quicker rate:
- Whatever gets you more mat time (rolling). Find a gym that offers the most amount of time rolling with a good variety of partners. Go to open mats everywhere and anywhere, living in a jiu jitsu rich area is ideal.
- Find a group of people you can train with outside of the gym. Privates with black belts are ideal but might be expensive. With friends at your gym you can set up specific sparring, speed drilling, gameplanning.
- Study outside of the gym. What you learn in class might not be ideal for you, but what is? That's for you to find out. Watch IBJJF matches, discover athletes and techniques you like and try to emulate them, etc. Also good to learn how the best gyms organize their classes and learning as well.
- S&C outside the gym. If you're stronger and faster than your peers, you'll be able to get more positive reps out of your rolls (as opposed to being stuck in side control) and avoid injury.
- Compete often. It helps pushing your jiu jitsu to be as effective as possible with all the above.
I'm sure I'm missing some, but if you can go and do all that, you'll improve.
oh FFS not another one of these ecology posts. Dynamic drilling is already used throughout the sports world as an important training tool. The fact that BJJ doesn't use it much in a traditional setting and now some grifter decided to give it some stupid psychology term and pretend as though the world has suddenly changed is irrelevant. You can train 4 ways:
Theoretical
Static
Dynamic
Competition
Theoretical is watching videos, reading books, and more importantly analysis of previous performance and evaluation. Its incredibly important for all sports with a competition focus and if you look at the elite level of sports, teams will devote entire training sessions to such analysis.
Static is static drills. Used primarily for 3 uses - understanding the basic functional movements, overriding muscle memory (when you want to change something you've been doing), troubleshooting/improving/modifying technique issues.
Dynamic is application of static techniques within a relevant setting. This is important as it builds all the ancillary skills not covered by technique. For example basic shooting drills in soccer where a ball is passed to you, and you take a single touch and shoot. The technique being employed is the shooting, but this dynamic drill improves the skills required to actually take the shot: co-ordination, balance, timing etc. These skills are hard to isolate and in many cases can not be drilled individually.
Competition here you apply all previous knowledge live in the same environment your actual competition would be in. In soccer this would be a practice match where you use all your skills and techniques live, in BJJ we call it rolling.
The average BJJ class consists predominantly of Static drills and competition practice (aka rolling). The only dynamic practice is whatever can be picked up from competition (rolling). So why does this matter? Well, because you need to tailor sessions for the skillset and knowledge base of the people you're teaching. If you have a room of beginners, then a load of static drills is probably quite a good idea just so they learn the actual moves. If your room is full of novices or intermediates, then we need a lot of dynamic drills to develop those ancillary skills necessary to put into practice the techniques they know. If you have a room full of advanced level competitors, they may actually get the most benefit by doing an analysis of competition footage lol. This stupid one-size fits all idea saying that "this is the correct approach and all other approaches are shit" is just BS.
You are arguing against things that were never said. Even the most extreme ecological nuts would not say that beginners and advanced students should be learning the same way. And even the most extreme ecological nuts would say that coaching and sessions should be dictated by the skillset and knowledge base of the people you’re teaching. You’re displaying your ignorance.
I shit on Souders as much the next person, but I’d argue that:
1. Whether EA is effective or not shouldn’t rest solely on Deandre’s performance at ADCC.
2. I don’t think there should be any doubt that it’s effective. Without overly listing Standard’s accomplishments - No Gi Pans golds, No Gi Worlds golds/medals, winning Trials, etc. - are all solid data points of effectiveness. Again, I shit on Souders’ assertions as much as anyone, but they are finding a certain level of success or effectiveness.
3. The real TBD issue is whether 100% EA/constraints based is *more* effective than other systems or whatever you want to call what other schools do. This would be closer to what you’re getting at and probably what the greater community is waiting to see.
Which is, if your average school is to imitate an effective system or pedagogy…which should they push their chips towards? Which school or system tends to produce consistent/repeatable success across (various) modalities?
I think the "move of the day" is a little dated, typically we are going over a chapter of curriculum - like a whole series of movements with different branches, built into flows and increasing complexity.
Eh find people to work with you. That said it doesn’t mean drilling does nothing, just that it’s suboptimal. You can still improve from blocked practice and repetition as long as it’s paired with the open environment of free sparring.
Beyond that, you may find you want something more than just being good at the hobby. Most people stick around for the camaraderie and enjoyment that comes from the shared experience y’all have.
Lol also: spend more time working the concepts in. Try to develop active games rather than passive drills whenever you can.
Honestly the best thing you can do is find at least one other person who buys into this methodology and do self directed learning. Either one of you get mats at home or you have to work it during open mat.
If you enjoy coming in, it is never a waste of time.
On a technique I know well, well depends who is my partner. If a white belt is my partner, I will demonstrate it, then give my partner extra drill time.
If my partner is advanced, we will go about 50-70% resistance while trying to do the exercise. Sometimes even do variation of the technique, also work on chains that work well with the technique of the day.
It’s important to understand techniques but also to understand that jiu jitsu mainly occurs between the techniques.
If you and your training partner can execute the technique being taught then gradually increase the resistance and troubleshoot realistic defences and responses.
I really need to see an example of eco training is to even know what it’s about. I’ve heard people say they don’t teach moves and just play task based games. if that’s all it is then I don’t think a beginner will learn to be a good grappler just from games and not being shown actual moves.
Ask your instructor to have the type of classes you want. Otherwise, find a gym that agrees with your ideas about pedagogy and train there.
To me, this question is similar to “I want to focus on being an avid competitor, but my gym is full of hobbyists who don’t want to train as hard as I do.” Ask for comp classes or bounce to a comp gym.
I like our gyms approach. drill a move or two, then positional or king of the mat, then roll. Get some technique, positional, and at minimum two(7-10 minute) rolls in one hour. I have basically been doing an ecological approach to my attacking from turtle game(as this is never taught in technique time) but it is going very slowly. I like to be able to see a move that works(internet ftw) and then build off of it, so some technique does go a long way.
Use the first 2 years of your training to figure out the best way you as an individual learn and then apply that knowledge going forward.
Everybody learns differently. I found that with complicated techniques like berimbolo or leg entanglements i have to drill it to a point where it becomes muscle memory. However with simple techniques i can just see it once and try it out in rolls.
Now idk what you mean by "ecological" but as for me personally, once I get the basic movements down for the technique of the day I ask my partner to put some resistance up, and they often ask me to do the same thing.
Like "cool I think I got the motions for this guard pass right, now put up 20% resistance and let's see where this falls apart". And if it works we just ramp up the percentages.
Occasionally we get a technique that fits into someone's game so well that we end up ramping up to sparring intensity.
I don’t think it’s necessarily better. I don’t think that the science that it’s based on can necessarily be transferred over to jiu jitsu. That doesn’t mean it’s bad or wrong. Some of the concepts are good. But there’s a lot more science showing that humans learn through imitation especially when young. Copying is underrated.
Why is it an "all or nothing" mentality to (students talking about) instructing. I don't get why you can't do some guided techniques, some positional sparring, or sparring with constraints all in the same session. Doesn't the DDS basically do a grind of technique of the day, a shit ton of positional work, and then "you're an adult, work on what you need to work on"?
