#190 Drake Roth: Journey Coaching with CLA, How to Scale Games, and Exploring The Underhook

In this episode I chat with Drake Roth (@dek_grappling) about his journey learning about the science of skill, information processing vs dynamic systems theory, and how this all relates to jiu jitsu. Hope you enjoy!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Uh hello.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hey Drake, it's Josh from 1-800 BJJ help. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Oh man, thank you so much for having on. I've been a fan for a while. It's an honor to finally be on the show, man. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Yeah, I'm excited. So for people who don't know, we met through uh the school group. Uh Greg Sider is the standard jujitsu school group. Uh I put a post in there wanting to interview people who had started coaching with CLA to share and capture their early lessons, challenges, advice, and multiple people mentioned uh that you should come on. So I'm excited to have you on. Uh for people who don't know who you are, could you give maybe a quick intro of like how you got into jiu-jitsu and coaching?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yeah. Um, so my name's Drake. I grew up in Minnesota. I actually started jujitsu in 2010. Um, I started because the high school I was at ended their hockey team. I was a hockey player. I lost my sport that I wanted to play. Um, and I had a friend of a friend through my mom that did jujitsu. He was a purple belt, and I started taking private lessons from him, and then I never stopped doing it.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Wow. And then how did uh coaching come into the picture?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Um, I've always been pretty fortunate. One, I'm I'm kind of uh like uh an annoying guy, like I'm always getting really getting really into stuff. Um, and I was always really lucky to be just somehow find my way into gym environments where people would always give me space to do stuff. And so even at Bluebelt, um I had a couple instructors who would let me run classes on occasion. Um, and then by the time I was a purple belt, I was living in Seattle. Um, and I had an instructor there who gave me regular classes and kind of helped develop me a little bit as a coach. Um, but I've always been really fortunate to like people have always made space for me to share my passion and kind of explore, you know, instructing and coaching.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Dang, so you started coaching early on. Um, right away, did you enjoy coaching? Like, did you know that that's something that you wanted to do?

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Yeah, I I really liked doing it. Um what's kind of funny, and I didn't really start to appreciate this until the past couple of years, but so my aunt is uh uh a renowned coach in the equestrian the horse jumping world. Um so there's like a a through line there with coaching in my family. So after a while, it sort of made sense that this felt like it clicked so well. Um so yeah, kind of kind of weird, but yeah, it always it always clicked really well for me. I always really liked doing it, and it was um a way that I felt I could be the the best version of me, interacting with people in that way and helping them grow their knowledge and share, you know, share knowledge between people for sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Gotcha. And what's your current situation like with coaching your schedule? Are you a gym owner? Are you like coaching at someone else's gym and how's it?

SPEAKER_00 2:47

I'm I'm got hired on as a head coach at a gym called Hamel Jiu Jitsu. It's in the township of Hamill, um 20 minutes outside of Minneapolis. Um I coach all the evening programs there, kids and adults. Um, and then I also coach on the weekends at another local gym um called M Theory. That's where um I trained when I moved out here, that's where I trained and got my black belt. Um so I'm at two different gyms now. And then another nice thing in Minneapolis is that we're sort of somehow, we're sort of like a hotbed for CLA contemporary coaching practice. So there's like a big group of coaches here. We all talk, we all kind of uh collect ideas together. We had a big group of us at the sports move and skill conference uh two weeks ago. Um, so again, just like somehow really lucky that like this community, like this community just kind of rises up out of nowhere where um, you know, we can all grow and share all these ideas. It's been really, really cool the past few years um in regards to that.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Whoa, that is super that is very surprising. I had no idea.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Um it's very funny. Yeah, we all we all didn't know about it at first. And so like through the through the grapevine, we all heard that we were all separately into this, and then we just decided to combine forces um a couple of years ago. And yeah, but it just was very random.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

That is awesome. Uh how did you first hear about CLA and and yeah, yeah, what were your first impressions of it?

