Ep. 330: The Student's Guide to Eco, feat. Noah Shaffner & Greg Souders

Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Gin, top ranked women's competitor in North America, and long time B.J. Mental Models Premium Community Member has published her first ever course with us exclusive to B.J. Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in Jiu-Jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in Jiu-Jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a B.J. Mental Models Premium subscriber, you've already got access, and if you are not good news, you can get it now and get your first week free, go to B.J. Mental Models.com and check it out today. Hey, welcome to B.J. Mental Models Episode 330. I'm Steve Kwan. B.J. Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. Today, I'm joined by a first-timer to the podcast, Noah Schaffner, and a many-time returning guest. I've got Mr. Greg Saughters as well. Welcome guys. How's it going? The leg is going to tell you. I am doing well. Now, Noah, let's turn it over to you first, because you're the new kid on the block here. I mean, first of all, you're now a B.J. Mental Models sponsor to athlete, which I'm super excited about. Yeah, yeah, but it's so. Yeah, awesome. But you are also here today, because you have a very unique perspective on training under the ecological approach and the constraints led approach. But maybe I'll turn it over to you to tell your story here. Why don't you introduce yourself and talk about who you are and what your training looks like and what I were here today? Yeah, so I started grappling in the beginning of 2021. How I got interested in it isn't a particularly unique story. Just I enjoy competing and lost interest in team sports as I started to grow up and then became a fan of UFC and then Jiu-Jitsu, you seem like the most accessible outlet that would be relatively similar. And then I just got lucky enough that standard was the first jam that I actually walked into and trained at. And then right away, because I had done some prior looking into Jiu-Jitsu and what it was and what it looks like and what the training is like. There was definitely immediately a clear difference to how this gym was ran and what the classes looked like and how they're structured as opposed to what most of them look like at least at first glance online. But I really just became very passionate about it very quickly and as a result, one was training all the time because I was showing up to the class every single day like very, very early and because it's all live, I was getting a lot of experience grappling and then also because of my interest in it as a sport and how I was learning it in the specific way that Greg was structuring practice, I became more and more curious about that specifically and Greg would talk to me about that and share information with me. And yeah, basically the last four years, a majority of my time that has been able to be spent in here has been spent in standard, just training and trying to basically become the best representation that I can be of the methodology that we use and the athletes that it should be able to produce based on the claims we're making. Nice, Matt. Well, you know, this is fascinating to me. I was talking to, I don't remember who it was, but I had a guest on the show at one point many years ago who said that probably one of the main stats that determines how far you're going to go into sport is just sheer luck of the draw in terms of where you started, right? And to start and not know much about the sport and just randomly pick standard you get to as your first, that's pretty good luck, man. Like when I started, I wound up at this like awful strip mall, Gracie Baja because I didn't know any better. I just went to Google and chose the first result. So that is fantastic, man. You kind of wound up being able to ride the cutting edge here. And like we were talking about earlier, ECO is still relatively new to its adoption in Jiu Jitsu. And so many of the people now who are at strongest advocates, they didn't start using ECO. You know, they were already experienced grapplers by the time they landed on this method. But you're an interesting story because correct me if I'm wrong. But since day one, you've been using an ecological constraints led approach as the basis for your training, correct? Yeah, yeah. Well, I've been using as a generous way to say it. I've been subject to it's Greg who structures all the practice and has all the information and uses it and applies it. But I was lucky enough to show up at a gym where he had already been putting it into practice for years and had a ton of success at, you know, basically all up most levels of the sport. And then once the Andre came around all levels of the sport because he was able to show that it can take somebody who's just competing on local black belt circuits to the most highest peak elite level. But yeah, I was lucky enough where I already got to start in an environment that Greg was facilitating like that, which is pretty unique. Awesome, man. Well, Greg, I mean, I don't know if you need an introduction. You've of course been on here many times. And I'm guessing that anyone who listens to a show like this is probably already seen your stuff. But just in case why don't you also give yourself a quick intro for people who might be joining the podcast new? Oh, yeah. I'm a grappling coach, specializes in Nogi Jitsu. I run a gym called Standard Jitsu. You guys already been talking about. No, here's my student. I've been trying to teach the Jitsu community over the last few years how to implement CLA and should I try to introduce them to it as a better training methodology relative to the one we already have. So yeah, work with athletes and produce athletes specifically for Nogi. Amazing, man. Well, I think we probably don't need to spend a lot of time digging into what is Eko and what is the constraints led approach? Greg and me. Well, both Greg and Dr. Rob Gray have been on the podcast many times. And we've kind of unpacked this already. So my suggestion would be if you're landing on this new and you don't know what those terms mean, then I would hit the show notes and go listen to those episodes first or check out. I mean, there's myriad resources on the internet for learning a bit about this. But today, assuming that as a listener, we are all somewhat familiar with those approaches. I thought what would be cool is to talk about the student's perspective of what it's like in an Eko classroom because so many of the conversations that I've heard and Greg, you tell me if I'm wrong here, but they seem to center from the coaches perspective, right? And coaches can argue back and forth all day long about what the best approach is. But ultimately what matters is what is actually happening in the room and what are students getting out of it. So I would love to kind of use this as a show and tell to talk about what students see as the perspective of Eko. We know what it means for coaches, but for students, I think this could be fantastic. Okay, for sure. Awesome. I mean, the other option, of course, is we could just argue about Eko for three hours, but I think that's probably been done to death. No, it's exhilarating. I'm so tired of it. I can barely take it. When I hear that word ecological, I want, oh, I can't take it. So tired hearing it. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's okay. So again, I'll put a link in the show notes to some resources if people aren't familiar with the concepts, but assuming we are, no, I'll turn it over to you. I mean, tell me a little bit about what is it actually like? I mean, I think we all know the idea of Eko, right? You know, and the idea of a constraints led system where rather than explicit instruction, right? Rather than being told, here's the 10 steps to how to do the perfect arm bar. You're kind of in a live lab where you it organically emerges from your practice and the role of the coach is to put guard rails on that to steer you in the right direction. Sounds all well and good, but tactically speaking, like when you go to class, what does that look like? What happens? And how is that different from again, someone who's maybe training at a Gracie Baja and is used to the classic way of running a Jiu Jitsu class? What does your training look like? Yeah. Well, I think for starters, like one thing that's important for people to know if they don't already, it's a lot more simple than a lot of the community makes it out to be in terms of the students experience. A lot of people think that really, really complex academic languages being used because a majority of the information out there about this methodology comes from Greg or other people that use this methodology or this field of science to underpin their methodology for training. When they go on these podcasts is with the idea or the intention to spread this information to people so they can get better at coaching or structuring practice or understanding how human behavior or skill emerges. It's not, I'm going to tell you this information so you can get better at grappling. If it was just that, you would not need nearly as much information or nearly as complex language, which is the whole point that we're trying to make. So for one, in the training room, the game explanations are very, very brief. Like the percentage of coach speaking versus live training is 95% to 5%, or 90% to 10%, maybe. And that can be determined in a small margin, like depending on what we're exploring, but it really, really is just you set out tasks either continuously or to fight towards to the end in order to win a game. And then you have these tasks contradict each other. So that both players, actions, whatever they're taking are always in opposition to each other, which is representative of actual grappling. And then you try to vary that up as much as you can where they're experiencing every aspect of the game generally. And you just do that on a daily daily basis. So it's exposing anybody regardless of whatever experience that they have to every general aspect of grappling, every single training session, every single day. And so even though you're not speaking to the students that much, the amount of information that they're picking up and are organizing around are like how much valuable information they're picking up