BTG 123 - The Ecological Approach to BJJ

Hey, what's going on? Welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. On today's episode, I want to talk about what's been coming up at least on my social feed for some time now, which is what's being referred to as the ecological approach of training sports and specifically jiu-jitsu. One of the major proponents of this now is a gentleman named Greg Souders. And apparently he has opened up a school. Well, he he had a school beforehand, but he changed the whole teaching methodology so that it was strictly following this ecological approach. I haven't heard it directly from Well, yes, I I listened to a podcast that he did. Uh I think it was an hour and a half. Uh I and it was a good interview. They were going back and forth. So, he got to defend his position a bit and explain the logic behind it. I won't profess that I have the full understanding of his entire approach, but I have read about it's not uh something new per to sports. It's being done in other sports. Uh not new to jiu-jitsu either, to be honest. Uh Kit Dale had a very similar system much earlier uh that he called like task-based drills and task-based games. It's the same approach. So, I'll give you the rundown of my understanding of how it's being used in jiu-jitsu and my take on the viability of it. With the ecological approach, the idea is that we're looking at the game of jiu-jitsu as a system versus a set of techniques, right? And the main um reproach from people who are using this is that schools are just teaching lots of individual techniques that then the students just are mimicking. They're not really understanding why they're doing the movement or why it works. They just know that this is what they're supposed to do. For example, when we're doing a guard pass, and the example they use like a knee cut, if the instructor teaches you the knee cut, you just know, oh, this is how I'm supposed to pass guard. I just do this. I don't question why or how it works. I just know that it works. And when I do encounter situations in life where it doesn't work, now I'm stuck because I don't know what to do next. Whereas in the ecological approach, they teach you the understanding of the system, which is, okay, to pass a guard, you have to get around the guy's legs, and get both of your knees either to the side of one of his uh of his body or on either side of his body on top of his hips, right? Mounted position, for example. Uh so or so you could be side control, north-south, you know, the other side control, but basically that's what we talk about when we're passing guard. Now, how do you move the legs around? Well, you can go over them, you can go under them, you know, you can go around them. There's different ways. So, in the ecological approach, they're going to tell you the ways that you can get around the legs, and then you're supposed to figure out on your own how to get around them. All right? So, they call this uh constraints, right? Where I'm giving you a specific task to get around the legs, and I'm putting in these constraints as far as like what is the condition as far as the end condition that you want to be able to pass somebody's guard. The idea here is that by putting people in a real situation and giving them the creativity to express their body in movement in a way that appears natural to them, you're allowing them to learn faster and you're they're learning like on the job, right? And from experience, we know that on the job training typically is better than theory training, right? Which is if I read a book about how to wire a house versus actually be mentored by somebody and shadow them while they're wiring a house. The latter experience is going to be far better than just reading the book. More often than not. Sounds great. However, I feel that they have a very strict view of uh I would say is a traditional teaching model versus uh this ecological approach. When I teach, I am explaining why I do the things that I do, right? When I go over my 10-point Kimura, I'm telling you the 10 points of why it works and how each of those points affects the the final hold and how come it's applying extra leverage or extra pinning power, right? So, it's not like I'm just doing the movement and go just do this. Right? Maybe there are professors or teachers that do that. It's not what I do. So, I don't find that it is a mutually exclusive thing to be able to teach fundamental principles of how how a technique works and also give the person the understanding of why it works. Right? So, like for example, for a Kimura, what do we need to do in my opinion to have the best Kimura? You need to pin the shoulder and we're talking about let's say top side control. Pin the shoulder, pin the wrist, elevate the elbow, right? And by elevating the elbow and having that wrist and shoulder pinned, we're putting a lot of rotational pressure on the shoulder joint, which is going to make him tap. Right? That is what we would say, I guess in the ecological approach, that's how we're going to describe that submission. Like this is how the the breaking mechanics, if you will, is going to work. So, now grab the arm however you want and make it work. Sure, I could I could leave that flexibility and have someone try to figure out how to do it. I just think it's a bit more effective and you're going to save time on the guy and say, "Hey, look, rather than you fumbling around for weeks or or months trying to figure out how to get this hold exactly right, I'm going to show you how this hold looks like. And since I've done this thousands of times for decades, I have a good amount of experience and testing, right? And at the