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Man, well, so 2019, I had to take, I was training a lot and I had to take a break for a medical condition. And um, my my coach at the time, he's like, Well, if if you're not gonna be training, I'll give you a lot more classes to teach. And so I was like, Well, I want to take this seriously, so I'm gonna um take it as seriously as I can. And what that ended up being is I bought a bunch of textbooks, uh, all the motor controlled learning textbooks, all the base, like all the the standard ones, the Schmidt, the McGill, all of that. And I started reading them. I started reading them. Um, and that kind of opened my eyes just to like the the evidence-informed side of it and the theory behind it, because I just like everyone else, I kind of just was going off of how I was taught. Um and then I think similar to a lot of people, um, when COVID started, or however you want to refer to that, um, that gave me a lot of extra time to really buckle down and start digging into this stuff. And that's when I got into I somehow came across Rob Gray. Um, so a pretty typical typical story. Um, one funny thing for me that's different to a couple people is I because I dove into the reading so quickly at first that I remember having a moment where I have uh the Schmitt textbook, you know, the inf information processing textbook, and I was reading that, and then I had the dynamics of skill acquisition for ecological dynamics, and I was comparing them. I was like, well, what does this one say a skill is? And what and I started realizing certain words weren't in the glossaries in each of them. Uh, so I was like bonking my head on these kind of two different theoretical paradigms without even realizing what I was doing. I was so confused um for a couple months and um gradually started to get out of that confusion. But yeah, I was like, I was just dunking my head underwater and holding it there, essentially trying to make sense of this without really knowing what I was trying to make sense of initially. Um but that's how I started getting into motor control, the science of skill acquisition, um, and then just trying to bump that up against my own personal experience learning and teaching. Um, but I had always approached it as a point of curiosity, um, especially once I started realizing what ecological dynamics in CLA was, I was like, oh, there's this whole world of a way to know about jujitsu, this thing I love, um, that's completely different from the way I was learning it. Um, and for me personally, like embodying that, embodying being an expert, have being able to know all about CLA and all of that. Um, I wanted a mastery of that as or as closest to mastery as I can get. Um, and then as I jumped into it more, I I kind of, you know, drank the Kool-Aid or whatever, but a lot of it seemed very intuitive to me. And so that's where I'm at now. I try to keep things um purely CLA or I mean, whatever that means. I'm not really sure what any of that means anymore. But yeah, we've been doing CLA for the past three years at Hamill. Um, and man, the results have just been fantastic. People get so good so quickly. Um, they become extremely competent um in a lot of different like niche areas, like leg locks. And I really, really love what it does for gym culture. It makes the gym culture really, really fun. Everyone develops a really good relationship with failure um and adversity and fighting through stuff. Um, and so yeah, I'm kind of bought on, um, bot bought into all of it, but I still read um in everything. I'm just finishing up kind of an insane lit review where I went, I hunted down a bunch of college syllabuses to read through all of the undergrad textbooks that I can find to sign for motor control and learning. Um, yeah, it's kind of it's ruined my life in it for free.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

That's amazing. I think you're you sound like probably one of the most well-read coaches uh who's come on the show so far. So I'm actually excited to dig into your journey there. I have also drank the Kool-Aid, but um, maybe we can paint a little bit of the journey of what it's like to get there. In the beginning, when you said you were reading both and just very confused, like the information processing side and then the the CLA side or ecologic dynamic side. Um, how are you relating it to your jujitsu practice and coaching at the time? Like when you're reading the motor learning stuff, were you like, oh, that's where technique happens and repetition and what like yeah, what was that early confusion phase like? And how are you relating it to your jiu-jitsu?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