at least is much greater than say a stereotypical Gracie Baja experience where it's a 20 minute, 30 minute lecture on one specific movement sequence and then 30 minutes of warmups. Or if it is due to just a related movement, it's just high repetition drilling. And then once they do go into live, it's incredibly unfocused high-intensity short interval training, which is basically just really, really hard workouts. Yeah, I think that we can maybe explain a little bit what we mean when we talk about the traditional method. It occurs to me, people may not be familiar with that terminology. But when I was a young lad and I started Giu Gitsu, I went to class and the class was basically divided into three parts. The first part was some sort of warmup. I was lucky. The warm-up would be jujitsu-related kind of, but even when a warm-up is jujitsu-related, often it's not intelligently designed such that it's really that useful. The example that I always give is, you know, the old line drills where you get people to shrimp down the mat, right? People think that that is a super helpful drill because technically shrimping is the thing you do in jujitsu, but I've always argued that's not really a great approach because the way that you shrimp to go down the mat is like distance-based, and that's a very different goal from shrimping to get someone off of you or get out of a bad position. But if you're not lucky, the first part of the class is just going to be jumping jacks and burpees and stuff, right? Basically, calisthenic bullshit that you could do at home. Then the second third of the class is lecture time, which is where you're, everyone gathers around the instructor, and they show you the ten steps to do the perfect arm bar or whatever the technique of the day is. Usually there's not one technique. Usually there's like three if you're lucky, sometimes more, and it's often way more than any new person can reasonably remember. Then the last third of the class is usually sparring, and that can take a variety of forms. It can be open rolling, which is fun, but not always the best for targeted skill development. Sometimes if you're real lucky, maybe the coach will apply some degree of positional sparring, so at least the role is kind of focused. That's where this whole debate comes up, but the whole meme of it, well, is the coach's positional sparring? It's like, well, no, we won't get into that for now. The point is that this kind of three-part structure is very common in jujitsu, even to this day. You can learn jujitsu pretty well doing that. There's a lot of people who have become amazing at it, but that doesn't mean it's the best approach. The movement that I have observed is more towards like task-based, skill-based games. The thing I've also found and know what you tell me if I'm wrong here, but it's a lot harder from the student's perspective. It's a lot more tiring because there's much more game time involved. You don't get 30 minutes to sit there and listen to your coach talk. You're always working. That really changes the dynamic of the room. Sure. From where I'm standing, at least in regards to skill development alone, the only utility that's going to be found in any of that traditional class structure that's not the live training when it comes to skill development is going to be like the slight direction that you might be able to push a student in with that 30-minute lecture where they're going to have some sort of intention for themselves or something new that they're paying attention to while they're grappling. But even then, to acknowledge that benefit is kind of silly on its face because that exact same benefit could be had from just a very, very small queue or task given prior to training before setting the students out into a game where now you've given them the exact same amount of benefit, but with a one-word queue as opposed to a 30-minute lecture. Okay, so let's talk about that because the whole concept of how language influences coaching I think is furiously under-discussed in this sport. A friend of the show, Nick Winkelman, he's an awesome coach who has created some amazing resources about how to use language to coach more effectively and he talks about the importance of queues. But I would love to hear like, what does a queue look like in this room? Because again, if someone is coming in from the traditional method, they're probably used to their coach sitting down and being like, "Okay, guys, today we're doing the arm bar and step one is you put your foot here and step two is you put your foot here and now you drill that for two minutes and then the other guy drills that for two minutes and you haven't learned anything yet because none of this is going to sink in, but it's time to move on to a new technique, right? Queuing is all about simplifying your language. What does that look like in the gym? What kind of queues would Greg be throwing at you while you're trying to learn and how do you find those are more helpful than I guess a traditional, more wordy approach? Well, I guess some important distinctions that I would make between the average queue or task that would be given to a student versus what I hear and standard would be one, there's never any reference to any sort of idealized movement beyond reaching the desired outcome. So everything has always talked about within the context of its function and reaching whatever outcome you're trying to reach with whatever that exchange may be. It's never him trying to push me towards a very, very specific idealized shape or a personal preference of his. It's all the language that is going to be used is going to be very, very physical and very literal and it's going to be very, very focused on what effect am I going to try and have on my opponent or what effect am I trying to prevent my opponent from having on me? It's all physical language. He's speaking about two human bodies and the fundamental reality of those interactions in a grappling context. Not how do I stop somebody from doing it just to the dragon on me? So Greg, maybe what would some examples be? I mean, again, taking it back to what people might be used to if they follow a more traditional approach, you know, I have had many coaches yell at me over the years like put your left foot on his hip and I have not found that always to be the best coaching when it gets super explicit and literal. And often if the coach gets frustrated, it devolves into basically the role has to stop because the coach is throwing so much info at you that you can't actually roll anymore because now you're fully engaged in listening. So as a coach, like what would a good cue look like and maybe an example? I mean, arm bars, right? Like what would what kind of cueing language would you be throwing out there at your athletes to get them to kind of tighten their technique? Well, we're not really throwing cueing language at all. What we're doing is we first define the situation that we're in and then we give them a task focus. So we could think simply in the mounted position, we want our students to have a deeper relationship with how to move arms. So we give them a task at like try to get your partner's wrists and pin them to the mat on either side of the head or try to get one arm under your partner's elbows and connect your hands or both your arms under your partner's elbows and connect your hands, something like this. All the while, stay on top and hold your partner down. We would give them a task. So we don't even say a thing. We would divide the position. We show what we mean and we give them something they can work on that has an immediate result, meaning if I get it, I can see that I got it. If I didn't, I can see that it failed and then I can continue to adjust as I continue to play the game. So we give them task focuses and then while they're playing, we could interact with them while they're working and say something like focus on the elbows. Keep trying to get under your partner's elbows, remove their hands, remove what's pushing on you. These are just words we use to get the affy acting in a direction to produce a result external from their body. Right. Interesting. Let's maybe explain that as well. Why is it important that it's external form from their body? Why is that more important than just telling people how to look at things from an internal perspective? Why is it important that the language refer to the outside world? Well, the first reason is that the shapes we make with our body, the angles that we move our wrist, elbows, shoulders, hips, knees, the way we move our torso are all relative to demand to the task. So they're not essentially controlled. It's not like we have a map inside the body that we're trying to map onto the effect that we're trying to have. I have to move the parts relative to what they're moving for. So the way my arm was shaped to get under an elbow would be different from when my arm was shaped to get under a head, for example. Though there might be similarities, again, we control our shapes based on the demands of the task that's being asked of us. And because of that, because the shapes we make with our body are relational, relational being between the capacity I have to move and what I'm being asked to move against, we want to keep the focus outward because of that. So again, it's what I'm doing that makes my arm move the way that it does, not the way that I think about it. And there's also a deeper reason. There's a researcher named Gabriel Wolff who showed that attention affects performance. So when we're thinking about let's say the way our elbow bends or the feelings that we're having or the thing that we're trying to do, performance goes down. But if we focus our attention external to ourselves, like further away from our body, producing results that we can see happen in real time, our performance goes up. So again, it's the marriage between the relational idea of why we move IE. We move relative to demand the task. And of course, the function our attention has on that, which is external from ourselves, produces a better result. Yeah. And in the language of coaching here, we often refer to that as external cues. And those are generally considered to be superior to internal cues, which are more just a reference of like you said, Greg, what's going on in your brain at the time? A good example of this in illustration