same time, I'm not going to be arrogant and say this is the end-all be-all of all Kimuras. This is just the best way that I have learned so far and I'm telling you the reasons why it's I find that it's the best. Now, if you can find a better grip, please do. Because then I would love to learn that. I don't see this as being restrictive. I'm showing you the most efficient way as a coach that I know of of applying this hold. I'm telling you why we're doing it. I'm telling you how it works. As far as I'm concerned, the ecological approach honestly sounds a little lazy in that the coach is not going to actually teach techniques to you. He's just going to tell you the the task, right? So, I'm going to pass guard or I'm going to go for a submission. He's going to tell you the constraints as far as like, "Okay, what are the the conditions that you're operating under?" And then you're supposed to be able to figure out on your own. And I'm sure that people do figure it out on their own. And perhaps it's a little funner because you're you're you know, you're problem-solving, right? You're trying to figure out the problem and you don't know the best uh approach about it, so you have to experiment a lot and I think that's good. But as the coach, and they even mentioned this, it's like you have much less to do in the class. Like So, yeah, it sounds lazier to me. Like I can have that same uh approach, but also being more hands-on by actually teaching you technique, right? And teaching you the process to win that game, that task, the most effective way that I know, right? But I always tell students like, "You can experiment and you can fool around once you know how to do it the way that I have shown you, that I know it works. Feel free to play, right? Find other ways of making this work. Since you know how the submission actually works and the way I'm utilizing those levers, start finding your own ways to get there. Maybe instead of doing the figure four, you go to the wrist control, or maybe you do it with the one arm and you go shallower. Like there's a lot of ways you can get that same end condition, the wrist pin, shoulder pin, elbow elevation, right? But I don't think I'm saving time for somebody by not telling them uh how to do it. In fact, I can see ways where you're wasting time for people as far as them spinning their wheels a bit more to try to figure out the proper hold. Sometimes perhaps a big strong guy will be able to get by by doing it with very poor technique. And against lesser people, he's able to do it. So, he's like, "Oh, this is great. This is works." And if I I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure he said that if somebody is able to make something work for them, that means that's a good move. And no, that's objectively not true. Because they could be very inefficient with the way they do it, but just because of their their natural athleticism, their strength, their size, etc., they're able to make it work. But if I teach that guy how to do it more effectively, he's even better at that technique. So, and I've had this with people where uh, again, uh, somebody who I looked up to as being uh, really powerful submission artist, probably the most dangerous one in the UFC heavyweight division, was Frank Mir. The guy broke arms, he broke legs. Like, he's just incredible breaking power. And uh, he wanted to do a Kimura private lesson with me. Taught him the lesson and he the the very first technique, he said he was blown away, right? And obviously this is a guy who's very effective, right? He didn't need me to be able to finish Kimuras. He broke people's arms before. But combining the techniques and uh, and it really wasn't a technique I showed him that was new. He obviously already knew it, but some extra details to get more leverage out of it, I'm afraid for the guy who who gets Kimuras from him now, because now he's got some more juice on it, all right? But moves can be better. And if I feel as a coach, my whole you know, selling point to you is that I do have this breadth of experience that I can draw from. So, I'm going to share with you my repeated trials because I have gone through this process already, right? Maybe I'm a little different than your average coach because my brother and I were largely self-taught. I did about a year and a half of Jeet Kune Do, got into wrestling 3 years, trained shoot fighting MMA and Luta Livre, you know, before MMA the term was coined for about a year and a half with our coach, right? And after that, my brother and I were essentially ronin, right? And we were training ourselves. So, we did have to experiment a lot and we had to understand why techniques worked. We filmed a lot. We watched a lot of video. Um and again, this was before the internet was a big deal. So, the video was us with a VHS camera filming our competitions and then studying both what we were doing and what our opponents were trying to do, as well. Going to seminars, uh reading magazines, books, all these different things. So, us learning this way required a fundamental understanding of why the techniques worked because if we just imitated, it wasn't enough. And I always trust the people. I don't want you imitating what I'm doing. I want you to understanding what I'm doing. So, I feel that the proponents of the ecological approach seem to say that the old-fashioned way of learning is robotic. You just learn techniques. You don't yet have an understanding of why it works. I'm like, who's teaching you that way is doing a terrible job as being a an instructor. I always teach with this is why this works. This is how come we do this. This is why you want to get to here, right? There's a reason