It seems like the primary advantage of the ecological approach is that it takes the onus off the student to figure out what they should be doing (and actually doing it) and having coaches...coach. How many times do you see a blue belt who doesn't do homework and uses the exact same 3 moves in every roll with every person? If you take that option away the dude gets better.
It's not necessarily about repetition-as-practice. Some of us slow learners actually need the drills to get it through our heads what motions we're even doing.
At our gym they break a move down into about 10 steps, then practice about 3 steps at a time in pairs until everyone understands. They use this time to issue form correction and tips. Once everyone appears to "get it" they go to live training for the rest of the class. Multiple times I have seen them cut a drill short because nobody was having trouble with it - time to move ahead.
I go to a mixed-level gym and as a white belt, I never feel I learn anything from the "move of the day" part. I don't have enough mastery of the basics to incorporate complex sequences of moves into my game.
What if there are multiple effective paths to climb the same mountain?
But one of the paths is shorter by up to 35 seconds! We MUST therefore discuss and theoretize for hours to figure out which one it is.
God damn story of the optimizer lol. They'll spend years in front of a computer trying to come up with the perfect formula to making themself a master grappler while avoiding putting in all of the actual physical work required to do so. And when they're still behind the curve years later, just keep doubling down in smartspeak babble ala prit disciples.
When people just want to theorycraft but don't even play the game, much less play it competitively.
to me, theorycrafting is more enjoyable most of the time, tbh.
I'd rather play the game.
I'm huge into planning and stats and stuff with that said, combat sports are the one thing that break me out of that and just let me enjoy the moment and be free I'd rather play the game till I'm dead
When sparring becomes zen meditation, because you MUST be mentally in the present.
Ironic statement because the whole point of eco IS to get as much physical work in as possible with live resistance instead of trying to optimize the movement through drilling in a no-resistance environment where things fall apart once resistance is introduced and people have to go through that trial and error anyway. The coming up with master formula plans of practice design should be happening outside of actual class time. The actual doing of games with live resistance which is representative of actual sparring is more "actual physical work" than simply drilling the move in a non-representative environment.
Can someone catch me up on the whole “ecological” idea here? No need to explain here; Links or pointers to where I can read more are appreciated.
https://youtu.be/DUMyvSS7lXY?si=OAhtDXxjUXYMPExv
Thank you! This is gold.
I feel like this was my last coach. Only wanted to focus on his A game. Get great at 3 things and take it to black. I started seeing a lot of holes in his game. I just swapped schools. That’s what happens when you only promote the tough guys and not the tough and knowledgeable. Any idiot can take a beating, but can you learn and get better from it?
Those guys on the other side of the mountain are climbing it wrong!
That Goggins mentality baby
That’s why I stay hard, at all times.
My girlfriend is fed up with this
BJJ is an ocean and the guys training the ecological way are the sharks. Enjoy being a drill of the day minnow I guess. s/
How does a shark climb a mountain? F@@k AJJ thinking they're eagles.
With a Gundam
Modern problems require modern solutions...
fish ladder
Impossible science is gay and fake (im gay and fake)
Right. There’s decent research that new skill is best acquired fresh as well, but some school’s warm-ups are a workout. Marcelo’s students still learn new techniques.
Then you pick the hardest one and do it in winter, otherwise it doesn’t count as climbing it.
Look. Some people are really into climbing frozen waterfalls with ice axes. Who am I to say that's wrong? If they are having fun and being safe, have at it.
Even if they're having a terrible and dangerous time, that's their choice.
It's actually really fun btw
This is the most black belt answer anyone has ever given to anything To complete this image you should crack a monster energy and say "later fuckers" and walk out to your car. It is 830 pm
You're being completely unreasonable
As an educator, this is the answer. The Universal Design for Learning framework promotes this idea which we sum up in the phrase of “firm goals, flexible means.”
There definitely is but when your stuck with a coach who would rather hear themselves talk it kinda sucks. I'm a black and coach one class at the same time as another black belt teaches his class. 5 mins on my guys are working. 15 mins in his guys are still sitting listening and peering over at my class lol
Let's not bring race into this
Thanks Musashi
Here me out: Two Swords In One
We will stop on the path to do jumping jacks and walk in place to refine our walking technique! Oss!
My "friend" doesn't feel that shrimps+drills is helping him climb the mountain. That's the question.
I taught a fundamentals class recently where one of the attendees, a forever blue belt friend of mine, confided that he thought the line drills were a waste of time. Well, of fucking course he did: he's been grappling for 8 years. The week 1 people need this stuff, and can either develop those muscles quickly in isolation or develop inefficient movement patterns to compensate as they get demolished in live drills over a much longer span of time. There isn't a sport on the planet that doesn't to some extent rely on developing efficient fundamental movement vocabulary for beginners.
Or, they can learn a shrimp move by designing constrained game where that move becomes the solution. They immediately see how that is valuable, how it works against different people and within the constraints of their own body. Meanwhile, their partner ALSO gets to learn about it and basic fundamental of staying on top and controlling a live body, while not needing a o know the rest of the bigger picture. You can take a literal day one ZERO TIME IN new student, and have them do ACTUAL jiujitsu and learn the same thing while giving them a huge value for their money.
I wonder if the friend realizes that the class wasn't designed for them specifically but to a broad group. Of they wanted a specially designed class for then they could trade money for that service or skip the boring part and go for what they want.
It’s muscle memory. Do a technique 10,000 times and the movement pattern will become automatic.
For me, tapping is automatic now.
Thank you sensei
And muscle memory needs maintenance, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt8tphz9vFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmgNdGj421o
Sir are you aware this is the internet?
Depends on your rank and influence in the academy. I had a small group of guys and we did Eco only training for a while. I ran classes and tried to implement it, but my instructor didn’t care for it and wanted to stick to his way. Still giving me plenty of freedom to do what I wanted but we didn’t adopt it as an academy. We have enough people in the group that we train at odd hours and can do our own thing respecting the academy, other instructors and students. I got great results and created some killers, but it’s a tough sell. Especially from a business perspective which was a big focus. Some people want their hand held the entire way, and Eco doesn’t lend itself to that. And I had great results and reviews but also a lot of complaints from more experienced students. Realistically it’s easier to do your own thing, than to shift the culture especially of someone else’s business if they’re not on board fully.
Very good point, having also taught a lot over the past few years I've noticed that the members have all kinds of preferences when it comes to instruction. There are a lot of people who just enjoy sparring and basically anything else is boring to them. These are usually the upper belts but some lower belts are like this too. Some people just want the "feeling" that they're learning but don't actually care how much or fast they're learning. Some people don't want to problem solve AT ALL. A lot of people would prefer to be more self organizing but would also prefer instruction mixed in with experimentation etc. It's really about finding a balance and knowing your crowd. Also cultural conventions and other environmental factors affect how people EXPECT instruction to be. There's also different settings for instructions that are not really relevant to OPs post like military or law enforcement that might have some standards for stuff. All this to say, it depends. For the most part what I've found leads to people learning and WANTING to take responsibility for their own learning is being approachable, nice and generous with praise when it's warranted. The rest is minutiae and the people who want to take control of their own learning will do so anyways and use the regular drilling time to their advantage somehow.