for people listening. If you've ever been in a situation where you're trying to do something like an, I don't know, like an arm bar or a knee bar, and it just feels like your body length is too different from your partner's body length. And you're just not able to do the things that your coach is saying. And it sounds so easy. Like they're saying, just do this with your hand. You know, just tighten your grip here and here. And here, a lot of the time that's because the way they're coaching you is not taking into account the fact that we all have different body dimensions. And so if you're entirely focused on like your own body positioning, that doesn't take into account that there could be significant differences in your opponent's shape and size. And you may have to adjust how you position things the way that you do a technique properly against like a giant person. It isn't going to look the same as the way that a coach might explain it verbally if they're talking about things in a more classic way. So I really like that bit about being outcome based in terms of your cues and describing things like what is the goal you're trying to achieve in the environment rather than just telling people like put your left hand one inch higher, put your right hand one inch lower. Did that explain that okay? Yeah, yeah, but you know, what's interesting about that just I make this point for you, you can talk to know more. But the one idea that I've been centering my mind around recently is how strong feedback is like when you read any model of learning and whether it be a computer system or a human, the way they receive feedback, how often and how salient that feedback is determines what type of adjustment they can make. So you know, in movement science, we really have two types of feedback that are like big picture. This would be knowledge of result and knowledge of performance. So knowledge of result is an immediate feedback we get from acting out on the world. Did I get the result that I was intending to? This is very strong because it allows us to adjust right away because we can see successive failure happen right in front of us. Knowledge of performance is a little bit trickier. This is like the angle which my elbow was when I did the thing. Did I produce as much force as I could have at this angle versus this angle or at this height versus that height? That's harder. And it's more difficult for us to focus on the performance rather than the result. So just by starting creating training protocols where it's result based, we get students interacting with that feedback mechanism right away. First is the performance one which may take days, weeks, or months to tune ourselves to. Or we might have to watch video of it happening and make these hard guesses about why the elbow is this degree and not this degree. And that's harder to access as a feedback mechanism. It's not as salient for immediate changes and outcomes. So again, that's another reason why those external cues and those external focus of attention and those task focuses of tend to are so important. Awesome. Awesome. Noah, I would love to hear from your perspective, as someone who started off under this method, how did you find this approach as a beginner? Because something that I've observed is, you know, of course, when coaches are talking about eco, they're often talking to other coaches about eco. And so they're using coaching language. And that can make it sound like this is really complicated and hard. But something that you brought up earlier, of course, is that's language from one coach to another. The way that Greg would be running his class in the room and the language he's using with his students is deliberately simplified. Like we're not sitting people down and citing research in the middle of the class. That's more an FYI thing. So I'd love to hear Noah as someone who literally started under this method. What was that like, you know, that you come in here, you don't know anything about Jiu Jitsu, other than that you saw it on the UFC a few times. What does that experience like for a brand new beginner to use a constrained sled approach? Well, I think one important thing is no matter what like methodology the gym that you're training at uses. Once you start live training and actually grappling, there's a base level of, you know, just feeling overwhelmed. It's a very, very new action that you're taking. And it's, it hurts physically, psychologically, you're bad. You're usually wrong with people that have years or months more than experiencing you. And even that margin alone, if you're completely new, will make a massive difference. And you're just getting your ass being day in, day out. But I think CLA makes that experience much less overwhelming, much quicker because they're not ever giving you any sort of false frame of reference as to what grappling is supposed to feel like or what grappling is. You're just immediately put into the environment repeatedly into different aspects of the environment with different tasks that you're trying to fulfill. Either continuously or fighting towards a specific end and doing that in as many contexts as the coach can give you in the grappling environment will take away that like feeling of novelty or feeling overwhelmed or not knowing what's going on or what you're supposed to be doing much quicker than having to draw from 30 minutes of what your coach was telling you about how this was supposed to feel or what you were supposed to be doing to your partner and then not having any of that come through at all in the training. And so in the very beginning, obviously I had the initial experience of being very, very bad at grappling and getting my ass beat every day. But even on the very, very first day with little to no knowledge of or about grappling, as soon as I started training and we started playing the games while I was in the games, I still knew exactly what I was trying to accomplish and what exactly I was trying to prevent my partner from accomplishing and that alone is so much more direction that you could be giving to people that have months of experience. But instead, they don't even end up training until they're like six months, 12 months in where all they've done is static drill and listen to lectures. And then it's even more overwhelming because they're drawing from a bunch of information that isn't real or representative of what grappling actually is. Yeah. There seems to be this perception that in eco, the coach isn't really teaching you anything, right? You have to figure it out yourself, which of course is just like internet bullshit, right? But the argument that I would make for eco is coaches often think that more information is better. But the reality is like, look, if you are a day one student and you're getting bombarded with verbal instruction on how to perfectly execute three techniques every single class, you're not going to retain any of that. Like you know that? I know that everyone knows that, but yet people still defend that system, which I find very strange. Yeah. Well, I think an important distinction to make is not even necessarily that less information is good. It's just what information is valuable. So would you rather be getting that information directly by trying to accomplish something against the resisting opponent and then whether or not you can articulate it is really irrelevant. Is your body experiencing the stimuli and then organizing around it, either in like a short term or long term period, however you want to analyze it, you can try to parse that out as much as you can. But the reality is the whole thing that we're supposing or proposing, I guess is there's much more valuable information to be found in that interaction alone than another organism trying to explain to you a quality of that they're getting from that stimuli and then trying to describe it as best they can with language that at the end of the day, once you really follow it down to the origin is completely arbitrary. Besides trying to describe best they can, the physical shapes that they're seeing are the feelings that they're have while it's happening. And so to me, it's not more less information. It's where's the information most valuable and pertaining to you and affecting your actions. Yeah, that's a wonderful answer. I can't even say that because my fucking student, you're dumb. You don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah, you're right. Greg's just going to say it better now. No, no, no, I'm actually going to agree with him. And that's actually the issue that that kills me is that the idea of information. We have this false view that information is what we remember our coach telling us, but the information we use to move is outside there. Like where my partner's elbows determine how I go and attack them, whether open or closed or they're turning their right side or left side, that's the information I use to determine where I move. And that has nothing to do with memory. Like maybe we memorize an idea like, okay, I really want to get under the elbows. That's it. And then the rest of the information for how to do it is exchanged between me and my resisting opponent. So it's the information problem. When people use that word, they're using it incorrectly or they have a poor view of what it means. Yeah, I think people often think of learning jujitsu, sort of like you would think in high school of how to study for an exam. You know, you would try to just cram as much information into your head as you possibly can and just absorb everything your coach says. But I don't know about you, but all of the stuff that I tried to learn in high school using that method, it was in one ear out the other, right? It's not really a great method for learning stuff is to just get bombarded with irrelevant details. And I spent, I would say the first eight years of my jujitsu career, kind of in that more traditional environment where every day I would go in and I would be taught three moves. And I never questioned it for a long time, mostly because I didn't have another point of reference to know that there was a different way of doing things. But what I can say is I was tremendously frustrated because I just felt like I couldn't learn anything. The coach would show three moves. And I mean, yes, in the two minutes they gave me to practice it against