and there's a there's a there's a why, there's a how, there's a when, right? I'm trying to answer all those questions. And I'm going to show you the best way I figured out to solve that task. But I'm not going to punish you if you figure out a new way. In fact, I would applaud you. And I have on several occasions recognized people who I taught them something and then they taught me something back. Cuz they're like, "Hey, have you ever tried this?" I'm like, "No, that's a new one. Awesome. I'm going to add this now to the system, right?" So I in that interview, there were things that he mentioned about the ecological approach that I think are going to be novel for most people as far as the the way that he played uh games or tasks. That's something that we do though. I mean, it's again it's not exclusive to uh the ecological approach to pace play games that are situational, right? Like this is situational drills. You're both are going to start from an open guard. The guy in uh let's say in side control, the guy in bottom has to escape or stand up. Guy on top has to keep him pinned. This is a an example of a game that they might pose or like you're setting constraints and then you're allowing them to do what they want. You're not giving specific guidance as oh, go into a crucifix or use an underhook escape. No, this is like these are the constraints. You you win by solving the problem however you can. That's a situational drill. Anybody who's worth their salt does this, right? Like as a coach, like, of course. You're trying to give somebody repeated exposure to a particular scenario that's very common. Right? Uh I forgot what they call this. Man, that's the other thing that, at least to someone who's outside of it, they use a lot of uh new terms to describe different things that uh make sense. I get it. But from an outsider, it's like, oh, I got to figure out what you mean by this particular concept, this new term that you've you've coined. Uh but yeah, this is not something novel. This is something that any half-decent coach should be doing anyways, right? If I show you techniques, like I show you a bunch of escapes from side control, and I go, "Okay, that's it." I did a bad job because I didn't give you a chance to actually rehearse this in some sort of relevant circumstance. Because to me, the value of drilling is you get to get repeated exposure to a position, a situation, or a technique over and over again in live or not live, because we'll say in real-life resistance or close to it, um in a somewhat choreographed scene constraints, so that you get a lot more chances to feel that position and understand how it works. Because they Remember I talked about this before, real quick, I'll sum it up here. For me, four phases of learning: observation, practice, drilling, sparring. Observation is when the coach teaches you a technique or you learn it from a video, magazine, etc., right? You're just watching and you're getting an idea of a technique or position or some type of concept and putting it in your head. Practice, you now start recreating your idea of what you observed into the physical world. It's clumsy. You have to think your way through it. Sometimes you're going to have to stop, ask for help until you get some sort of semblance of what you observed. Third is drilling. So now I'm going to whatever concept I have with that technique, position, etc. movement, I'm going to recreate to the best of my ability with my partner. And depending on the type of drilling we're doing, it might be, you know, a static drill where I'm just doing the technique with zero resistance. Usually this is only done like when you're first learning the move. So you're you're not giving yourself a lot of resistance. You're just trying to develop some speed and proficiency. And over time, we can start adding some resistance so that now we can feel more realistic pressure, right? Kind of like if we're doing basketball, a static drill would be like free throw shooting, right? Where you're just by yourself shooting free throws. It has a value, right? But is it relevant as relevant as having a shot blocker trying to jump and while you're shooting? No, right? Because now there's pressure, there's obviously the obstruction of the the guy blocking your vision and, you know, also potentially blocking the ball from reaching the basket. So we can do different types of drills. The again, the people who have this ecological approach as the main goal, they seem to think that drilling is simply static drilling where zero resistance, you're doing everything, the guy never moves. Again, that is to me the very basic form of drilling, which by the way, still has value. All right? They try to say, "Oh, it produces no value." Really? Let's get a set of identical twins, right? I'm going to teach them both the Kimura from side control. One of them is just going to do it once, the other one is going to do it 10,000 times. And at the end of it, let's see who has the better Kimura. If you said the guy who did it once, I'm sorry my friend, you're an idiot. Right? It's going to be the guy who did it 10,000 times, and everybody knows that, right? So, of course, drilling has value, even a very static basic drilling pattern. Now, so the question is, does drilling work? Yes, it works. Objectively, it works. The The better question would be, is drilling the best way of improving your skill? Now, you have an argument. You could say, "Well, this ecological approach, task-based games, whatever you want to call it, is going to improve the speed that you learn." Maybe. But, uh I believe they straw man quite a bit the standard Well, what I would consider standard. Maybe