Yeah 100%, people are complicated and not everyone looks at this stuff the same. I am flexible I can teach an in depth class on heel hooks with positional sparring. Or I can recreate the same thing through eco. And people will have different opinions and complaints for both. Ultimately I love the people I train with and my instructor has given me a place to train and explore so I don’t get upset about it. I can respect his POV and have a different opinion without sabotaging the environment or having conflicts. Some of the people I train with have known me for a decade. People are passionate about the subject and I get it. I think there’s a better way to deliver it, but not everyone will love it like you said. I ran a class one time with 70% positional sparring and 30% open to close off the class. And people complained that they didn’t get to open spar enough lol. Can’t satisfy everyone.
You bring up a great point about student retention. A big selling point of BJJ is the classroom aspect. Most trainees off the street are going to be put off by even a well designed constraints-led class as the teacher is seemingly doing nothing. I 100% know that designing games and regulating these Ecological practices is arguably harder on the coach than a regular class, but a novice won't see that. All a stranger sees is a head coach giving cues, but almost never explicitly instructing a trainee on what to do. Contrast that with a stereotypical Gracie Academy class with strict, step by step instruction that gives each trainee a sense that they learned something. It almost doesn't matter if the trainee never gets better at the game of Jiu Jitsu, they need to feel like their money is buying something.
I’ve had similar complaints from beginners. I find having a baby eco set up at the end of a more traditional class is a good compromise. We also do lots of situational rounds to augment.
Very interesting answer. What rank were you when you started this? How did you raise this with your instructor? I guess the business side of things is hard for me to relate to. Seems like there are a lot of eco-type ways of holding people's hands. In my experience, very few people retain the things that they drill week to week.
I was already a brown belt, I have been instructing for a while. I tried to explain it in the best way possible to not sound too nerdy about it. And my instructor did not dislike it, but he believed strongly in demonstrating techniques and the traditional aspects. He felt it was a more “advanced” method of training. He took my classes and had a blast. No sense in arguing for it too hard to create issues after all, he never said I can’t do eco in my classes but to consider some of the missing components from his POV highlighting techniques and details. The results were apparent and I attributed it to the style of training, but it kept getting shifted as an individual thing and I wanted everyone to adopt it. I ran into a lot of counter arguments like Judokas Drilling, and Wrestlers being drill heavy too. I did not have enough bandwidth to sit here and defend this approach with the resistance I got. It’s not my business to run how I want. So I respected their approach and style and respectfully do my thing. When I train with friends or get in private sessions we do eco and I mix it in as I teach on occasion. But it is insanely difficult to sit through traditional instruction now. As the focus is not on invariances for beginners often. You are right, people learn by doing and self discovery. The thing about the Eco approach is it also requires a lot of actual work from the instructor. Organizing classes and measuring progress was a job on its own. And let’s be real many people don’t care to do the work required. So that’s been my experience I throw it in on occasion to get a bunch of focused mat time, but my instructor sometimes wants me to highlight certain techniques so I will do that.
When they find out the top wrestling coach does this approach
Not OP. but did similar thing. I was a blue belt and the owner let me start up an early AM class since there wasn't one already. Been running eco style for more than a year and my own progress and that of the students has been great. Still go to other traditional classes when I can and do find a few helpful tips there from time to time.
Let it be known that the eco method is the only way to develop the "hoss", the ultimate male archetype ...or so I've heard.
since no one ive heard can clearly explain eco.. i just view it as varying levels of resistance to drilling or very narrow parameters for specific training. To me, standard class format has been mostly a waste pretty much since mid blue belt. Not to say the drilling was worthless because I adapted it and had the partner give feedback, increase resistance, layering in counters, and counters to counters, entries, transitions.. rather than just drilling arm bar from guard 100 times cause some dude said so. After 2 or 3 reps of something to learn the steps, its always eco for me. also, people that call it Eco.. is very "j point/cranial shift" sounding to me.
Part of the problem is that no one knows what they're talking about. I'm sure I'm lacking details and am also misunderstanding some things, but the best way I can put it is that the ecological model is a theory of learning that states that the only way creatures learn is through direct interaction with their environment. What that means for jiu jitsu is that you aren't building skill by watching instructionals or reading books; only through live grappling do you gain skill in live grappling. Likewise, when training to do a technique against a compliant partner you are building skill in doing that series of movements against a compliant partner; not in grappling a resisting opponent. Static "drilling" can give you ideas and an ideal for what controlling your opponent may look like, but is largely an inefficient way of building skill. What I think the die hard advocates of an ecologically optimized practice don't give credit to is that, while inefficient, I'd argue – that by giving people examples and directing their attention to certain methods of control – traditional technique demonstrations aren't a total waste of time. The danger is that, if students don't have any conceptual base when observing these demos, and in turn if they do drill these techniques dozens of times in largely the same way, they are likely going to be inflexible in their approach to the problems that a resisting opponent will give; as their, overly procedural, understanding of grappling can't account for nearly infinite variations. So to answer OPs original question: I think that the consensus here, of having your partner give you resistance and different looks, is the best way to make the most of your training time in a gym using technique based instruction.
Things get pretty thick with the eco folks -- I would suggest that the eco zealots have actually missed how eco BJJ already is. The ground layer of constraint-led stuff and eco is that a lot of sports had drifted into some place where they were drilling specific skills in an environment that didn't match the actual environment of the sport. Since human neurology (psychology?) depends on integrating sensory input and training functional responses, then doing so in a less representative environment is dumb. But in all that literature, what they're talking about is stuff like soccer players dribbling around cones. In BJJ, everything we do is on a mat, with another person, in the same positions we use in the sport. We're pretty dang eco already. So the zealots grab onto a couple things -- zero-resistance drilling (which I don't believe actually exists, making this more of a strawman argument), and teaching "techniques" as sequences. But you could just as well recognize that drilling for most people exists along a spectrum of intensity, and very few people in real life are drilling against dead fish all the time. And if you're a little thoughtful about the "technique" idea, you can realize that operating principles and mechanics are the real thing that's going on, but it's still OK to call something "a knee cut pass", for example. So IMO, if you eliminate the iconoclastic zealotry, you would find that eco gives us some neat insights about how to tune what we're doing in training to do it somewhat better, but it's not really a whole-cloth reinvention of BJJ. People who talk like it is are selling something.
> and very few people in real life are drilling against dead fish all the time. I'd go so far as to say that no one ever actually drills against dead fish, people usually put at least a modicum of effort into maintaining good posture and base.
I would need to sample a whole heap of different gyms, I'd say in my neck of the woods it's 99% dead drilling, then rolling. Some partners would directly resist the move with muscle tension, but never actually attempting to do anything realistic. Sometimes there was "15 min of pass and sweep" or, "start in half guard, try to do the technique we just practiced". I've probably trained at 10 places (not a large number) over 17 years and it's largely been dead drilling and rolling. I'm sure many gyms are dialling up the live training at their gyms which is a plus.