a non-resisting opponent, I could do it fine. But as soon as live rolling time came around, I couldn't execute the move. And I know why that is now, you know, it's because the way that you do things in a live environment is totally different from the way that you do things in a scripted environment. And you need time to build up those reps and get that practice. But at the time, I just felt like I was just bad at this because I wasn't learning anything. And I realized, you know, out of all of the stuff that my coach is showing me in class, long term, I'm probably only retaining like one percent of this. Most of the stuff they're showing is I'll do it in the class and then it's gone by the next time I come in. Like I'm just not using it. All of the stuff that I was using that was sticking with me was stuff that I kind of figured out on my own, kind of like coming up with my own concepts and ways of thinking of how things move. And that was just lived experience. And that's kind of when I started realizing, okay, maybe there's a problem with the way that most of these classes are running things. Yeah, well, even the way you're thinking, it doesn't really matter. That's the funny part. This is almost hard to convince people of. It's like the information your body uses to move is not so much what you're holding in your head, but what you're experiencing in any given time. And I was sensitive. You are to that exchange. And it's a hard thing to wrap our head around. You know what I mean? Like I could do an entire training session and only ever think about my partner's elbows, but I did heel hooks and backtakes and keyities that I was ever thinking about is where I was relative to my partner's elbows. And that's fucking fascinating because all the other stuff is moving it really by itself. I'm not really focused on it as a specific thing. And that's just an interesting idea. Like if you're really hard to pay attention to it. No, I would actually love your perspective on this. Like when you are rolling, what's going on inside your head? What kind of is occupying your thoughts as you're rolling? Because the misconception that I had when I started jujitsu was that when I, you know, when you're rolling, you're thinking of every single little technical detail. But like Greg said, I find that most of the time when I'm rolling now, I'm thinking of big picture concepts and ideas like, you know, open their elbows or something like that. I got to get under their elbows. And then from there, I sort of just let everything else just shake out. However, it's going to shake out. But I'd love to get your thoughts in terms of what is going on in your brain while you're rolling. Yeah. Well, I mean, throughout the week in the structured training sessions for the competitors, the only things that my mind are the intentions that I have relative to the tasks that were set out for us in the game and what the wins what the wins were in that game, depending on what role I'm playing. And then everything else is a distraction that I am constantly trying to fight so I can have a more clear intention and go towards that infection all the time. But yeah, any like feelings that I'm having about the training session or thoughts as to how I wanted to be going or some sort of outcome that I want to be reaching is going to have a lot less utility to me than what actions am I trying to take at this very moment or what can I be doing to progress or why can't I progress what is preventing me from progressing. How can I rid myself of that so I can continue to how can I prevent my opponent from progressing and all that is always going to be relative to what the task is that was given to me whether I'm the bottom top player, standing player, whatever the scenario may be. But yeah, I try to keep the things that are going on in my mind while I'm grappling very, very minimal and very, very relative to what I'm actually doing and what is in front of me. Let me ask you a question Noah. How do you feel this approach lends itself to student confidence? And I say this because I think this is something we don't talk enough about in Jiu Jitsu. Are we making our students feel like they're succeeding? Regardless of whether they actually are, are we creating an environment where they feel like they're doing well? And I bring this up because I would say that the traditional approach where you get techniques thrown at you and most of them you never use or you can't pull off in a live role. Not only is that inefficient from a learning perspective, but it makes students feel like they're bad at Jiu Jitsu, which I don't think is necessarily correct in terms of how they're actually performing and I definitely don't think it's good for student motivation. One of the most common listener questions I get is people people telling me, Steve, I feel like I'm terrible at the sport. I suck at it. What can I do? Every time the coach shows me a move, I can never make it work the way they showed me. And I always have to tell them, like, good news. That's not a you problem. That's a them problem. That happens to all of us. Anyone who gets taught under that method is going to feel crappy about it because it's just a bad way to learn. You're going to feel like you can't execute this move exactly the way that your coach taught you because you just can't. You're not your coach. You have different body types, different everything, right? So I don't think we talk enough about the importance of confidence in our coaching methods and how that makes students feel. I would love to know, Noah, what is that like? I mean, both from yourself and maybe some of the newer people coming up, what's the vibe that you get from students in terms of training under this method? Well, I think, like, looking out at the room and like the average student at standard, like all of the people that train throughout the week in the 6pm and 7pm, that, like, feeling of success or not making sure that the students aren't getting too frustrated or feeling like they're never getting any better grappling or they just feel like they're absolutely dog shit is really much more managed by the coach than I think it is anybody else. I think what determines that is mostly going to be are your partners relatively the same size as you? Do they have relatively the same amount of experience as you? And then with that, if that's true, if you're playing through a whole class, at least here in standards where you're going to experience every general scenario in the game and you're going to play the whole game, as we say, in a class, there should be enough variability in those games where you are going to find success at some time in some way and some dimension. And then that might be easier or harder for people depending on how general or narrow their focus is. So I know at least me personally, I was training with like very, very good grapplers very, very early, just because of my unique experience and how involved I wanted to become very, very early in my grappling career. So with that, the only success that I was ever going to find in my mind to, you know, quench my competitiveness and like make sure that I didn't get so frustrated that I just up and quit was making sure that my focus was narrow enough where it was success that was realistic. So if I'm grappling against the Andre and I'm a 16 year old blue belt and the Andre is a future trials winner at this point, I'm not going to score on DeAndre. I'm not going to submit DeAndre. I'm probably not even going to get my hands connected around to him for any significant period of time in any situation. But if I can keep his hands off of me for some period of time or if I can stay in between his elbows for some period of time or at least prevent him from getting in between my elbows, whatever the situation may be, if I can narrow my focus enough, where it's a small enough aspect of an exchange where I can try to just find success in that and fight over that and not frustrate myself or stress myself out with any other aspect of what's going on in grappling because the reality is, there's a lot of shit is going on at once and you're never going to be able to think about all of it at once, especially if you're new. Keeping your focus narrow will allow you to find success where others may not, especially if you're starting here at standard where you're not going towards any idealized move that's trying to hit and then never hitting because it's never going to feel like the way that it was shown to you or explain to you. But rather, it's just, hey guys, bottom player, I want you to try and keep your feet connected to the top player and in front of the top player anyway that you can. And if you can add at least bare minimum through that, even if you're not progressing beyond that, you still feel like you're doing your job to some degree. Very well said, man. One of the things I love about that explanation is you're narrowing down on the fact that these are you're focusing on the process, not on the outcome and a huge problem that I mean, honestly, you see this at almost every gym because I think this has less to do with the coaching method. But in more to do with just our psychology, people want to win roles and the problem is when you're in the gym, there's no benefit to winning the role. And if you only measure your success by who am I tapping out and who is tapping me out, you're not actually measuring your skill development in any meaningful way. I mean, there's a lot of people who started at White Belt and just due to their athletic advantages, they were tapping out everyone in the room. But if all of the other White belts get better skill wise, then within a few years, they're going to be tapping out that athlete anyway, right? So I love how you're talking about carving out goals that have less to do with a who's submitting who and more to do with, can I make sure that I'm doing, I'm moving properly? Like you said, can I make sure that my feet are connected where they need to be? Can I make sure that I've got base at all times? Because that is always a good goal to chase even against someone who's technically bigger and more experienced than you. Does that kind of factor into the game design that you guys use at Standard? Yeah, well, I don't mean that interrupt, but I mean, yes, everything is scaled and everything is given a