Maybe it's not. Maybe I'm wrong, right? Uh Maybe most people do this teach do this, don't question me, right? And if that's the case, then I could see the criticism being valid. I'm like, "Okay, that's not That's not great instruction then, because then you're just being a copycat." But, at least the way that I learned, the way that my brother teaches, the way that we teach at our school, we're teaching you the operating principles behind each technique, and the reasons why you're doing it, when you should be looking to do this, how you should be doing it depending on different situations. All right, what are the main levers that make the move work? Because what I want is people who are good thinkers. Remember, I come from an engineering background, so I'm always trying to understand why things work. I don't like just getting something, "Oh, let me use it because I know this works." I want to know why it works. So, I like giving that same type of explanation to other people, because as someone who I believe myself to be creative, I want to know why something works, so then I can start tweaking it and manipulating it, trying to get something more out of it, right? To the lament of my wife, because sometimes I I I cook as well. I'll cook something and I follow a recipe and once I figure it out and she's like, "Oh, I love it." I'm like, "Okay, now I'm going to start playing around with it." And she's like, "Wait, wait, wait, why are you going to tweak it?" Like, "Because I'm not satisfied with my first understanding of it, right? Like, I'm going to try to manipulate the different ingredients to see which one comes out better." Right? And they actually use this example as well as a cooking example. Like, if you want to learn how to bake a cake, the I guess his version of the standard approach is you I just give you the recipe and you just follow it, zero questions. Right? Whereas, the ecological approach, they're going to tell you, you know, why in a cake you need something that's a binder and then perhaps something that's a leavener that's going to, you know, create air in the cake to give it some lift, uh etc. And then you're going to figure out how to bake your cakes on your own and then you're going to be able to learn how to make any cake. First of all, man, there's going to be a lot of trial and error if you don't have a recipe when you're making a cake, all right? Uh I don't know if this guy has ever baked a cake before. There are things that you have to do to get it right. And if you don't have a recipe, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. You know what I would do? I would do both. I would give you the recipe. I'm like, "Look, this is the thing that works. Let me explain why we use each of these ingredients." I don't understand why they're trying to make it seem like it's exclusive to teaching to tell the student why it actually works. I don't just give students recipes and just go, "Oh, here you go, that's it. Never ask me about this." That seems ridiculous. No, no. If I give you a recipe, I'm going to explain why the recipe works. And then I'm going to tell you, these are the levers in this recipe that have the main difference. Right? Like, if you don't put any sugar or sweetener, this cake is not going to taste good because it's going to have no sweetness. So, that's an important one. Now, depending on how you sweet you want your cake, add more sugar, add less sugar, right? Changing type of sugar, like using honey instead of cane sugar, is going to change uh the taste and texture a little bit, so and these are things you can be aware of. That's how I approach all my teaching. So, I don't understand why they feel like they have a level up when they're removing a portion of teaching, cuz I mean the way I teach, I include all that. We do situational games or, you know, fast-paced games, that's just drilling, right? Maybe like I said, their the coaches that they work with didn't have a good understanding of applying games or applying drills and only had them do static drilling, and as a result, they didn't really see a wider range because the type of things that they're doing are just drills, right? Again, there's more to drilling than just static drilling, and every time I hear someone go against drilling, they're always talking about static drilling. I'm like, yeah, that's the most basic form of drilling possible, right? And even that has value, right? So, to say that you shouldn't do that at all, to me, mistake, right? Now, if that's the only thing you do, yeah, you're probably having going to have some diminishing returns once you start getting to like thousand plus reps, 10,000 reps. Uh that usually like, okay, you probably gained as much of from there as you can quickly, right? And from that point on, like, you might get incrementally better, but you're wasting time, right? Now, situational drilling can be very useful here, right? Cuz now let's Okay, you shoot, the guy scrolls. Okay, now we have to do go into a peek out or go into some secondary finish, right? And then we can add another layer, right? Where I have to read a signal before I shoot, right? So, now I'm building some timing as well. Okay? So, like you can switch up the drills. All drilling is, at least in my mind, is we're creating a scenario which is somewhat rehearsed, right? Both players know what we're going to do. And we're going at 100%. So, we're getting feedback of real resistance, right? Or it could be zero resistance, right? In the static case, but we both know what's going to happen. We're getting feedback, and I'm able to execute. So, I'm developing speed, developing power, and developing stamina, and I'm