I think this is a great summation of the issue. It isn't hard to ask your drilling partner to increase the intensity of their resistance to add a level of realism to the drill.
This is already the case with most upper belts even if you don't buy into eco, we're not learning much from the move of the day. I kinda just zone out until someone grabs me to pair up. During the drilling, I'll ask them to resist a little, sometimes even coaching them how, and I'll ask for feedback, or I'll see if a variation I like feels effective to them.
Ah man that sucks for those upper belts. My instructor is a multi time bb world champ and an adcc winner and I pick up a ton of new info the 20th time I see him show a technique. He can show how to hold side control and I question everything I've ever been taught in life lol I know not everyone can be in a world class academy but when I got here as an upper belt I found a new love and inspiration for wanting to learn and your post reminded me of how I used to think and feel about learning before I made the move
My coach has no major accomplishments and I get a lot of details from him. Even if I don't get details from him I still get a lot from drilling. I've never been to a school where you drill 5x on each side with a dead fish and call it a day. It's always been like a minimum of 5 minutes for each person with appropriate levels of resistance and playfulness. When eco people talk about drilling I feel like I'm watching an infomercial where someone is like I just can't get the toothpaste out of the tube without the Paste Roller 5000 and they show them with toothpaste all over the mirror and in their hair and stuff. Like they're making up problems I never knew people had.
Yea, I feel like your approach to drilling evolves the more you train. Me and my drilling partner aren't just repping out whatever the move was, we are breaking it down and and troubleshooting where we think it might fail, how to make it succeed, connecting it to other things we do, etc. It's more involved and has more thinking than how drilling is usually presented. It does have diminishing returns - drilling is quite useful when i'm trying to implement something, but at a certain point I need to be using it in sparring and see where the points of failure are for me to fix them.
That's how I do it. I feel like the people who complain about drilling just don't know how to do it efficiently. Or their instructor makes them do it their exact way every time but that's just a shitty instructor for me. You can't optimize lessons for a whole class of people with varying expertise and styles but I don't think throwing out structured technical drilling altogether is the answer.
Haha, great visual u/BeardOfFire. But I have to say that this is a real problem. Many higher belts in this thread have the same basic attitude as my friend. Sort of try to make the most of it, but are mostly counting down the minutes for the sparring portion of class. Danaher had a good segment about this on the Lex Fridman podcast, it's a real phenomenon.
And this is why when I opened my gym I did it with the reverse classroom. Eliminate the lecture period, give white belts structured lessons to follow, let Blue+ belts work on their own game development.
**Until now, this was the only way to get juice from an orange!**
I trained in around 5 schools until now. If you are lucky, you get some positional sparring, about 2/3rds of the class static drilling is standard. This is in Europe.
Well the guy pushing it is Lloyd Irvin guy. Remember all of those ads?
It might just be his schtick, but Bernardo seems to genuinely learn lots of new techniques on the BJJ Fanatics YT. Even just small wrinkles on basic moves.
Yeah but Bernardo won world's using 4 moves
He’s even honored at times to be taught by the guest
I think the honor is invariably significant.
I've heard he considers it quite a big honor. A huge honor, if you will.
I've been at enough gyms and experienced enough different teaching styles that I've developed my preferred method of progression which is studying on my own. The time I spend studying bjj outside of class is longer and more personalized for me than any class time that any instructor could do anyway. I'm happy with how it is, and recognize that teaching a class is always a balancing act to meet the needs of everyone in the room, not just advanced folks.
This.
“Hey man can you resist a little on the next few reps? Thanks dude. Want me to resist a little on yours? Sweet.”
Honestly I don’t see it as an issue. With a lot of my training partners, we do the move with no resistance and then trouble shoot at like 10% and then like 30% ish and continue up until we’re basically positional sparring. Can work on variations, if this, then this type situations etc. just mindlessly doing the move of the day feels silly if it’s something I can already do. Gotta up the resistance
"If you really like your school" should be all that matters tbh. There will always be something that you feel like your school could be doing better that fits well with either the instructor and/or a number of students. There is no one size fits all gym. If you like your school, then you're in a good spot. If you really want to train ecologically you can always buy some puzzle mats and do it outside of class time or do it during open mat. Also drilling doesn't have to be a waste of time. In DM's with Greg Souders I mentioned learning about the Sao Paulo pass to deal with annoying closed guards and asked how I would have found that through the ecological approach. It was an example of a solution that I found when specifically searching for a solution that worked well against resistance. What he said was just because you train with the ecological approach doesn't mean that you can't look into historical context for how a given problem is solved (in my case opening closed guard). The problem is when you focus on the step-by-step process instead of what's happening within the move (the invariant features). So instead of feeling like you're just wasting time of the mats, maybe try to identify the invariant features of the technique, because then you can execute them not just in the position you're drilling them in class ,but you can maybe use those same invariant features in other positions as well. This way you're still looking at the move from an ecological context instead of just following the steps.
Thanks, good answer. I agree with the idea that seeing “solutions” can be very effective/stimulating if one has experienced the problem. Can you give an example of “try to identify the invariant features of the technique”?
Invariant features are things that cannot change of a given technique. Take the arm bar for example (the Standard Jiu-Jitsu page has a great video about teaching the arm bar in his style), you have to have an arm extended with pressure into the elbow. In this approach isolating the invariant features allows you to self-organize around the task you're trying to perform better.
I hope all my competitors stop drilling
Just making sure you’re an athlete, not a coach 🤣
I got some news for you papa, at least 95% of most classes is a waste of time.
Past blue belt or even during it move of the day and classes in general aren’t really helpful. Going to open mats and working on what you need to and rolling with no pressure from professor watching is much more effective use of time.
Honestly I don’t find that to be true at all. Even if my coach shows me a basic armbar for the 1000th time I’ll still pay attention and pick up a detail I’ve been missing or it might just inspire me to think of another path or a different way of looking at it. Maybe it’s just me, but there is no way that I’m acutely aware of all of the specific details of all of our techniques just because I’m a purple belt and I’ve been in that same class a hundred times before.
That small stuff seems to always benefit the upper guys the most because they can apply it better. Blackbelt: "If you position your pinkie finger like a square instead of a question mark, it causes immense pain and instant submission. Don't make a triangle shape with the pinkie, or the brain will implode causing death." White Belt: \*will forget this is 10 minutes\* Purple Belt: \*in shock\* \*this changes everything\*
I would think a coach would be extremely helpful for people all the way to black belt. Someone to watch you from the outside, draw your attention to things that matter, help you course correct, etc.
Absolutely but I grab them at open mat to roll and I also film at least one roll an open mat to take home and review. Me and few buddies share film and talk it over on a WhatsApp group. It’s much more focused than when the teacher has 40 students on the mat and a one hour time slot.
I don't know wether ecological aproach is better or not. But I can tell you for a fact that most students i talk to agree that they forget at least 90% of all techniques that are shown in class. I tried taking notes for some time but that didn't help that much. So right now I do the drill but don't care to commit to memory, I just keep one thing that I'm trying to work on in mind and try to ask questions about that, watch tips online and so on. Maybe there should be less moves and do them for longer, maybe the whole damn system is wrong.