focus. So we try to scale it down low enough that anyone can engage even if they're going with a more advanced player and all these focuses are result-based. You could see if you reach your end target or not. You can see if you fulfill the condition or not. And this always gives the student the power of understanding where they are at any given moment. But it's never really random. It's random at all. God, it got it. Noah, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, it's going to be a boring repeated answer of Greg's own. And so I, yeah, I pretty much fully agree with his analysis of it. I'll just end up saying it in a different way. Amazing. Well, something that I want to hear from you as well is in terms of intensity, how do you find this method stacks up? Because I can tell you that one thing that I found the first time I ever did a CLA class, I was already a black belt. And I thought there was something like seriously wrong with me because I was getting like, I was really struggling with blue belts. And I was like, what the fuck is wrong with me? Why, you know, how is it that I as a black belt and struggling against blue belts? And then I realized, well, wait a minute. That's because we're playing a game that is specifically designed to get that outcome. If you leave me with a blue belt and we're just left to our own devices to roll, I'm going to go directly to my, you know, if I'm not thinking about what I'm doing and I'm not deliberately practicing, I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to go right to my A game and I'm going to not let them get anything off and I'm probably going to slice through them without even breaking a sweat. But in a games based approach, you're not playing the game to win. You're playing the game to maximize play time. And what I found was that you can't do the kinds of things that you would do in a real role like just disengage, right? I mean, if my opponent is good at leg locks and we're practicing leg locks, I have to spend time in the pocket training with them. So I can't just shut them down. And as a result, what I found is these people that I would normally beat in a regular role in the context of this game, they were a very good training partner, even though there might be like a 10 year experience gap. And it really took me a while to kind of come to terms with the fact that a blue belt can really challenge me in a CLA role because the game is designed to get that result. But I'd love to hear from you know what if that kind of aligns with your expectations. And what the work level is like in the room. Do you find that you have to work harder under this approach? Yeah, well, I mean, in comparison to a traditional approach where there's just going to be less live training happening. Absolutely. It is going to be more intense. It's going to be more taxing. But I also now because I was I started training full time pretty early. My intensity probably got a lot higher than what it would actually be representative of just like an average student starting here. But I think another really, really important factor in how intense the training is either in the moment or over a long period of time is Greg makes this distinction all the time is exploitation versus exploration. So what intention the one you're going into as the student with what intention you're going into training with whether it's to explore some idea or to go towards some sort of new focus that you've given yourself for the coaches given you based on the games that you're playing and fully invested in exploring that idea. And that's all your intention is going towards as opposed to exploitation where you are trying to win the role as people will say you are trying to win every single exchange that you can have you're trying to win the game whatever the game may be based on whatever skills you already have developed and then going towards those skills to make sure that you can be as certain and reaching the desired outcome that you have. And there's utility to be founded both but I find that the intensity in training if the goal is exploitation, you know, if we're two weeks out from a really, really big tournament or something like that or three weeks out from the big tournament the closer we're get the less oriented the training is going to become around exploration and developing new skills and exploring new aspects of whatever aspect of grappling we're trying to explore but rather we're trying to win and we're trying to win consistently with the skills that we already have developed. You're going to have the best guys in the room using their best shit and constantly going towards their best alignments their best connections to reach the outcome that they want to reach because they want to fucking win that's going to be way more intense training than you know, a room full of people trying to keep their head and hands in front of somebody or trying to stay in between elbows or whatever else they'd be. God, I got it. Now something I'd love to hear from both of you, a common misconception about a constraints led class is that the instructor is like hands off and isn't doing anything and so you figure it out yourself. You know, this is eco. The instructor doesn't need to say or do anything. And if you listen to a lot of classic jujitsu instructors, they kind of act like they're the only person keeping sanity in the gym and they feel like if they're not there telling people what to do all of the time, it's just going to devolve into chaos. So a common concern and piece of pushback I hear from people is, well, if you let people organically do stuff, it wouldn't that make the injury rate higher because we got to protect these white belts from themselves. You know, what if they spike each other on their heads? So this is, and I mean, we all know that like this is a mischaracterization of what's actually happening, but I'd love to hear your perspective of why specifically this is wrong. I think people sometimes get it in their heads that eco might have like a higher risk of injury or something to that effect. Tell me why that's wrong. Like what does it actually look like in the class and how does safety factor in? So it's wrong because it's called the constraints led approach were literally constraining students by removing options to guide them towards a direction. So the reason students don't spike each other on their heads is we don't put them in situations where that's a solution to the task. Like if anyone tries to use CLA and gets crazy results like that is because they're, they implement it a poor practice. It says less about CLA and more about the coach implementing it. So our beginners classes are highly constrained, you know, the information sources reduced, meaning the space in which we have our students operating is small. The tasks we're having our students operate for are simple, and we use basic human-to-human language to get them focused on things that anybody can do. And so, because of this, we are able to reduce the injury rate, reduce the randomness, reduce the chaos. The demand of the task are what causes us to move. So if they're well-defined and controlled, the movements are well-defined or controlled, or more so than they would be otherwise. It's not the magic words of the coach. Yeah, I always found it really strange that people would assume that CLA would have a higher injury rate or be less beginner-friendly than the traditional approach, because at least from where I'm standing, the fundamental problem when it comes to beginners getting injured in these new scenarios or alignments or submissions or whatever else it may be is exposure. And that is ultimately controlled by the coach and the structure of the practice. And to me, something like starting somebody at the end, so starting somebody in an armlock or starting somebody in an entanglement with heel exposure where the connected players only goals to keep heel exposure and they're not trying to break and the defending players only trying to free their toes while making sure that they're keeping their partner's connections away from their hips where they're experiencing that 100% totally live, otherwise what you would consider threatening position without any actual risk of getting injured, at least in how open you can go as a player. So if it's a completely open round and you're starting entangled, then they can just go towards submissions on a brand new player. They're going to go the wrong way or they're going to be submitted in such a way where they didn't even know there was a threat as opposed to, you know, if you start them constrained and basically over time gradually increase the amount of exposure that they have to these what you would consider dangerous alignments or positions. That seems much more effective to me than giving somebody a bunch of different idealized movement patterns that they're practicing on somebody that's not trying to stop them from doing these patterns and then going out live with very, very minimal constraints or no constraints and a completely regular round and then being expected to produce the exact same outcome while doing it in a safe manner. It's funny that we're talking about this because I've always found it interesting that people using more traditional methods would be, you know, they would advocate that their method is safer because like, look, I grew up in those methods and I would not say that most gyms are doing a good job of injury prevention. I think the challenge with most gyms is if you give people the objective of winning the role, they're going to do whatever they can to win and when you get white belts doing that, they're not educated and experienced enough yet to know how to do things safely for themselves and their training partner. They're going to look at their training partner like an opponent because their objective is to win. And I would say that at most traditional gyms, the injury rates are white belts, especially are frankly horrifying. You know, I don't know if we can really argue that you jitsu is improving people's lives if people are getting their ACLs torn when they've got two stripes on their white belt, right? So I think we need to consider that when we use a games based approach, one of the beautiful things there is you change the objective of the role. It's no longer about winning. It's about