developing, most importantly, proficiency in the technique. Cuz the more I do it, the better I'm going to understand it. And I have found many times, as I drill technique over and over again, something will click. I'm like, "Huh, oh." I realized something that I did that made a big difference, and now my understanding of the technique improves a little bit more. Not to mention, it's a great workout, right? And again, I feel this is why a lot of people are scared of drilling, because it's tough. Right? And to me, this is kind of the gimmick. Like, most of the people I know that are world champ- I actually I can't think of a one guy who's a world champion that doesn't drill, even statically. Uh when I prepared for ADCC, lots of drilling. Most of the training sessions I did was drilling. Especially as I got older, because sparring was dangerous. You get hurt, you get injured. It's a lot easier to happen. When you're drilling, I could drill 100% without I can't recall a time I was hurt drilling. Right? It just We both know what we're doing. So, it's very easy to to not get hurt, right? There's no surprises. But, it is exhausting. 30-minute drill session, especially that's well choreographed, is is very, very tough. I I much rather roll around for 30 minutes. And my feeling of this is like the ecological approach seems to work. The coach is being lazier and he doesn't really have to teach anything. He just has to set up the conditions for these games and you know, explain the basic concepts of what they're looking for. And then the athletes are not really, you know, grinding as much. They I mean, from the let me let me be a little more uh forgiving on this. It does sound like they're doing lots of situational drills. Situational drills can be tough. Uh but they're a bit more open as far as it's open-ended. You can solve the problem in many ways, which is what they want, right? The so I'm not saying it's the easiest training session possible, but it's definitely funner, right? Versus a more choreographed style of drill, which would be like I'm going to for example, I'll give you one that we've used before for myself, particularly for ADCC, where we knew we had to be able to counter the turtle position and to overcome it, where I would shoot, guy would sprawl. I would circle towards the back. He would try to pull guard. I would have to break him down, ride the back, then start looking for a choke. He's going to try to roll out again. Sometimes we allow the guy to escape into a stand up. Other times I would get the finish, right? Uh so this was a back and forth where both guys were making movements. We both knew what we were doing, both trying to win. So there wasn't anything too unexpected there, right? These are tough drills, right? Cuz we're just going to go back and forth. Uh, I'll do one, he'll do one. I'll do one, he'll do one. And doing 100 reps in a training session, good quality, right? Not just trying to hit numbers. Uh, we're we were trying to make every rep better than the previous one. That was the standard. If you had a bad rep, you do 10 more. So, you weren't trying to be quick. You were trying to be good. That is a very tiring practice. So, I imagine most of the population doesn't want to do that. But if I told you, "Let's play this little game." Uh, most people love playing games. I have And don't get me wrong, I use games also. Uh, I uh, done seminars where when I see people starting to get a little tired or a little mind fog, let's break into a game. And you'll see grown men giddy like a child once they hear the word game and they start playing. And they have all the energy of the world when just a few moments ago they looked like they were defeated, right? We like having fun. So, to me the ecological approach is more of a fun-based thing. And again, from my take, a little lazier on the coach's side. Right? Uh, as the coach, I'm supposed to be sharing my experience. And at least in my opinion, that's the value. Like that's why I want a coach that has competed before, has, you know, decades of experience, has produced athletes of high caliber, right? Like I know his track record. I know he's done well. And I can see results with that coach quicker as well. And he's also someone who's invested and has the same vision uh, for my future. Right? And as far as like my trajectory. If I'm just going to say, I mean, as far as I'm concerned with the ecological approach, you really need minimal experience or coaching ability. Right? You just need to know the conditions of the game. And then you're just letting people figure out their own solutions. Now, they do they they have a thing where they call variants or invariants, right? Where certain positions or techniques, there's a lot of different ways that the move can uh finish. Like a guard pass, for example, has lots of variations, right? So, uh and those situations, from my understanding, they won't teach a technique. But the example they gave uh armbar, they do teach because the only way an arm straight armbar finishes is by hyperextension, and that is a very limited motion, right? Like you're only getting that usually from one way. So, they say they will explicitly teach what an armbar looks like, but then open it up afterwards and there's how the the many different ways you can do the the armbar, right? Like we the traditional way, at least I learned, leg over the head, leg over the hips. Then we learn, you know, we can have a knee here, leg over the head. We can do the the shoulder triangle, right? So, there's a lot of ways we can configure the armbar now. But so it's not like they're opposed entirely to technique instruction, although they do, from the