JordanTeachesJiujitsu does not understand the Ecological Approach

Do not let grifters bait and switch everything this methodology is about.

Jordan recently published a Talk-Jitsu podcast episode on its associated YouTube Channel. In the episode, Jordan splits eco into “hybrid” and “purist” factions and perpetuates an extensive rap sheet of falsehoods and slippery redefinitions.

I don’t want coaches and learners to feel nervous to articulate their understanding of where they’re at. This is not about them. We all make mistakes in our understanding and articulation of complex topics.

This, however, was not a mistake.

I know this because I personally expended something like 3 or 4 hours of my time to dialog with Jordan on these concepts and attempted to correct the very same canards he argues in the episode.

This article examines the episode in question and highlights Jordan’s false claims and misinformed arguments.

Assessing Episode 43 of Talk-Jitsu

An overview:

• Jordan engages in labelling or repositioning, a PR/marketing/rhetorical strategy meant to influence audiences into forming negative perceptions prior to factual considerations. I know, because I’m a marketer by trade and I studied rhetoric. “Hybrid” sounds immediately more reasonable and is intrinsically less challenging to viewers. “Purists,” however, sounds immediately unreasonable, even prudish. “Purist” is almost never used in a positive way colloquially.

• Jordan has never once asked me a question about ecological dynamics or CLA, publicly or privately, despite very long interactions between us on a chat server. He has not responded to any corrections I’ve made about EcD theory or CLA practice. While I was still in the chat server, I did not observe him asking any of the other members about EcD, either, despite claiming he was just in there to learn more about it.

• Jordan was already corrected on the erroneous talking points in Episode 43 of Talk-Jitsu. I know because he test-ran them in a chat server, and I spent hours of my own time correcting his misconceptions myself. I also staved off the contortions of other starstruck members in there eager to please him—I know what they said, and Jordan repeats their misconceptions, too.

I respond to select timestamps of the video below.

8:08 — “More solutions makes better problem solvers”

Jordan claims that giving his students solutions makes them better problem solvers in merit of having more solutions.

This is a bizarre claim since in this scenario his students did not solve the problem. So how did they get better at problem-solving when they never engaged the solving process?

“Giving solutions” also doesn’t make you a better problem solver since most solutions you’re “given” never emerge in the performance context anyway. They never actualize as solutions; they don’t solve anything for you.

There’s hundreds of individually labelled techniques and variations taught in jiu jitsu curricula, and students never use most of them.

As for analyzing movements, this is a separate activity from drilling and not directly a learning activity. It is useful; my 3D Model of Coaching teaches “Dissection,” specifically playback analysis, which is an analytical process.

Drilling a movement is not analysis. You don’t even know what you’re dealing with or how it works or what is really required to hit it in rolling.

Suggesting otherwise is a strawman, and it betrays a lack of familiarity with categories and conceptual definitions we use and that are also shared between theoretical camps.

09:45 — “Eco people use the worst examples of the traditional approach”

The “15 step technique” rhetoric is hyperbole. It’s cringey that he thinks it’s a literal criticism, although bizarrely enough there are real cases of this (e.g., Alliance’s connection sequences). He somehow manages to be wrong in two distinct ways.

In reality, techniques are usually 3+ steps—often because an artificial context and transition into the movement is part of the drilling repetition process. Not including additional details that stop the natural flow of practice.

When I criticize the traditional approach, I'm chiefly criticizing the near-uniform methodology I experienced across Alliance (Lucas Lepri's program, heard directly from Gurgel on how he designed Alliance's program), Gracie University, Gracie Barra, Team Gordo, and Team Traven.

Claiming that this doesn’t happen on big teams, across mats, and even in elite rooms, is simply dishonest.

At the end of the day, this all violates direct learning, representative learning design, and information-movement coupling. It’s not ecological, by definition of ecological in ecological dynamics.

Jordan thinks his initial arguments eco weren’t wrong. They were wrong, and they are still wrong.

10:00 — “They’re still going to self-organize”

It’s true that learners will engage in self-organization in rolling because you literally cannot teach every move they need to make during the course of a sparring round.

Jordan then tortures the concept of self-organization so that it affirms what he already did before discovering eco. He claims he prescribes one thing, but his wife self-organized to iterate on it, and the two synergized into a successful outcome. Yay for hybrid!

Except, per Jordan’s own next words, this is very clearly not what happened.

Jordan copes with this fact by saying his wife’s creativity was in fact “based on” what he had taught her.