maximizing or encouraging a specific play style. And once you take the need to win out of the role, I think what most people would find is safety goes up rather than down. Yeah, I mean, we see it across the board. I mean, our white belts do nothing but this. People coming off the streets day one, they're working from standing situation now, garnet situation, pitting situation. And the end of the day, they're doing regular rounds. And we have probably the lowest injury rate any gym you've ever heard of. I mean, we don't get hurt. And here's just a little anecdote for you. I'm not afraid to roll with anyone at my gym, white belt or otherwise. And I've got a bad knee, a bad hip, a bad neck. I've got nerve damage. Oh, it's kind of crap. And I'm not scared of rolls anyone. When I go visit other gyms, I get super nervous because these people are chaotic and uncontrolled. I don't feel like that at my gym, even with the most new students. Yeah, I think that is a huge, huge thing to point out. If the focus is game play, then the game is the objective in and of itself. If the focus is winning around, then the objective is submitting. And that's when you start to see people, especially beginners, do anything they can to get the tap. I mean, I got an injured shoulder right now. And that was specifically because of that. I dropped in at another gym and some big giant guy tried to snap on an arm bar. He didn't have the arm bar, but he kicked me, I guess, in the shoulder enough that it tore my shoulder. Oh, man. Yeah, fucking lesson learned, right? So that is something that I think we don't talk enough about the eco. And not even an eco thing. It's just careful game design is very good for changing the psychology of training. So your students aren't trying to kill each other anymore. Yes. When we talk about constraints, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about changing the culture of the individuals. We're talking about changing the emotions of the individuals. The CLA is not just task-based games. It's all the things that make up a person and how they interact with their world. So we're manipulating the human environment, the Noah environment, the Greg environment, the Standards Jitsu environment, the games of the grappling tasks that philosophy's I have as a coach has relates to the game. So there's constraints everywhere that we're manipulating. And the more we understand that these are present and then because the clearer we are, and looking out at what constraints, what and causes, what effects, we have more control over our environment than there otherwise would be. So safety goes up across the board. Cohesiveness in the room goes up across the board. Skill acquisition goes up across the board because now we're paying attention to what actually causes these things to emerge naturally. And again, we have control over it now. So yeah, and there's so much more than just the task. Oh, and also to before I forget, Noah's just hoping I don't talk about my shoulder right now, but we're not going to discuss that. Noah, did you injure your coach? No, my coach injured himself because he didn't want me to triangle him. Yeah, apparently I shocker. I wish Greg told me this explicitly because then I would have known, but apparently it's really hard to connect to your partner's shoulders if their elbows are in the way. And so I tried to connect to the shoulders while the elbows were in the way and then I disconnected his shoulder. So yeah, I'm telling you, I was being an idiot and I got hurt. I was contributing to the idiocy. That's right. Now, Noah, something else, of course, you started as a beginner in jujitsu under this method, but you're not a beginner anymore. And something that I have observed as a, you know, an older guy who frankly is kind of set in my ways, you know, I'm well into my forties at this point. The older you get, the kind of harder it is to change and shake things up. One of the things that I've really come to enjoy about an ecological or constraints led approach is it forces me out of my comfort zone more than regular training does. What I've observed, like I brought up earlier, under a games based approach, I have to play inside the pocket. I have to go into a position where I'm legitimately threatened. If my leg entanglement defense is good, I can shut down a lot of people from doing the kind of stuff that they may want to do if they're a leg locker. But that only works if we're actually rolling. If we're playing some sort of game, the objective for me is not to shut them down and prevent them from doing their stuff. The objective for me might be to stay in the pocket and let them work and work my defense. So under a more traditional structure, I might get, you know, 30 seconds of relevant training time on that area, whereas under a constraints led approach, I'm spending the literally the entire class working in that area. So what I've actually found is as an experienced grappler, this approach has been more useful for me because it prevents me from steering the fight into the areas where I'm definitely going to win. I have to spend all of my time in the pocket and I find that that also prevents things like black belt laziness where you know, when it wants you to get good enough at your jizzi, you can be efficient and that often means you can win without even really having to try sometimes. But if the purpose of the game is like, you're going to sit in this person's 50/50 and let them try to heal hook you for five minutes or something to that effect, you have to work. You can't just shut it down and escape and run away. I'd love to know your thoughts on from an experienced grappler's perspective, how you feel this approach is working for you. Well, I think you kind of let on to the same point that I would probably end up making is not only does this format make training more effective, which is at the end of the day what we're proposing, but also it makes it more fun, it makes it more engaging and for a much longer period of time where you know, somebody like you who already has a ton of experience in this board in years and years of training, wants picking up on this new way to structure practice and then implementing it, you're immediately finding training more engaging and more interesting again in one way or another. But the reason for it becoming more engaging or more effective is really the same, which is if we think about what skill is, which is being able to reach a consistent outcome in the face of novelty and as many variable solutions as we're able to find to the same problem whatever else it may be. If we consider that general definition skill, constraining somebody to go towards either a specific task or you can only win in one specific way in this alignment where you would otherwise try and reach a different outcome that you have more success reaching. You're forcing people to explore this other level of variation that would only be accessed if you were exploring in that direction. If you were just trying to win the same way that you would with that connection or with that alignment, whatever it may be, you're never going to even have any exposure to that possible solution to the same problem that you've been solving the same way repeatedly over and over again and then wondering why you're not getting any better at that specific alignment or whatever else it may be. Right. Right. Something I also want to ask is we get close to an hour here and know what. There's a lot of memes and fake information floating around about ECO out there. I don't know who would do that kind of thing. Who would make ECO memes that just seems like such a weird thing to do. Making ECO memes, I don't get it. In all seriousness, a lot of the way that people think about ECO is just really quicky thought terminating cliches. Greg and his team, they don't watch instructional, blah, blah, blah. Right. I'd love to know what is really the truth in this. Do you guys engage in more that classic approach at all or do you actually feel like there's no benefit to watching? other people do stuff watching YouTube videos, it's got to be all constraints based all the time. -No, well, I mean, like that claim is nothing but a meme. Like nobody from standard Greg or anybody else from like a actual good faith CLA camp or at least live training camp, I don't think is ever actually seriously proposed that idea. Like we've never said that there isn't utility to be found in other aspects of engaging with grappling, you know, whether it be studying tape or having conversations with their training partners after training, whatever else may be, it's just I think that how to what degree these other ways of engaging with grappling besides live training to what degree these actually do have utility has just been massively overplayed historically. So all we've been trying to do is get people to have a more realistic understanding of how much utility certain, you know, training methods or studying methods or whatever else you want to call it may or may not have. So it was like what we were talking about earlier. It's like there might be some utility found in the 30 minute lecture prior to actually starting live training, but if that only utility is directing a student's intention or attention and that same success can be had from just a simple cue given prior to playing the game or a simple task focused prior to playing the game, then why would we not choose the path of least resistance? -Yeah, Greg, what are your thoughts on that? -I think it's foolish to think that in the constraints led approach or an ecological approach assumed that we shouldn't watch other expert performers or it shouldn't watch tape or shouldn't watch video. We should engage with our world, but like I've already said, like Noah's already said is that what effect is it having? Like, why would I watch eight hours of an instructional? Like is that really the biggest bang for my buck? I could probably take a single thing that took 30 seconds to say, and I could probably work on that for the next six weeks with more effect than the whole eight hours watched. And it's not that there's not value in it. It's just how much value? It's just like, no, no, no, no, he said it's oversold, it's overplayed. We talk about technique, we look at techniques, we discuss new things that are happening, new things that each of