interview, my gathering was they were very uh uh apprehensive about teaching technique. They're uh at least from what Greg was saying, he's apprehensive about it because he feels like once the coach teaches you something, you're going to forget all the other possibilities and just do that, right? You're going to limit yourself because, "Oh, I know this works. I don't have to try to reinvent the wheel. I'm only going to do that, never question it ever again." I can see that happening if you don't preface it properly, right? I like I say, I try to tell people there's this is the best way I know of doing this. This is why we're doing it. This is how it works. This is when you do it. But feel free to experiment. Right? Uh I'm always looking to try to create a better mousetrap. All right? My Kimura from side control, when I first taught it, it was a seven point Kimura. And then it went to eight, went to nine. Recently, we moved it up to 10, right? I'm always trying to uncover new details. And they're not necessarily new, they're just being brought into consciousness, right? I feel one of the things I'm trying to do is figure out as many different control points or leverage points as possible with each movement technique position so that we can really maximize our efficiency. Cuz if I know I have a leverage point that was untouched that I wasn't that I was neglecting, now when I incorporate that, I'm going to be a much more efficient grappler. So, I feel as a coach, I should be doing that. I should be showing you recipes for things that work well, but also giving you the flexibility to be able to create your own recipes afterwards by teaching you why my recipe works. I feel this is just like being a good parent. If my parenting strategy was just to dictate to my kids what they're allowed to do without any explanation, you're going to have probably a really bad time, right? If I say, "Oh, you you do this or else." And why? Because I told you to. That's not a great example, right? That's not great uh parenting in my opinion. I feel like if you're going to be a good parent, I I'll tell you, "Hey, you're not allowed to do this and here's the reasons why, right? I don't want you to put your hand over open flame because you're going to burn yourself, right? So, it's dangerous to do that. And that's why I don't want you to do that, right? I don't want you to take drugs because they're going to affect your head. And when you're young, and especially you're you're still developing, it can stunt your brain growth or it can have other ill effects. You're going to be next to people who are not great people, yada yada yada, whatever the your explanation is. But I I the reasons why. They may not like it, they may not agree it, but with it, but at least they understand where I'm coming from, right? I'm not just going to dictate to you and expect you to follow blindly. As a coach, if I'm not able to explain why I'm teaching you something, I need to question then what am I doing, right? Like then maybe I don't know what I'm doing and I I'm just repeating patterns because I never questioned before. I need to get back into the drawing board and figure out why the moves I'm teaching uh are are working. So, uh to summarize, is the ecological approach terrible? No. I think it will work and it will produce results, right? I'm sure people will get better doing it. Do I think it's the best way of doing it? Not at this time. No. I think cutting out a portion and mind you, they're cutting out major portions. I Not only are they cutting out a good amount of the drilling, they're like they're taking away all the basically rehearsed drilling. They're only doing more open drilling, right? Or the you know, the games so to speak, right? Sparring situations, situational sparring, right? They're also taking away the observation phase, which is they're not teaching you anything. So, they're just telling you what the the goal conditions is to win. They're setting up the problem, telling you what the the the victory condition is, and then letting you figure it out on your own. So, like you're missing two major phases of learning from my point of view. So, I feel like you're really stunting uh the growth. I I I I will say as a pro, I do like that this approach definitely forces the student to be more cerebral in the sense that he has to really think a lot more, which is good. But you should be doing that anyways as a coach. Right? That's why I feel this is cutting out instead of adding, and that's what they admit, but they feel the stuff they're cutting out is unnecessary. I heavily disagree with that, right? Just from objectively, I don't know any of the champions that exist that didn't drill. Right? And from my understanding, Greg came from uh Lloyd Irvin's gym, which I know they're very heavy into drilling. Right? So, he from my understanding, he left the gym and then he started his own program, and he developed this whole approach. But he is not a product of his teaching either, right? He is a product of drilling. So, he's not a good example of like this new approach. So, we we'd have to judge based on the students, right? Um And listen, I'm I'm all for, you know, people proving me wrong and finding a better way to to do things. I just don't see it yet. And I think they're neglecting important parts of the the learning process. You know, the And I I'll I'll be humble here I admit it could be wrong and perhaps the people who do the this approach will be better, but let's let's see the the fruits of of your labor, right? Cuz we we haven't seen it yet. The people that say I know I think they said like oh Marcelo Garcia doesn't drill like No, no, he does. He