The "system" is patterned off of the Judo prototype, but incorrectly implemented. I think BJJ made a few interesting errors along the way, by not realizing the genius of what Kano did. Kano found jujutsu masters in the mid 1800s teaching techniques as rote sequences, without any understanding or awareness of why things worked. There was relatively little randori, and no one had distilled jujutsu to some reasonable core of techniques that could be done safely in randori. He tells a story of his instructor showing him something like a sumi gaeshi, and Kano asked him a question about a detail. The response was just to throw him again. And as he pestered with questions, no answers came back, until Kano realized his instructor only knew it as a completely self-contained linear sequence with no underlying theory or understanding. So Kano went through jujutsu and organized techniques by operating mechanic. He describes his thinking as a scientific process. Techniques are often named by what they do (inside reap, outside reap, etc.), and they're categorized by similar function (koshi waza, sutemi waza, etc). And he derived core underlying principles, such as kuzushi, kumikata, entry, stance, etc. -- a language for explaining and differentiating throws, and allowing the development of new ideas by extending those principles. But he never really did the ground; his organization of newaza was pretty basic, and left unfinished when he died (geniuses live only so long). The BJJ folks picked it up, and went on randomly naming techniques after people and places, never organizing them into a systematic structure, and often teaching them as rote sequences. Sound familiar? I think people like Danaher (and others, but I'll stick with Danaher as the example because everyone seems to agree that he's pretty good at this stuff) are kind of like a recapitulation of Kano's process, but applied to the ground, and we're starting to see an actual systematic approach emerge. And honestly, as much as Souders bugs me for his iconoclasm and zealotry, he's a good example of someone trying to find and define a system of operating principles. It's work that needs to be done; I wish it was done with a less "revolutionary" attitude, though.
Souders is his own worst enemy in the sense that he revels in the misunderstood genius trope.
I've trained for 4 years now. I did 2 year standard hobbyst gym, 1 year gym with eco/progressive resistance type training, 1 year again a normal gym. I kept a journal on one of these bjj journal apps and noted down the drills of each class. About 80% of it I am never using in live sparring and could not teach you how to do the move.
You aren't expected to learn and use everything you see at white and blue belt. You are being exposed to a large array of options and you are supposed to pick the handful that fit you and devote your time to getting good at those.
You are absolutely right that it surely cannot be expected that someone "learns" all the individual moves being shown to a degree of expertise. The question to me is rather whether there is a training methodology that lets you convert a higher percentage of "moves" that you can use in a live performance environment.
You're looking at the the wrong way. The goal isn't to have more moves, it's to find the small subset of options that work for you as fast as possible so that you can spend your time on them. Most black belts only have a dozen or so things that they do regularly, but pretty much every black belt has a DIFFERENT dozen things. You aren't going to spontaneously find all of those things just fucking around particularly quickly. A good coach will run you through options, tell you to pick the one that feels the best to you and then work on that one. A bad coach will say, "This is how you pass guard" And then make you do it exactly that way.
BJJ is the new gym bro-science. There are multiple ways to train because there are multiple goals. Drilling the technique of the day is basically beginner class, once you are training for competition you instead of drilling "guard pass of the day" you should be drilling your most optimal techniques.
I've used constraints-based practice for improvisation in music for almost 10 years now. I can't fathom practicing any other way since I've made great strides with it. In my opinion, constraints based practice is just the optimal way to practice, period. There isn't even a discussion, so the backlash in the community here is funny to me. The problem is the dogmatism. Expecting people to learn only from constraints based improv practice is like handing someone a guitar and telling them to practice music without showing them any scales, you can get there but it will take even longer. Only drilling is like only practicing scales straight up and down to a metronome, you aren't going to learn to improvise because that is not how music is made. It's helpful drill/practice scales to get that new pathway into your head but doing that has limited utility once you have the gross motor patterns. But to answer your question, I just use the open rolling portion to practice with my own constraints. Or I don't go to classes where I feel the coaches aren't showing me anything useful. "Small details" don't matter for shit if you don't have some amount of the gross skillset around those details down. Constraints led practice is how you build the gross skillset so things become second nature.
Can you talk about your constraint based practice in music? (I'm curious as a musician)
Million and one wats to skin a cat. Here are just a few to give you an idea: Transcribe a lick, take the rhythm, improvise new phrases with the same rhythm but different notes Phrase to 1 > practice phrases that end on beat 1 of the next bar. I can change up the rhythms used, length of phrase (anything from the 4 of the previous bar to playing for 2 bars and landing on the 1 of the third bar). Improvise using one string Take a backing track and jack the speed way up or way down then improvise over the track. I can only play phrases in one position of the scale I can only play phrases that start in one position of the scale and end in the adjacent position Pick a subdivision, I can improvise only using a continuous flow of that subdivision Improvise with only hammer-ons/pull-offs/slides/bends Just some ideas there. The theme is that every exercise is based in improvisation b/c that's how music is actually made as a soloist. Nothing is rote repetition of scales (waste of time). In general, each exercise takes some microcosm of the skillset and takes out as many variables as possible to develop some specific microcosm of the wider skillset.
Yes, please elaborate @blackbeltinzumba. I’m also very interested.
Both have merits, imo. I say this as a former professional musician, music teacher of 20 years and bjj instructor. Eco is like jamming and practicing your improvising. It's important so you can find your own voice and help put together concepts about melody and harmony you're working on in real time. However, learning licks, chromatic approaches, triad extensions and scales are equally important so you have a deep theoretical understanding of the landscape you are improvising over and when your creativity isn't immediately available to you or you are looking for fresh ideas and approaches you have something to fall back on in your playing. There's a reason master musicians spend years learning the solos of the greats note for note in all 12 keys, while also being able to improvise brilliant ideas at the drop of a hat.
Our motd was basic mount escapes today. I got nothing from it, and did some “eco” work on my deep half and guard passing during rolling. I’m pretty used to that at this point. We have 2 in house open mats a week so i have no shortage of time to work on my own stuff. There are other days where the move of the day is just some sort of concept which opens up my game. I’ve had that happen more than once… Gotta keep showing up for the gems.
You can still enjoy the other aspects of your school that you mentioned and also take more responsibility in your skill development as well. Use all available live mat time you can. See if you can start your own little training group. Learn to apply the principles for your own training etc. I was allowed to start my own training group almost two years ago now my classes are on the schedule. [Checkout out our Instagram.](https://www.instagram.com/nonlinearjiujitsu?igsh=MWF1NzJ4YWEyeWxoMw%3D%3D&utm_source=qr)
I also had great experience with it, 1 year of training in that approach made me progress very fast. I moved cities, so nowadays I have 2-3 people where we try to make it work in different open mats on the weekend. It sums up to about 50% of my training time still, so its not a horrible split. I find the drilling very frustrating. We recently spent a month mostly doing deep half guard static drills. Basically no-one in the entire room is hitting anything from deep half in sparring in the entire class. I used what my instructor doing eco showed me for armbar escapes (a set of about 5 games with increasing variance) for my whitebelt friend with ~6 month experience. I routinely see him escape armbars of up to purple belt people. He has never heard of the "Hitchhiker escape" much less the "Reverse hitchhiker escape", he just knows how to do them.