us are discovering as we work, we're sharing ideas, we're watching other great grapplers, like when Pato does some sick-ass shit, we're like, yo, look at how he's like going over the shoulders and back into the legs. Let's start doing that too. Or like, yo, look at this crazy grip that sit is ripping everyone's heels off with. Let's just try to mimic Sid. You know, we're all engaging like everybody else. We just know that it's the constraints that cause the emergence of behavior, not the silly things we tell ourselves about. Yeah, well said, man, I think that when people hear about the stuff, they think that the argument is that eco is 100% of everything all the time. And my take and feel free to fact check me is that, like, look, eco is about motor skill acquisition. That's what it's about. But that doesn't mean that motor skill acquisition is the only thing. I mean, we are human beings, right? A part of coaching is still going to and learning is idea exchange communication, you know, emotional regulation. There's a lot of aspects. Now, at the end of the day, if you want to actually learn to do something, that's motor skill acquisition. But in terms of how you got these ideas into your head in the first place and how you figure out what you want to focus on, I mean, there is an argument to be made that, yeah, of course, idea exchange is important. It's just not going to be the thing that actually helps you learn how to do the jiu jitsu by itself. You got to actually get on there and train your body to do things. And that's the part that eco solves for. Well, I just, I mean, to back off of that, I think the important part is just people acknowledging what intention they're actually going into whatever they're practicing actually is. So, you know, if you're hitting pads and in your mind, you're like, I'm getting better striking. I'm going to be able to hit more punches consistently than that would be poor training. But if you're hitting pads with the intention of, I need my arms to be less tired when I'm striking. And I need my shoulders to be more dexterous. So I can strike for a longer period of time. But I don't have somebody with me right now that I can actually swing at. Then hitting pads might be an optimal practice for you to have with that intention. So if you just want to watch instructional because in reality, you want to listen to somebody explain what they're thinking about when they're taking a specific action. And they're able to do that thing at the highest level and you're curious about where they're coming at it from. So that's fine. Buy that instructional. Listen to that instructional. But if you're buying it and you're sitting down on the couch with the intention of watching the full eight hours and then expecting to be able to regurgitate to any degree, any of the things that that athlete is showing you're doing in that instructional the next day in training or the next month in training, then you're coming at it from the wrong direction. Yeah, I agree completely. I often tell people when they tell me how much they they think the instructions are important. I always tell them, well, how is that really working out for you? Like how much money have you spent on instructions? And first of all, have you even watched them? Because if you're like 90 plus percentage of jiu-jitsu people, you probably got a hard drive or a shelf full of instructions that you have watched maybe once, maybe not even all the way through, right? No. Greg gave me his BGJ fanatics account like a year into training. And I remember I only watched I watched a full Gordon Ryan body locking DVD and a full Dan or her leg in Tangermont's DVD. And then every other instructional that I watched after that, I would watch the first 20 minutes and then take those things that they were talking about in my mind and then end up realizing that it was just a different articulation of the tasks that were already being given to me in practice. Yeah. I sometimes call it the Jiu-jitsu instructional complex, right? It's like the military industrial complex. It's gotten so big now that it's sometimes kind of feels like it needs to justify itself. And as a result, you get instructional that are getting longer and longer because of course if you want to justify a large price tag, you've got to provide a lot of content. But none of that is to say that all of that is going to be great information for you that you're going to absorb and you're going to use. And maybe, like you said, sometimes you buy an instructional and there's only one thing that you need out of it or or maybe you pick and choose things and you only want to get a little bit of value out of it. So I do encourage people to understand that like, Instructionals do have their place but they're just not to be all end all right. They have a use, but I think that there's very limited utility to them compared to how useful people think they actually are. Well, you know, I even think there's a market for better Instructionals. That's actually something I believe in. Like I think that what we have now is bad. Whether it's useful or not, it's crap. Like it's bloated because you have to sell 77 different techniques or you have to have it eight hours. Like I've been behind the scenes that the producers say, I need this much content so you have to fill the hours. I've been behind the scenes with people who make DVDs and they were just making up shit on the spot. Like that's real. And another troubling thing too is like, if we like I always take Danah as the guy who's the best at modeling behaviors because he's got it such a deep knowledge of jiu-jitsu and movement and all of that stuff. And most Instructionals just copying what he's already doing or they're copying what wrestlers are already doing or there is just copy of a copy of a copy. It's just regurgitated shit so people will make a buck and I'm not trying to, you know, tell the one not to get their bag because we're all here trying to survive in a sport that makes some money. But at the same time, we can admit that this is probably the best way to go about it. And there's probably a better way to form and use Instructionals if we want to maximize them for informational exchange. My feeling on this is that there is a market for micro Instructionals. Some of the best Instructionals that I've seen are like 20 or 30 minutes long and they're priced appropriately for that length. Some of the best stuff I've seen are these little clips on IG where a guy will like, there's a guy I'm friends with over the internet. We chat chat back and forth. He's been doing this stuff. I think he's calling it the gray area. His little 90 second clips are better than anything else. It's crazy. Yeah, you know, I think the only reason more people don't take that approach is because when people get into shorter form content, they feel like they're competing with YouTube and they feel like, well, how can I sell something in an industry where all of my competition is free? I've got to create the big long instructional because that's how people open up their wallets. But I do think that that's something that could be challenged. I think people who focused on smaller, more frequent Instructionals that get to the point faster and cut it all the fluff. I think there's a real market there. In fact, I think the reason why a lot of subscription sites are getting more popular is because they're kind of structured that way. It's just like a constant fire hose of shorter form, but more still very useful content. I think there is a lot of growth potential there. I think that if we were to figure out a way to get instructional shorter, I think that people would get a lot more out of them. Probably a topic for another day. Something else that I would like to ask is, and I've kind of observed this. I don't know if there's a name for it, but I've kind of started calling it the pre-Meckelson factor, which is that when you become known for something, it's the only thing that people ever ask you about. It's the only thing that you ever talk about. As a result, that creates this misconception that it's the only thing you do. And I bring up, as an example, because he's best known for focusing on the defense side of Jiu-Jitsu. As a result, the only interviews this guy gets, people want to know what his defense looks like. When he goes to a seminar, they ever ask him, "How do you do an inside-heel hook?" They want to know, "How do you defend from back position?" This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, where people think that he says, "Just do defense all the time." He has never said that. Creed has a pretty well-rounded Jiu-Jitsu understanding. He's not telling people, "Just go and do defense all the time." But there is this perception of that, because that's all people ever hear from him. I think that with Eco, a lot of the EcoCoach is kind of get into the same feedback loop, where because they're an EcoCoach, they get asked about Eco, and because of that, it's all they talk about. And because of that, people think that's all they do and they don't care about anything else. It's pretty brutal for me, because that's what I'm being faced with now. Everyone's angry about the way I talk about things philosophically, or abstractly. That's my fault, because that is my area of interest. I love the philosophy behind it. I love the abstract nature of it. And that's me, that's on me, forcing me to be a better communicator. But people have to understand is that I use my Jiu-Jitsu to get to these conclusions. So I use my understanding of grappling to adopt CLA as best I could. It wasn't the other way around. So the only reason I was able to understand these deeper concepts in the field is because I related to the things I already knew about Jiu-Jitsu and grappling. And as another point, and I'm not saying this in arrogant ways, so it might come off as arrogant, so be it. But look at my students. Nobody ever looks at any one of my students at any level and thinks they're unprepared. Like, look at any one of them and look at their vast array of skill sets. They wrestle, they use their guards, they submit from legs, they submit on the upper body, they can take the back, they can pass, and they can do it starting very early, even in their white and blue belt early in their careers. And so how would I be able to design those