But the fact is Jordan’s prescription was wrong—the detail was a hindrance rather than a help—and the behavior that Jordan had intentionally excluded from his instruction (“I don’t recommend this”) ended up being the behavior his wife needed to succeed.

Folks, this is the “coaching to the average” nonsense of traditionalists in a squiggly mustache disguise. You have to do the artificial ideal unless you prove yourself a genius after the fact. Otherwise, coach always knows best.

But her movement system knew better than coach Jordan. For that reason, the illustration fails.

Self-organization fixed his coaching mistake. There was no synergy: she succeeded despite his instruction.

Jordan and I had this exact argument over minute guillotine details, and later on the lateral drop. I know he’s been corrected on his faulty understanding here.

He’s wrong, and he proved it himself.

19:01 — “But you do gain knowledge about [from drilling]”

Drilling can sometimes have an attention directing effect, which is why—from the ecological perspective—occasionally some moves drilled in class eventually emerge in some impoverished form. Jordan mentions this, and he’s correct on that point.

Static drilling, however, is highly unrepresentative of the performance context. It is not true that it necessarily imbues “knowledge about”—in fact, since it’s chiefly an experience, albeit a very different one from sparring, it almost certainly does not.

For those unaware, knowledge of is experience in situ, in a sufficiently representative environment or the performance environment itself. It is not simply any experience that bears resemblance to it. It must contain all the pertinent information for a given problem space.

Knowledge about is knowledge of facts that describe or explain a thing; it is the propositions you have in your head, the things you think about and use to analyze and understand things intellectually.

You can gain “knowledge about” from the instruction and explanations of the coach, but drilling does not imbue or reinforce this knowledge since it does not actually represent the environment being described.

I spent probably an entire hour trying to correct Jordan’s bastardized understanding of knowledge of and knowledge about. This demonstrates it was to no avail.

By the way, if transmitting knowledge about is such a productive use of class time, why not use up more training time to lecture about something more useful than a snapshot of one technique?

Moreover, Jordan seems to constantly conflate modeling and drilling. This is a sophomoric error. They are not the same, and one does not imply the need or value of the other.

He mentions Dr. Hodges here in this context, but I’ll address his comments later when he mentions her again.

25:11 — “People are telling me don’t cross my ankles…”

Here Jordan is complaining about a problem created and perpetuated by the traditional approach.

Coaches shouldn’t unilaterally say don’t cross your ankles from back, according to Jordan.

I agree.

So what about when he unilaterally removed information for a passing technique that his wife ended up needing because he flat “doesn’t recommend” it?

This is surely not the same thing. Isn’t there a difference? Quick, someone, make up a difference. We need a difference.

There’s got to be a difference!

(There is no difference.)

Jordan lastly claims these proclamations are a sign of a poor coach. With regard to traditional teaching approaches, this is simply not true. My first coaches were good from the traditional perspective, and they told me not to cross my ankles all the same.

This is an exercise in moving the goalposts.

26:29 — “You could take examples of people who are poor ecological coaches…that’s a skill that takes time to develop”

So let me get this straight.

A criticism of eco is that it’s new and most coaches are still learning how to do it well?

Eco is indeed new on the scene and there aren’t yet many educational resources and training programs on how to do it well. This is simply an absurd comparison and a totally inane criticism.

29:20 — “It builds awareness of affordances…that’s what builds skill.”

Jordan demonstrates that he does not understand learning, skill, affordances, or knowledge of.

Jordan suggests drilling facilitates knowledge of. It does not. The attention directing affect is properly an accident and is not consistent.

You don’t know what it directs attention on, if it will at all, or when. I made this painstakingly clear to everyone in the chat. Jordan was corrected on this point.

More importantly, the focus of attention on drilling is almost exclusively internal. This has been demonstrated by IP researchers like Gabriele Wulf (as well as eco researchers) to frustrate both motor control and learning.

He also passingly suggests it helps you see affordances. It does not. Drilling is not representative and is devoid even of most of the context around openings that present themselves in a grappling match.

If the right information isn’t there, the affordance is not being detected. This is eco 101.

In other words, students learn despite the static drilling. It does not help them do anything.

“The more tools you have, the more you can problem solve.”

Unfunctional techniques that you drilled are not tools, and nonexistent tools can’t help you solve existing problems.

Jordan rightly points out that drilling does not immediately give you a skill, but then he talks as if it does.

Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior associated with practice and experience. In other words, if a drilled technique ever shows up in live rolls at all, it does not show up as a functional and stable part of a player’s game. Definitionally, it is not learning yet.

How can drilling give you a tool if it literally still has to be learned in live training?