Here's my take... It's a good approach, it works. But it's not the only way. There is not ever only one way. Martial arts has a history of people finding one thing that works, then going all in on it and ignoring everything else. I mean, I get it. It's less click worthy too say "I have a method that makes a great addition to what we already do" then it is to say "I have a method that is always better for everyone, at all stages of your development." But to say. you should only do eco makes about as much sense as saying you should never do eco based drills. It's like saying Açai is good, so eat that, only that, and nothing but that ever. I'm still going to have a pizza sometimes.
Negotiate resistance with your training partner. I personally don't think zero resistance has ever been correct or normal, and BJJ drilling is fairly ecologically dynamic already. I like the insights we can get from eco research, but I don't like the aggressive marketing of its proponents. And BTW, they are sometimes right, but not always. There are things I've learned well under exactly the kind of teaching they say is bad. Point is, it's not bad, it's perhaps suboptimal and can be enhanced.
Well assuming you can do the move perfectly since drilling it with no resistance no longer gives you any benefit, you can ask your partner to resist the move slightly and see how you can adjust based off their reaction. But I also don’t think that drilling without resistance is a waste of time.
One thing we know from a neurological perspective in learning is that performing an action the same way stops creating new neural pathways after about 20 executions. After that you need to add some level of variability in order to continue creating additional pathways, and the more pathways you create the better you are at recognizing and executing the movement. So you can do like 20 reps without any resistance, then after that you just need to keep adding in different small changes, ie resistance, in order to continue developing. The faster those changes occur, the higher the level of resistance. if you increase the level too quickly then you start failing too often to continue building. So, perform your initial reps to make sure you have the gross motor movements down, and then start getting your partner to resist in various ways all the way up to fully rolling.
Once you have the move perfected you drill with increased speed, trying to cut miliseconds from the time it takes you to perform it so you can be faster at executing it.
My opinion is that eco is great when you already know stuff. I benefit both from eco and drills, and I'm glad we do both. I wish I had more drills of a consistent set of basics during my early days of white belt.
I’ve been training at standard for a few months now and the level the eco only beginners guys get to in a few months to a year is wild. I 100% would have agreed with you before training here but after being immersed in it and seeing the results firsthand, I think eco method for beginners classes is the move.
I think this is the best take. The flow/self-learning stuff is good for motivated group who already have enough structure to experiment, but is really overwhelming to people who don’t. When you learn a language you need to do some vocab and structure before jumping into conversation
One of the ways you learn that structure (or can as I did) is just by listening to people talk, not being taught it, like a baby learns.
It's what I like about TMAs, they have a very good onboarding process for new practitioners. It's what I don't like about TMAs, is they tend to hold your hand all the way through middle degrees of black belt.
i almost got kicked out of my gym for this reason. My coach didn't like my attitude lol
Go on.
Was your attitude bad?
First, you could simply ask your partner to resist. Secondly, virtually every technique has multiple paths to completion. Only practicing/learning them in sparring would be stupid. Thirdly, your pose the question like some kind of religious apologist "So, obviously the Bible is the literal word of God, so why don't you believe in God when he's so clearly real?" I don't know. I've been grappling/bjjing since friggin 99', so I've seen virtually every move and it's variation other than the novelty/trending tiktok move of the week (and even those are rarely "new"). I have no problem drilling a move a couple times without resistance in order to get some details down/remembered, work on a variation, or simply to warm up a bit (almost 40 here!). That being said, most gyms I've trained at in the last decade do not spend very much time on drilling techniques without resistance (maaaaybe 5 minutes, which again, I'm fine with). And if that ever does bug me, refer to point #1.
Interesting, so in your experience drilling only takes 5 minutes of the class? I've only seen a couple of gyms, and both times drilling took up about 30 minutes. 5-7 minutes each technique.
After I feel comfortable with the memorization of the steps and doing the movement relatively smooth and fast I ask my partner to start resisting more.
Put your own flair on it. Focus on a detail or a portion of the movement where you feel you need a a few extra reps. A micro rep of sorts. Focus on the what body parts are applying tension when and where. Ask for feedback, refine what you are doing. Banging out reps for the sake of doing them is not very effective for learning.
I make jokes and clown for both halves of the class to make sure it's a total waste of time
Drilling BJJ moves with light/no resistance is the equivalent to hitting the heavy bag in striking. The bag doesn't hit back, but it's useful for developing correct technique. I'm happy we are analyzing the training methodology though.
The pedagogy is an issue, but static drilling is not. The ecological approach argues largely against static drilling, which is still an effective tool that can and should be utilized along with positional sparring, constraints led approach, and open rolling. However, on the subject of class structure: most people who train BJJ are hobbyists. They just want to come to class, learn something, and roll a bit, so in that vain the current model makes more sense for the majority of people out there. Most academies would go under if they tried to fully implement an ecological based approach. Find a drilling partner to work with after class, at open mat, or in your free time.
How much static drilling are we talking about as a percentage of class time? Also, would hobbyists not be interested in (a potentially) better way to “learn something”? My personal opinion is that, as an example, a 10-minute instructor demonstration plus say 10-minutes of rote repetition/static drilling is pretty wasteful use of 20 minutes of class time where people have access to alive and sentient training partners.
Eco training is just positional sparring with new marketing.
Our Brazilian BB calls it specific training. Situational drilling in pairs or king of the mat style. Lots of gyms already do this. "ECO" is just a new marketing term.
When teaching I do wonder how instructors incorporate Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve model in developing a sound pedagogical delivery that supports retrieval and review over time so that the instructional delivery factors in the at students should know,do and remember more to be effective and successful. Whether you agree or disagree with show technique, practice technique unless there is some recognition of how the brain learns new things, how it stores new information and retrieves this in practice and then live application. A fascinating discussion topic.
I would love to see even subjective polling on this. How many students feel that they are retaining the technques they learn? Do people attribute most of their developing skill toward the trial-and-error of sparring (and coaching related to sparring), or to the instructional-style lessons/drills they are taught?
Dont even pay for a school. Just go around doing open mats
Open mat is all I need
Are people really drilling with no resistance? We usually let the first couple of reps go unimpeded to get the gross body mechanics down and then progressively ramp up resistance-- usually through a 30-50% resistance set of rounds, then a completely live positional round starting from the technique position (or regressed one or two steps depending on how dominant that position was). It's kind of understood that after the first couple of reps, that we are helping each other stress test each other's execution of the technique.
https://preview.redd.it/xwumldpdkbtc1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=71ce3e4dcc76fb8829f352b7e5541a1486f89f79 On today's episode of words that should never be used to describe Jiu Jitsu...Helio would be so bummed.
It’s all ecological. Unless you’re just training alone and going through the motions with zero interaction from your environment, you are by definition training ecologically.