I remember I remember two two big moments, and I'll I'd I'll try not to get like too into the theoretical terminology. But so the first big moment I remember is reading the Schmidt textbook, and um what it's it starts off like a lot of like, you know, kind of in a very traditional way, and that like, uh, skill. Oh, let's define skill. And I remember reading that and being like, man, you know, 10 years of training, and I've we've I've never actually like discussed with someone what the heck a skill is. Like, what do we even mean when we say this word? And so that that got me like really interested in because I realized there was this huge gap that I had in my knowledge that you know wasn't just jujitsu specific. Um, when things really started to click for me, I remember at early Blue Belt, I was training every day. I was, you know, being a good, a good jiu-jitsu student. Um and my gym at the time, we were, I was living in Georgia at the time. My gym at the time ended up taking a contract with um uh alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, the FBI. And so they would have guys come in and train with us, a bunch of big tough guys, no grappling experience. And I remember that was I remember I always think of that as like that was the summer I got good at jujitsu, um, because I had a bunch of big tough guys that I could roll with every day that I could kind of just mess around and practice things on. And I'd always I knew that that summer was like the summer I got good, or I started to understand things. Um, but I didn't quite understand why. I thought it was just I got to train a bunch, um, which is partially true, but going from like a traditional lens, so you have this idea of um a coordination pattern, a movement solution that is a motor program. Um now two of the problems with motor program theory are two of the not like problems, but things they're trying to solve is the novelty problem and the storage problem. So I have a motor program, how and I store all these programs somewhere in my body or my brain. When does a move when is a movement one motor program or another? Is it a like do I have a motor program for knee cutting a 90-pound person? Do I have a motor program for knee cutting the 120-pound person? Um, and how do I rifle through that storage? And one of the ways that that side of the theoretical perspective solved that is basically, and this is where things get get really confusing. So basically, there are, and this is the word that's used, there's some invariant qualities to any motor program that you use. Um and then those the pieces that are not invariant, that are variant in the motor program, you parameterize them based on the context that you're in. And so already, you know, you're kind of we're already kind of in a world where you're you're, oh, we got to make this adaptable, we got to expose ourselves to all these things. And that when I started reading that textbook, I realized, oh, that's essentially what happened that summer. I had all these techniques that I thought I knew how to do, but being able to just bash them against the wall of these big, strong guys who are coming in every day, like that gave me all this good variability that gave me the ability to parameterize or um, you know, whatever whatever word you want to use. We're trying to solve the same problem with both theoretical perspectives. But that was the summer that like I had a ton of quality time exploring all of that and taking things to points of failure and exploring um beyond just what I thought the step one, step two, step three was. Um so long-winded answer, but that that was when like the the theoretical side clicked with this personal experience I had. And then I was I was hooked on um researching all this stuff as much as I could and trying to embody it as best I could in my own coaching practice.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Gotcha. So um quick question on parameterize. Uh, what does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Um, so let's like we have a parameterized as as I understand it. Um, parameterization would be the things you change to fit the context of where you're trying to um apply the movement solution. So if you have a technique, a program, a motor program for a technique for a knee cut, you could parameterize potentially like where you put your grip, depending on how big or flexible the other person is. And so there's still some invariant pieces, like my knee needs to cut through the middle. Um, I need to put my like whatever, however you want to cut them up. But then there's some gray area. Well, it could be a little bit like this. And parameterizing is all those little bits and bobs, the same thing that we're exploring when we do CLA. Um, we're just, you know, we're just trusting that the invariant features are because they're invariant, are gonna come out in the training regardless. Um, but again, both theoretical perspectives are trying to solve that problem of adaptability and novelty. Um, obviously the motor program side's gonna have a slightly different perspective on how that gets cashed out in the theory. Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Okay, that makes sense. Because uh, I guess they could say a motor program is like super narrow move, but then they're like, but you can do that super narrow move against slightly different situations. So then what exactly is the motor program? Is it this wider, like it's so it's accurate?

SPEAKER_00 13:47

There's this really old paper by Richard Schmidt, um, and it was a paper he did with the U.S. Army, and there's this really funny part of it where like half a page, he's like they're like losing their minds trying to be like, okay, you can throw a ball like 30 yards and it's one motor program. If you throw the ball 35 yards, is that a new, is that a different motor program, or are we parameter like you know, it starts getting really gray as to what becomes what? And again, if you read a lot of the textbooks, like it's a similar thing. They're like, we it's hard to tell exactly where one thing ends and one thing doesn't. Um, so again, like both like both the theories, like when you look look in the textbooks, look at the literature, like they're both kind of um they're both trying to solve that same problem. Um, so yeah, it's it's it's very funny. But yeah, as I started getting more into ecological dynamics and CLA, um and the like the dynamic systems approach, um it just it just seemed way more intuitive to me in terms of um the the diagnostic process you use to practice any given thing. And so instead of starting with um the motor program, this abstract movement pattern that really no one's ever gonna use. Like you're not gonna use this abstracted, this average knee cut, because and the average doesn't represent any individual that you're working with. So why not just start um with you know simplifying or fractionalizing the the training tasks up to let that individual be an individual and not try to um you know stick a round peg through a square hole? Yeah. Um and yeah, that's one of the things I find really powerful about all this is you can you have a way more granular tool to meet people right where they're at and give them the thing that they need in that moment um in the training that you're providing for them.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Yeah, you mentioned there were two kind of aha moments. One is that that summer, what was the the next one?