Provided it shows up in rolling at all.

42:00 — “Wrong vs suboptimal”

This section is just sophistry, and it makes me wonder if Jordan is telling the truth about doing eco for the length of time he claimed.

I know by direct experience that most everyday normal guys do just fine in an ecological format. I train with them every week. I talk to my coach.

Souders has trained hundreds of individuals. So has Scott Sievewright. So have others.

Jordan is creating a bunch of hypotheticals. They’re solutions in search of a problem, but the problem does not exist in reality.

I also don’t know what Jordan thinks he’s even criticizing here. He says things are dependent on the person and the room, and normal people can’t handle too much failure.

So what?

You do a bunch of drilling then? Or do you scale the games?

“Skill acquisition first” is not for competitors. Competitors learn fast no matter what. Skill acquisition is for people who struggle, who are normal, who need a better way.

On top of that, it seems like Jordan is saying that you should do things suboptimal as long as you “feel” it’s what your room needs.

Is this the level of coaching in jiu jitsu?

Sad.

46:18 — “It sounds like ecological guys are criticizing how other people are doing things.”

Yes, we are. This is not a crime, and it’s a necessary part of improving the level of training and coaching anywhere, including jiu jitsu.

You do not make the rules. On top of that, you criticize eco “purists” this entire episode.

Get over yourself.

Read a book.

Make a real argument.

58:10 – PhDs saying there's value in demonstration

Jordan conflates modeling with drilling once again.

His presentation of Dr. Hodges is inaccurate. She says there is value, but models should be sparse and relatively undetailed.

Greg Souders and other bona-fide eco coaches engage in varying degrees of modeling or demonstration to accompany their task instructions. This comes with caveats, of course.

Jordan is blowing this up, but it doesn’t support how instructors traditionally use modeling: to aid multi-step technique instruction and fuss about details.

The “PhDs on both sides” talk is frankly a hallmark of sloppy thinking. Having a PhD is not an epistemic badge. The number of PhDs in one camp or another does not infuse upon them greater or lesser credibility.

It’s the weight of the arguments and the quality of research that matter. And most IP-based research I’ve seen has weak ecological validity and doesn’t compare prescriptive approaches to live/play-based ones.

59:00 — “A PhD researcher says the research is not there to say this is 100%”

Jordan apparently does not understand how science works (nothing in complex sciences is truly 100%) nor the importance of humble claims in research.

However, the evidence is good. More than that, it is sufficient.

This doubt-mongering is without substance. It makes no argument, interacts with no claims, does nothing but affirm Jordan in the place he was before he started experimenting with eco.

1:00:00 — “Learn how people learn, and then apply that to your practice.”

If you take the eco account of learning, you simply cannot defend anything you’ve said up to this point.

It’s not purity. It’s logic.

“It goes against eco…you learn by doing.”

It doesn’t. Practicing coaching is of primary importance in learning to coach ecologically.

There aren’t any apprenticeships available, so the only thing there is to do is read research and popular level resources to gain a sense of where to place your attention, what to focus on.

If they’re going to “just do it and figure it out” they need to know what they’re figuring out and where they’re headed. Otherwise they’re headed nowhere and the destination doesn’t matter.

Knowledge about and knowledge of is our language. You’re using it because of us.

Your cohost Joey is correct, and I’m glad he clarified this. The research calibrates your attention and sets your intention in designing.

You don’t know what you’re talking about.

Stop trying to criticize something you don’t even understand.

Why does Jordan need the Eco label? What is even Eco about his “Hybrid?”

What is actually different about what Jordan presents in this episode and what he used to do?

If he’s against virtually every major principle of eco, why does he insist on claiming the eco mantle?

The change in definition is not hard to surmise. We’re talking law of identity and basic communication.

1. “Eco” has a referent, and that’s the ecological approach.

2. The ecological approach has referents, and those are the ecological dynamics theory and the constraints-led approach to coaching.

3. Those frameworks have established content and principles.

4. Jordan does not believe or operate on the belief of those principles, as evidenced in the Talk-Jitsu episode.

5. Therefore, Jordan’s “eco” has no referent to the aforementioned concepts and has thus been redefined.

(I wrote extensively about what makes ecological dynamics “ecological”—and what the term means to us.)

Logic demands therefore that what Jordan calls eco is actually different than the ecological approach as we understand it: the work of Nikolai Bernstein, J.J. Gibson, Karl Newell, Keith Davids, Duarte Araujo, and many others.

And by different, I really mean it’s the same thing he and everyone else were doing before eco entered the jiu jitsu discourse.