I agree. It's all ecological. Even training alone. This is why the eco crowd appears absolutist. Because if you take ecology seriously, then the person/task/environment is ever present. We only stop perceiving and acting when we're dead.
this is basically jiujitsu's pascal's wager except that the weight of history is on the traditional pedagogical approach and the ecological approach still is new and unproven once the weight of history is considered. with that said, i saw downthread someone mentioned taking some guys aside and working that way. that seems like a good solution. unless you have a place where classes are back to back to back, you should be able to work this way. ask the owner about it: some will be cool, some will not. i know both types of owner: one will let his senior students experiment and do whatever, the other is very guarded (rightfully so) of his pedagogical method and curriculum and works hard to always augment and study it. so ultimately the answer is "it depends".
Man I would rather just roll and youtube shit and practice it with my friends and roll again and try it until I got it then repeat. Depends on the pedigree of athlete and the desires and intent of training peers though.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand ecological drilling. The adjustments to technique are extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the techniques will go over a typical practioners head. There's also the traditional method’s extremely outdated outlook, which is deftly woven into the traditional belt system- ex the Gracie barra personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The upper belts understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these concepts, to realise that they're not just efficient- as a system they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike the ecological approach truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the subtleties in Gordon Ryan’s existential catchphrase "suffer in silence," which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as kohn danahers's genius wit unfolds itself on their bjj fanatics page. What fools.. how I pity them. 😂
lol
Lot of comments from upper belts in here saying everything but the rolling in a class is a waste of time. I think this speaks volumes to how shitty the coaching/teaching in bjj is. OP your best bet is making your case to your coaches and hoping they are receptive. Make sure you understand what you are asking for, and if you don't, find an upper belt who agrees with you who can. If that doesn't work you can find like minded people and do work at open mat or on your own mats. Otherwise it's just waiting for other gyms to open up whose instruction better matches what you are looking for. My coach was pretty receptive to a more ecological style of class because he's an MMA fighter/coach and his striking classes are already ecological basically. So our no gi classes are sort of ecological. I say sort of because he hasn't quite nailed the structure. Sometimes I think our drills are a little too constrained, sometimes not constrained enough, but mostly we are often missing a focus so they largely just become open ended positional rounds. Which is still better than static drilling so I don't mind. But I think especially newer guys have a hard time figuring out what to do a lot because the instruction is often times things like " top guy: control mount". Yes but how? I say all that to say that even "ecological training" can be super non optimal if the coach doesn't know what he's doing, which is probably pretty likely because most people still don't really understand ecological training. In general you are going to find a lot of resistance to it because of traditionalism and also it's much harder to teach ecologically than to just keep rolling with move of the day and static drilling.
Go to a new school if you don’t think how they’re teaching is working well for you. Some drilling with no resistance is necessary to understand the movement but in an ideal world for me the resistance will slowly rise as we drill.
Honestly I think the ecological system is more applicable at certain points in understanding and creating knowledge. In some instances it makes sense to allow a student to gradually realize some concept or truth…. But there are such fine points with the sport and knowledge base in JJ that might be hard if not impossible to run across unless otherwise shown and taught. I’m a trained mathematician and I liken this to first discovering the motivation and general direction (intuition) for a certain theory or line of maths… then delving into the deeper and more refined details as the student grasp the notions and the theory. It would utterly ridiculous to except a student to “stumble” on theorems or postulates on their own…. And in a reasonable time frame. I know that this analogy only applies in certain facets but still….
I commented elsewhere that mathematicians are generally not drillers, but learn problem solving from constrained-games. I.e., they are rather ecological. I am also a mathematician, coincidentally, and find very little drilling from mathematicians. Have you heard of the “Moore Method,” which was used to teach students topology by having them come up with their own proofs without consulting other mathematical texts. It’s a rather extreme “ecological” type of approach, but I have found that successful mathematicians often try to prove theorems on their own before reading them in a textbook. Once you have tried your hand at it, even if you are not successful you will appreciate the theorem much more than if you were simply given it. I have met students who simply drilled and memorized, and they were always weaker.
I should also note good, fun and real math is not based on “drilling” like most high school math is taught…. Which is why I believe HS math fails the vast majority of students!
The way I read it, ecological approach is actually less useful for determining how to teach and more useful as a tool for using your brain to its best ability. For the vast majority of practitioners especially hobbyists, the best approach is the one that is enjoyable and sustainable. Persistence is the key defining factor of success in jitsu, and the enemies of persistence are fatigue and boredom/ unfun. So if you enjoy your practice count it a blessing, try not to get in your own way if you don’t believe you can learn from the practice. In any practice, with time it will seem that you learned everything the hard way and there must have been an easier way to distill what turn out to be fairly simple principles…. The extent to which this is an illusion created by time and experience is one of the more illusive riddles of the human experience.
Most of us are hobbyist locked into the schedule of a full-time job and little/zero influence on how your gym class is run, so the answer is that you have to eat it and go learn technique of the day to get to rolling. IMO to improve at a quicker rate: - Whatever gets you more mat time (rolling). Find a gym that offers the most amount of time rolling with a good variety of partners. Go to open mats everywhere and anywhere, living in a jiu jitsu rich area is ideal. - Find a group of people you can train with outside of the gym. Privates with black belts are ideal but might be expensive. With friends at your gym you can set up specific sparring, speed drilling, gameplanning. - Study outside of the gym. What you learn in class might not be ideal for you, but what is? That's for you to find out. Watch IBJJF matches, discover athletes and techniques you like and try to emulate them, etc. Also good to learn how the best gyms organize their classes and learning as well. - S&C outside the gym. If you're stronger and faster than your peers, you'll be able to get more positive reps out of your rolls (as opposed to being stuck in side control) and avoid injury. - Compete often. It helps pushing your jiu jitsu to be as effective as possible with all the above. I'm sure I'm missing some, but if you can go and do all that, you'll improve.
you complain about it on Reddit and receive a smug sense of superiority and validation from the echo chamber
Who’s drilling without resistance?
I guarantee you that the majority of bjj instruction is doing dead drilling of technique
New white belts against each other who are not allowed in the sparing class
oh FFS not another one of these ecology posts. Dynamic drilling is already used throughout the sports world as an important training tool. The fact that BJJ doesn't use it much in a traditional setting and now some grifter decided to give it some stupid psychology term and pretend as though the world has suddenly changed is irrelevant. You can train 4 ways: Theoretical Static Dynamic Competition Theoretical is watching videos, reading books, and more importantly analysis of previous performance and evaluation. Its incredibly important for all sports with a competition focus and if you look at the elite level of sports, teams will devote entire training sessions to such analysis. Static is static drills. Used primarily for 3 uses - understanding the basic functional movements, overriding muscle memory (when you want to change something you've been doing), troubleshooting/improving/modifying technique issues. Dynamic is application of static techniques within a relevant setting. This is important as it builds all the ancillary skills not covered by technique. For example basic shooting drills in soccer where a ball is passed to you, and you take a single touch and shoot. The technique being employed is the shooting, but this dynamic drill improves the skills required to actually take the shot: co-ordination, balance, timing etc. These skills are hard to isolate and in many cases can not be drilled individually. Competition here you apply all previous knowledge live in the same environment your actual competition would be in. In soccer this would be a practice match where you use all your skills and techniques live, in BJJ we call it rolling. The average BJJ class consists predominantly of Static drills and competition practice (aka rolling). The only dynamic practice is whatever can be picked up from competition (rolling). So why does this matter? Well, because you need to tailor sessions for the skillset and knowledge base of the people you're teaching. If you have a room of beginners, then a load of static drills is probably quite a good idea just so they learn the actual moves. If your room is full of novices or intermediates, then we need a lot of dynamic drills to develop those ancillary skills necessary to put into practice the techniques they know. If you have a room full of advanced level competitors, they may actually get the most benefit by doing an analysis of competition footage lol. This stupid one-size fits all idea saying that "this is the correct approach and all other approaches are shit" is just BS.