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Oh, the the the it was it was just um the first one, sorry, yeah. The first one was just realizing I didn't know what a skill was.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Gotcha. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

And then the second one was like I had this period of time, this experience where I felt like I got really good or better at jujitsu, but I didn't like, you know, oh, I was just training a lot, that's why I got good. But then as I got this new tool to look at the training and was it able to cut it up, I could kind of be like, oh, oh, that's why I was getting better, because I was able to just kind of get into a technique and then have to kind of figure out and adapt all these pieces of it, which like in the literature, like now I'm I'm parameterizing or I'm exploring functional variability in the task, and I'm right at that edge of failure in the movement to where I'm really being tested in my capabilities, which is like that's right where the growth happens, right when the something gets a little too hard for you. So I was really testing, you know, my capabilities in that way. And you know, that all just kind of snapped into place for me as I continued my studying and reading. Um it's very exciting because like you you feel you feel like you finally have a little bit of a grasp on something, and then um you get really excited and want to share that with people. But yeah, those were those were the two moments. Sorry if I was unclear about that.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

No, no, no, that's great. And then um going back to the the CLA stuff. So if motor program, they design it or they describe it that way um for that knee cut, and then there, you know, there's some parameterization and and whatnot, and it's all stored here and we fire it off or whatever. How would CLA describe that situation and how are they approaching that that problem?

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Yeah, so the way I understand it is that so in the CLA, you have um you have some sort of task in front of you that you're trying to achieve, and your body, based on the perceptual information that it's obtaining from the environment, is going to organize itself to solve that problem. Now, initially, um, this is where you you kind of they call it like stages of learning. Um, from a more dynamic systems approach, we use uh Newell's model. So the the first stage is like coordinative. Um, so that means like the bot you see it in new people, like they kind of freeze up, they get really notchy because they don't quite know what they're supposed to be paying attention to. They're slur looking for signal and the noise. They're they're not maybe not quite sure like what capacities they actually have to do this activity. Um, so as you simplify the task goal you have for them, um, you start letting them explore that space um towards whatever goal you have set out for them. What that does is it sets up these, like they call them like coordinative structures. And so instead of my body all being moving as single pieces, like I sort of link link pieces of my body together so they move sort of as like a single unit. Um again, like that's where that process of self-organization comes from. That coordinative structure that I build is going to be based on me, my specific capabilities and effectivities um against whatever task I'm trying to achieve. Um, I think the big difference is is I'm not, you're not like, you're not necessarily trying to give people like uh a stereotypical way to do the thing. You're instead of simplifying it by decoupling it and giving them the motor program, you're simplifying the outcome that they're trying to reach. So, like if we do like very, very stereotypical for CLA and guard passing, get both your partner's legs to one side of your body and touch your leg, you know, make a touch on the outside or however you want to cut that up. That's a much simpler way, much simpler task to organize around so that we can get them moving. And then you can start scaling up the difficulty or making things more specific or representative, wherever you want to fall on in using that terminology. Um, but then the nice thing is that that in that information, the movement that the person is making is always coupled to information that would be present when they're doing it. Whereas if you're doing rote repetition to build that motor program, you know, you do 10 reps, how do you know which rep, when is a rep good or not? You don't, there's no, there's no way to really know. Um, but on top of that, it it I feel like a lot of the time it builds, it builds an expectation in the learner of what something should feel like and what success means like. And so what I think the traditional approach sometimes can do is it builds an expectation that like if you come into a day of training and you don't hit the knee cut exactly the way Code showed it, you didn't have a successful day of training. Whereas with CLA, we have a much more granular diagnostic tool to be like, hey, did you stay close to your partner and not let them touch you with your feet? You're you killed it today. You did so good. Um, and it lets new new learners break apart the training a lot better. Um, and then everyone leaves feeling good, even if they didn't have like a very functional day, like they were on task, they knew what they were trying to do. You don't feel bad, you don't feel stupid. Um, you get a really good day of training in, and then three months down the line, all of a sudden you're pretty good at grappling and you can hang and and have a good time with everyone. And again, that's like that psychological piece is um so, so valuable um when it comes to using the CLA.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Wow. Yeah, it's would you say the the traditional approach, the way most people have experience jujitsu, you go to class, you get taught a few techniques, you drill it a bunch. Uh, that portion is pretty representative of the rote or the model, like the information processing model.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