does situational drills and and then they're calling that a victory for them like no, like everybody does situational drills. I do situational drills, and now you're going to claim that I'm a ecological approach guy would be silly. Um So, I don't feel what they do is novel, right? I feel that what's novel is they're removing important elements out of the the teaching process. Right? And if that's the case, I feel like the value of the coach has diminished greatly. Now, mind you, if it does work, that is pretty wild. I do think that after listening to that podcast, I would try to I I feel like there is value in trying to get people to understand the the game more. And maybe I could do a better job of that, right? So, I do appreciate that because again, as somebody who's an engineer, I like breaking things down. And even though I do I feel I do a pretty good job of explaining why things work and not just oh, this is it. Do that. I feel I show the recipe and I show the proof, right? Just like in math, you know, you have a formula, there's a proof of why this formula works. And I feel as a coach, that's my responsibility. But, if we go a step further, not only showing that, but then also explaining on a bigger general concept of what the whole game incorporates, perhaps I could do more there. So, like I said, I don't I'm this is not my intention is not really to you know, crap on this thing. Uh like I said, more competing ideas for coaching, I think it's good. Uh I just don't think this is the way to go personally, right? I wouldn't do this uh for my athletes or my or my students. I do appreciate that he's putting his his money where his mouth is, right? He changed his whole school approach to only cater to this method of teaching. So, for that, I give you props, right? Cuz he's not just being a mouthpiece and and saying this without practicing it. He's actually doing the work. So, you know, credit to you for doing that, right? You're not just talking the talk, you're also walking it. And uh as he produces homegrown athletes, which apparently he has a few that are coming up, it'll be great to see like what what what becomes of them, right? Uh also, I I would wonder what the timeline is as far as how long it took him to get to a certain level, and how much time invested did they have to put in, right? Um so it's tricky. It's a lot of variables, right? Uh I find the guys who who worked more like I did coming from a wrestling program where you you drill a lot, you do a lot of situational drills, you do a lot of live drills, you know, there's all sorts of things that you're doing. Um there's a lot of time invested into it. So I I know he does mention that he feels and it's very true, by the way, which is time is a one of the major constraints, right? If you're going to do a 2-minute round, you're going to use your energy much more freely than if you know you have a 20-minute round, right? Which you're now you're going to conserve your energy a bit more. And he says in training, that's also a factor, which is that if you're going to train every day, and you're going 120% every training session, you're not going to make it through the week cuz you're going to be all beat up. So people in training learn how to conserve themselves a little bit more and spread themselves throughout the week. Uh that's something I only learned recently as I got older and I had to you know, my recovery got shot. So then I had to like, okay, some days I go hard, some days I go light, you know. Um so yeah, I you know, it's I guess it'll be interesting to see. I know one of my kid Dale, a friend of mine, he's been a major proponent of this as long as I known him. It's one of the things I was critical of. I felt like it wasn't getting enough training in my opinion, but uh he called his style like task-based games or whatnot. He has courses on it, too. And to his credit, Kit's a, you know, talented athlete, for sure. Uh in my opinion, probably could have benefited from drilling, right? Uh cuz objectively, all the champions do. Right? They all do. And there's a reason. It's not just for technique. You're building strength, you're building stamina, you're building speed. And you're getting a lot of reps, cuz if you're just relying on live drills or situational drills, that's better than just sparring, because for you to get into a particular position that you want to work on in sparring, it's going to be tricky. You maybe going to get there once or twice. In a situational drill, now we're increasing the frequency, because we're putting ourselves closer to that position, usually. So, now maybe we'll get like 10, 12 times. But, when we're drilling in a more choreographed way, we're guaranteeing the exposure. So, now, in the same amount of time, I'll get maybe 50, 100, 200 repetitions. Those reps add up. And I don't care what people are trying to convince you of, they make a difference. Every time you do something, you get a little better. Right? There's a reason why back in the day they would have you write down the same mantra over and over again. It sticks, right? The more exposure you get to something, the more you practice it, the better you're going to get. Your body starts understanding the patterns more. And as you get lots of reps in, you start seeing things in what you're doing that you did unconsciously that become conscious. And once you get conscious awareness of your body's movements, you start getting more dialed in, more efficient. You understand how to manipulate the move better, and become better for it. Anyhow, that's my take on the ecological approach. You guys can let me know what you think about this. I will see you all next week.