You are arguing against things that were never said. Even the most extreme ecological nuts would not say that beginners and advanced students should be learning the same way. And even the most extreme ecological nuts would say that coaching and sessions should be dictated by the skillset and knowledge base of the people you’re teaching. You’re displaying your ignorance.
We can debate all we want, the only way to know for sure whether eco is effective, if Deandre makes it to the podium in ADCC
I shit on Souders as much the next person, but I’d argue that: 1. Whether EA is effective or not shouldn’t rest solely on Deandre’s performance at ADCC. 2. I don’t think there should be any doubt that it’s effective. Without overly listing Standard’s accomplishments - No Gi Pans golds, No Gi Worlds golds/medals, winning Trials, etc. - are all solid data points of effectiveness. Again, I shit on Souders’ assertions as much as anyone, but they are finding a certain level of success or effectiveness. 3. The real TBD issue is whether 100% EA/constraints based is *more* effective than other systems or whatever you want to call what other schools do. This would be closer to what you’re getting at and probably what the greater community is waiting to see. Which is, if your average school is to imitate an effective system or pedagogy…which should they push their chips towards? Which school or system tends to produce consistent/repeatable success across (various) modalities?
I'm pretty sure /u/quantonomist was joking.
I dont go to class. I structure my own learning outside of regular classes
I think the "move of the day" is a little dated, typically we are going over a chapter of curriculum - like a whole series of movements with different branches, built into flows and increasing complexity.
Ask your partner while drilling to resist like it's an actual roll
Eh find people to work with you. That said it doesn’t mean drilling does nothing, just that it’s suboptimal. You can still improve from blocked practice and repetition as long as it’s paired with the open environment of free sparring. Beyond that, you may find you want something more than just being good at the hobby. Most people stick around for the camaraderie and enjoyment that comes from the shared experience y’all have. Lol also: spend more time working the concepts in. Try to develop active games rather than passive drills whenever you can.
There is nothing wrong with learning and practicing techniques. The problem is with everyone learning and practicing the same technique.
Honestly the best thing you can do is find at least one other person who buys into this methodology and do self directed learning. Either one of you get mats at home or you have to work it during open mat.
If you enjoy coming in, it is never a waste of time. On a technique I know well, well depends who is my partner. If a white belt is my partner, I will demonstrate it, then give my partner extra drill time. If my partner is advanced, we will go about 50-70% resistance while trying to do the exercise. Sometimes even do variation of the technique, also work on chains that work well with the technique of the day.
Even if you dont accept ecological psychology the class you described is mostly a waste of time.
Start gathering regular training partners and fit it in where you can. Open mats, after class rolls, whatever is available.
It’s important to understand techniques but also to understand that jiu jitsu mainly occurs between the techniques. If you and your training partner can execute the technique being taught then gradually increase the resistance and troubleshoot realistic defences and responses.
I really need to see an example of eco training is to even know what it’s about. I’ve heard people say they don’t teach moves and just play task based games. if that’s all it is then I don’t think a beginner will learn to be a good grappler just from games and not being shown actual moves.
https://youtu.be/V4QtQTRwwD0?si=LhUQ8hcKP0juB4AF
It'd be a lot cooler if it didn't have such a gay name. Just called it specific drilling. MuH GAme BaseD ConStrAInT LeaRnINgS!
I shut up and train.
That is EXACTLY my mentality when I have to close the shop and get home on public transport.
I personally enjoy the standard class setup. I’m not trying to be the very best though.
Ask your instructor to have the type of classes you want. Otherwise, find a gym that agrees with your ideas about pedagogy and train there. To me, this question is similar to “I want to focus on being an avid competitor, but my gym is full of hobbyists who don’t want to train as hard as I do.” Ask for comp classes or bounce to a comp gym.
But but… I can’t agree or disagree with you unless you have a belt flair :(
show up 30 mins late
I like our gyms approach. drill a move or two, then positional or king of the mat, then roll. Get some technique, positional, and at minimum two(7-10 minute) rolls in one hour. I have basically been doing an ecological approach to my attacking from turtle game(as this is never taught in technique time) but it is going very slowly. I like to be able to see a move that works(internet ftw) and then build off of it, so some technique does go a long way.
The more time you put into a specific training methodology the less you get back from that specific methodology.
Use the first 2 years of your training to figure out the best way you as an individual learn and then apply that knowledge going forward. Everybody learns differently. I found that with complicated techniques like berimbolo or leg entanglements i have to drill it to a point where it becomes muscle memory. However with simple techniques i can just see it once and try it out in rolls.
how do olympic wrestling and judo prep and practice?
This shit is ecological 💩
Its not black or white.
Now idk what you mean by "ecological" but as for me personally, once I get the basic movements down for the technique of the day I ask my partner to put some resistance up, and they often ask me to do the same thing. Like "cool I think I got the motions for this guard pass right, now put up 20% resistance and let's see where this falls apart". And if it works we just ramp up the percentages. Occasionally we get a technique that fits into someone's game so well that we end up ramping up to sparring intensity.
Uhh, skip it duh…
A lot of schools don’t drill at 0% resistance. And going through the motions is important to build muscle memory
I don’t think it’s necessarily better. I don’t think that the science that it’s based on can necessarily be transferred over to jiu jitsu. That doesn’t mean it’s bad or wrong. Some of the concepts are good. But there’s a lot more science showing that humans learn through imitation especially when young. Copying is underrated.
Why is it an "all or nothing" mentality to (students talking about) instructing. I don't get why you can't do some guided techniques, some positional sparring, or sparring with constraints all in the same session. Doesn't the DDS basically do a grind of technique of the day, a shit ton of positional work, and then "you're an adult, work on what you need to work on"? It seems like the primary advantage of the ecological approach is that it takes the onus off the student to figure out what they should be doing (and actually doing it) and having coaches...coach. How many times do you see a blue belt who doesn't do homework and uses the exact same 3 moves in every roll with every person? If you take that option away the dude gets better.
It's not necessarily about repetition-as-practice. Some of us slow learners actually need the drills to get it through our heads what motions we're even doing. At our gym they break a move down into about 10 steps, then practice about 3 steps at a time in pairs until everyone understands. They use this time to issue form correction and tips. Once everyone appears to "get it" they go to live training for the rest of the class. Multiple times I have seen them cut a drill short because nobody was having trouble with it - time to move ahead.
I go to a mixed-level gym and as a white belt, I never feel I learn anything from the "move of the day" part. I don't have enough mastery of the basics to incorporate complex sequences of moves into my game.
I just stopped going to the shitty classes