That's where I struggle because I think like jujitsu, like we use the term information processing and dynamic systems and all this. I don't know, like my my hot take is if you're if you're following the evidence from either side, I don't know how different the practices would look. Because even even from the information processing side, like once you're once you can see that like the athlete kind of has that motor program down, we want to start parameterizing it. We want to expose them to variability. No, there's no argument that like variability and adaptability are bad things. Like both both perspectives on movement want that. Um, the question is. Is like how much information do we need to give someone before you start exposing them to that? Um, how do you like scaffold the learner into that? So I don't know in a traditional jujitsu gym, I don't know if they're doing, I wouldn't call that necessarily information processing. That's like some sort of folk pedagogy that is just part of jujitsu's culture, if if that makes sense. And it's not saying anyone's bad or wrong. It's just, you know, like from a sociological perspective, that's just how the training culture has developed in the sport. Got it. For better or for worse.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Right, right. Uh so then how did you start uh implementing some of the CLA into your own coaching?

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Um, man, I taught a lot of really bad classes. Um I I was struggling for a bit to implement it because I knew I wanted things to be live. I think where the gap was, and and you you you probably hear this a lot with CLA people, and then I just didn't know enough about jujitsu to really start designing practices. And so a lot of my a lot of my initial classes were positional sparring, basically. Um it was I was trying to constrain things as such that I would get a technique, um, which you know is is wrong, quote unquote. But people were moving, engaged with the problem and working towards stuff. I think um, you know, just those first couple of classes were just kind of rough on that. A couple other things that I really screwed up the first couple classes is I would be like, I want to teach, we're doing arm bars today. And then we would do 45 minutes of arm bars, and at the end of class, people would be like, Oh my sh. Like, I'd just be nailing people's shoulders with this stuff. And uh, so just like really hammering on like a single thing. Like I was getting, I was both overcomplicating things and undercomplicating things kind of at the same time. Um, and I was bonking my head on that for a really, really long time, like months, almost a year, and then you know, and then Greg showed up, and um, the way he was cutting the game up, the the the the way he was looking at the sport, golly, it just made so much sense. And so I just kind of jumped on to what he was doing. Obviously, I'm in the school now, but um yeah, that just the the tool set that he gave everybody to split the game up and and diagnose those training problems is just unbelievably valuable. I just it it blows my mind every day that he just kind of gave it to everyone.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Wow. So you were you had already been reading a lot about this. And so when Greg came on, you know, people like me, most of us were like very confused by the terminology. It took yeah, it took me like 10, 15 episodes and some chat GPTing to like start to even put together like what is he saying when you first heard him? Was it like, oh my gosh, it was a breath of fresh air? Right, wow.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

So excited, it was it was so fun. Like I was so used to hearing just listening to like Rob Gray. I remember having a call with Rob Gray, and I was just like, I probably sounded really fun because I was just I was just trying to use words and had no idea what I was saying, but um, because again, like it was I didn't know the science very well, and uh Rob Gray doesn't he didn't know anything about combat sports at the time. Um, but it was like so crazy to hear Greg come on and be like, not only does he know the theory, knows the the science behind it really well, but he knows grappling really well. Like then this just dropped into my lap. It was like the coolest thing ever. Um yeah, it was really exciting when he came on and and realizing I wasn't gonna have to do a lot of that groundwork myself. He had he had done a lot of it, you know, kind of for me.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Oh, do you remember uh any examples of like Greg's framework that really helped you shape your practice in the beginning?