practices if I didn't know Jiu Jitsu deeply? How would I be able to affect two athletes like Deandre and Gavin who come with such a deep well of capacity? How was I able to design practices that got the best out of them if I didn't know grappling? So it's grappling that I know very well, not CLA. CLA is on like a purple belt and CLA. It's an interesting thing to bring up because a lot of people I think incorrectly assume that if you wanna be an eco coach or if you wanna train in an eco gym, you need to like basically have a PhD in motor science. But that isn't true, right? Is no, you need a PhD in grappling. Yeah, it's just that the reason this keeps coming up is because people keep asking eco coaches so that dominates the dialogue. But that's coaching to coaching conversation. You're answering questions in that manner because those are the questions that are being asked of you. That doesn't necessarily mean that when you show up to training, you sit down and like make people listen to a one hour Rob Gray podcast, right? My understanding is you don't actually need to know all of the stuff to benefit from the student perspective, correct? You don't, not at all. I mean, I'll let no answer in a second, but there's a guy named John Mackie who I like quite a bit. I just recently started talking to him. I hope I don't quote this wrong. I think he's a boxing coach over here in London or in England or somewhere in this area. He said something interesting. He said we just have to start with something simple. That perception action are coupled and we have to keep them coupled. So if we just take that as our base assumption and then apply that to our practice, we're gonna do a phenomenal job. We don't need to know what the cast of resonance is. We don't need to know what bifurcation means. If we just know that perception action are coupled, we're good to go. Yeah, reminds me of how you don't need to be a mechanic to drive a car. You don't have to know what the hell is going on under the hood. All you need to know is how to drive the car. People can drive it. They don't even know how to drive. So. (laughing) Fuck that. Yeah, and so I think that's where a lot of the time this eco conversation gets lost in the sauce, right? When people listen to these podcasts, they think this is like some big brain PhD thing. And there is that element of it if you wanna go deep into the reads, but that's not required to actually use this. I mean, I would venture to guess that a lot of people who train under a CLA or ecosystem probably don't even know what those terms mean. They just show up to the gym and train like anyone else. This is my student. This is the LA funniest thing. My white belt and my new basic students will come to me like, "Hey coach, I heard you on a podcast. Is that what we're doing? Are we using CLA? They don't even know. They don't even, my own students have my gym. Don't even know. Awesome. Well, thanks a lot guys. I mean, know any closing thoughts, anything that you wanna add here before we tie this up? Well, I mean, just one thought I was having while you guys were talking about that is that, I feel like that's one of the major reasons why it's so hard for people in the community to have conversations about CLA or eco or whatever the hell you wanna call it. In either good faith manner or just in a manner where they actually understand what it is. And I think a lot of that, obviously, like we've talked about plenty of times, how it boils down a lot to traditions and longevity of practices that have already existed and you just do for a long time. But when it comes to coaching specifically, like the idea of lineages or who gave you a certain belt and what accomplishes they have, somehow having a reflection on you as a grappler or your skill or your prestigious a grappler, just that idea existing for so long in our sport, I think has been really, really detrimental to our ability to have a modern understanding of what good coaching is versus what a good athlete is. Like nobody in the basketball community would ever expect Phil Jackson to beat Michael Jordan on a one-on-one or even score a point on him. But I guarantee you there's some portion of the adjacent community that probably thinks that Marcelo Garcia now, as much of a legend as he is, who is much older and has lost some capacity and probably isn't training as much or as hard or with the same level of intensity versus any elite level black belt who's at the same weight that he is now for anyone to expect Marcelo Garcia to win them. That's really, it should be a little silly, but I guarantee you there are people in the community who think that just because they have such a minimal or no understanding of the difference between being a skilled athlete and being a skilled coach is, which is pretty silly because they're two fundamentally different things. Being skilled at a specific task or action like grappling versus being skilled at creating scale and somebody else or creating behavior in somebody else is they're completely unrelated really. - Absolutely, I agree. This is something that young folks often don't keep in their mind, right? It's like everyone gets old. - Yeah, but just to put it out there. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When you're well in the year 40s and 50s, you're just not gonna be a performance athlete anymore, no matter how good your Jiu-Jitsu technique actually is. Like age matters and your ability to coach and your ability to perform are two shockingly different things a lot of the time, right? These are completely different skillset. - I actually don't believe anything that I said. And if I lose trial someday, just know that it's because Greg didn't have enough black bow world titles. - 100%, 100%. (laughing) - Awesome. - Yeah, and I'm learning that hard lesson every day. Every time I touch these, there's no one said, they're just getting closer to just annihilating me completely. - Which time? - I'm deeply proud of. - Deeply proud of. - Yeah, so. - Well, that's the thing, right? Like what kind of coach always wants to be the best person in the room? That is a weird thing about Jiu-Jitsu traditionalism is there's always this expectation that like the headmost experience guys should be able to beat up everyone in the room. Like, look, if that's what you want out of your athletes, you fucking suck as a coach. You should want your athletes to be way better than you. You shouldn't want to be gatekeeping them by how good you are, right? That's concerning. If you as the coach need to be the dominant athlete in the room. - That's the Darwinian method. You gotta run the gym like a, you know, like a evolution, baby. Come on, we need to take my mail at the top of the room. - Oh, it's funny, no, it's a really respectful student. And, you know, he's seeded me, break my shit all the time and get hurt all the time. And, you know, when we roll, he looks at me like, are you sure? And I'm like, yeah, dog, let's go. You better take these limbs off me or you're not gonna get them. - Yeah, and then I said, are you sure? And then immediately destroyed his shoulder trying to do a shitty try? - No. (laughing) - Awesome man. Well, Noah, this was a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming by. If people want to follow you or connect with you, how do they go about doing that? - Well, I mean, you can find me all over the standard Gisoo page to follow us on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook or whatever the hell else we're on. It's standard Gisoo on everything. And then you can find me specifically just @nochafner on Instagram. That's a F-H-A-S-F-N-E-R. - Yeah. - A shaper. - Awesome. I will put a link in the show notes to make it easy for people. Greg, how about you? People wanna follow you or if they wanna learn more about standard Gisoo, how do they do that? @standardgisoo or @gd-souders? Awesome, amazing. And again, links it to all of that in the show notes. I definitely recommend that if people are in the area. Where are you guys, Greg, Maryland, right? - Just before, so we're in Rockville, Maryland, so we're about 20 minutes, or depending where we are, 45 minutes right outside of DC, I'll write on the Metro line. And for anybody listening, if anyone gets this far into the thing, our ultimate goal has always been to build a strong and competitive Gisoo team. And that's all this really is. All the crap about me talking about eco this, eco that CLA, that is secondary to the real goal, which is to build a Gisoo team using this method. So if anyone is hearing this, and anyone is serious and wants to move over here, we are recruiting, we are taking anyone that has the goals and wants to join the team and wants to push to the top with us, 'cause that's where we're going. So reach out. - Amazing, man. Well, I'll put a link to all of that in the show notes. Everything we make, if people want more from us, solid BJJMentalModels.com. I definitely recommend going back and listening to some of the earlier episodes that we did with Greg, digging into the specifics of like the ecological approach and also some with Rob Gray. I'll put a link to those in the show notes. I'd also recommend signing up for our newsletter. Again, all of that will go in the show notes. And of course, if you want to kick it up to the next level with us, BJJMentalModels Premium is the way that you do that. That's where all of our premium podcasts are. That's where our course library is. Hundreds of hours of content on there, primarily delivered through audio. And of course, we also offer direct coaching from some really elite tier black belts. You can learn more about that at bjjmentalmodels.com. Again, link to all of the stuff in the show notes. But no, Greg, thanks so much for coming by, man. I was looking forward to this chat, I think it delivered. And I think it's really cool to learn about the stuff, not from the traditional coach perspective. But what does it actually like to live this lifestyle as an athlete? So know what, thanks for doing this. - Yeah, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity. I was glad. I hope I was able to give some sort of new refreshing perspective for people that have any interest in it. - I thought so. And Greg, thanks to you as well, sir. - You're welcome, pal. - Amazing. And listeners, thanks to you too. We'll talk to you next time. See you then.