SPEAKER_00 25:38

Um a lot of it was uh scaling, like cutting tasks, cutting things apart in jujitsu that would like in a common sense way build to the thing we're trying to do. So everyone knows like the you know, the dirty feet, the passing game, and keep the feet off. But you know, taking that idea of scaling those tasks down like we do in passing games that everyone knows to all situations. Um, so for example, one I really, really like is like you know, from like the belly of arm lock, you pin the per you're on the top player, you're this, you're the submitting player, you're holding your partner down with your legs, you're splitting hands, and then instead of like taking it all the way to a finish, maybe the first round, it's just keep the hands split for as long as you can. The second round, you keep the hands split, and then as a top player, you win by going from either of your hands on your partner's hands to both your hands on the near arm that you would submit on. So getting to a point where you can maximally start straightening the arm, but we're not straightening the arm, and we're not putting pressure on the elbow joint, and we're not throwing so much new stuff and dealing with that anxiety of oh, the submission that a new learner can feel safe and they can they can play in the space. And the the ability to make an irreversible, irreversible accident never presents itself. Um, and then taking that thought process and applying it um to everything leg locks, back back attacks, you know, it's it's kind of out there, but um Michael Turvey, who's a uh very famous researcher in the space, he has this uh he has this uh passage in a book, and he it's a bunch of really fancy words, so I'm gonna paraphrase it. But basically he says, um let's pretend we have a bicycle and you have a wrench and a torch that will allow you to take the bicycle apart. It would be a mistake to think that just because you can take the bike apart in a torch, that you're taking it apart in pieces that build back into the original bike. Um whereas with the wrench, you don't necessarily you aren't necessarily getting to take it apart in a way that feels intuitive to you, but you're taking it apart in a way that lets you build back to the bike. And I think what what Greg's big influence was was giving us that wrench to take apart pieces of the game such that they fit back together into the original thing. Because everyone's had it where you take a slice of the game as a technique, and it it just doesn't quite plug back in the way that you think it should, or it's a bunch of novelty comes up and ruins it and makes it feel weird. Um, and that's that's really where the light bulb turned on with Greg. And I was like, oh, this is this is the wrench, man. He gave us the wrench to take the bike apart with. This is awesome. Um, and as like a starting point, so important because then um once you have those kind of regular bites, like regular basic stuff to set up for training activities, then you can get to the good stuff, the stuff you do next. Um, you know, that's individualized based on the athlete. That's that's where the good stuff, man, is that's where all the fun is with coaching, is like getting as close to that one-to-one interaction as you can for sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Right. Um, I I love that analogy uh with the wrench and piece in the game apart to be able to put it back together. Um I am I I wonder, uh, are there it seems like there are some constraints that are more effective and depending on what your goal is and other constraints that are not, or maybe it seems like there's some constraints where the game starts to look a little too different and doesn't fit back into the whole game very well, and others constraints that do. Um I think my question is like around how to how do you how can you tell like there's a good constrainer back? Like if you take out like submissions or like don't use your left arm, like like some are just like yeah, yeah, you do you know what I'm getting at?

SPEAKER_00 29:33

I yeah, I guess I would so I'm trying to remember the paper. So there's a paper that just introduced the idea of like primary constraints. So there's like, what's the bare minimum of things you need to put in place to start getting a behavior out that looks looks good to you with your knowledge as a coach? Now, there's a lot like I think really commonly in positional sparring, they'll we'll do stuff like oh, you can only arm bar, you can only use one hand or the other. And um I think I think where you can get a little bit into trouble is when you try to take this global look at setting training up. Um, I think any given like I may I I would maybe go so far as to say like there's no there's no bad constraints, but you have to know why you're putting a thing in place. And so I I can't think of one off the top of my head on why I would say like you can only use your left arm, but maybe maybe there's a reason for it, but that's gonna be based upon as a coach, your relationship with the athlete, you know, a problem or area that you've identified that you want to work on. And that is gonna inform why you use the specific training exercise that you use. I think in an abstract, it's like it's just way too hard to tell if something's good or not. You have to make it relational. You have to consider the context in which you're using the training intervention and the reasons why. Um, and so just looking at like just looking at training on its own, is it is it good or bad? Well, it's gonna depend on what the coach is, what the coach thinks they're getting out of that training practice. Um and I yeah, it kind of like sidesteps some of those questions. But I yeah, I would always encourage people to like when you see someone doing something for training, sit and reflect and think about why they might be using that. Whether you think they're right or wrong, try to figure out what the context is, because that's that's where the that's where the magic is, that's where the money is in this coaching stuff is knowing what to do, what to do next, like Rob Gray says, but the why, your reasoning for why you're using that specific thing is so, so important. Um, so yeah, don't use your left arm. Maybe if I have an athlete where we figure out that that's like something we need to do on a regular basis, I'm doing it, you know, if that's if that's what we think we need. But um yeah, it gets it gets complicated, but yeah, as long as you keep that perspective that it's relational to the athlete, um, I think you're always gonna kind of be on the right path when you're when you're running a room or running training for someone.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

That makes sense. Um, so in the beginning, a lot of your CLA coaching looked like positional sparring. How did it evolve from there?

SPEAKER_00 32:19

Um, it it really evolved from from the scaling, um, being being able to scale the tasks down to an appropriate level. The other thing that changed a lot for me was language. Being, man, delivering what, where are we? What are we trying to do? How does person A win? And how does person B win? Delivering that in under a minute, um, in clear, simple language. Um, Nick Winkleman's book, The Language of Coaching, was such a big influence to me. And then what I did, what I did for a while is I would wear a microphone underneath my rash guard. And um then after class, I would take it home, I would throw it in an editing program, and I would just, I couldn't like it was hard to listen to my voice. So I would just look at the waveforms. And if the waveform went on too long, I knew I was talking too much. Um, but then also just kind of being aware of and training yourself to be like, again, there's there's lots of talk about like internal or external focuses of attention. And then even when you're external, like how far out from the person's body are you directing their attention? And um, you know, external always better, but they're like, you know, they're it's developing still, but external, I think generally is is better. Um, but knowing when, again, that relational piece, when are we directing attention outside and why? When are we directing attention inside and why? Because for a particular athlete, um, you know, maybe you have an athlete who's really, really capable and they can smoke everybody in the room. Maybe you give them some like internal thing to focus on that kind of perturbs them, messes them up a little bit to make things harder for them. Like you have a lot of levers to pull as a coach in that regard. But yeah, the language was where it really started to take off for me. When you could like, you know, you you have very, very simple language, you set like two games up, and then the third training situation is like a combination of those two games. And now you're playing this really big, sort of complex space of the game where you don't need to sit there and explain oh, the position, the this and that, like all these like concepts. Um, and then um making sure that that language, you know, how you set the training up and how you set that experience up for people afterwards when you're sitting around on the mat bullshitting, like then you can give then you can give some cookies out. And then and that's when like people are so ready for those details, and you get hit, you get hit with those, like people are like, why did no one tell me this before? And it's like someone probably did, but like you just weren't you weren't like primed for it, maybe in the way you need to. You didn't have a good experience to make that really salient for you. Um, so yeah, language is such such a big one to me. And I think you hear that with a lot of the the CLA people. They get really, really particular about how we say things and why. But it's it's so, so important. Makes a big difference in the room too, in terms of how focused people look. Um, and do they look like they know what they're doing and why they're doing it to some extent.

unknown 35:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

I like that example you shared about um three games, like one piece of a game and another piece, and then combining the two. Can you give some examples? Because I feel like that would help maybe some of these coaches that are learning to apply CLA.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

Yeah. So an example that uh we were discussing a couple weeks ago in the school group, actually, not even a couple weeks ago, but so um, so let's say we're working on entangling. Um, we're gonna start with one player in single leg X in a mixed entanglement on a standing player. For this first round, as the entangling player, you to start the round, you're gonna disentangle as soon as your butt hits the map, the game starts. You win the round as a bottom player if you can re-entangle your partner. The top player just needs to pull their leg out of the entanglement and then touch their shin behind your knee or to the outside of your body. So just deny that inside space. So the first round, you just that's all you set up. You just let them go. Now, what's probably gonna happen is that the bottom player just looks for their entanglement right away if it's a greener room. Um, and they're not gonna do any sort of destabilization to get their partner's hands out of the way to access that entanglement better. So then the second round, you add in a condition. Okay, we're gonna do the same thing, everyone. Bottom player disentangle when your butt hits the mat, you win by re-entangling. But this time, you need to have hands or hips touching the mat while you're entangling. So we've presented them with a problem, re-entre engaging in entanglement on someone. We've let them kind of struggle with that a little bit, and now they're like, I they're so focused on it. They know there's a problem there and they they they want it so bad. Then you add in that second condition of putting hips or hands down to you know bake that, bake that idea into the game, and then you can reinforce it with language. So then after that second round, when people are have hopefully having more success or working towards it a little better, you can say, hey, look, if you if you put your partner's hands on the mat or take weight off their legs, they're much easier to entangle. Um, and so that's a way you can kind of bake that concept, that idea into the training. So then it's not just a concept you're giving out to people. It's something that you can functionally demonstrate and experience in the room that will help people build their understanding, both uh knowledge of, but also knowledge about. People are you know starting to put hands down looking to destabilize before they make those entanglements. Um, so that's an example. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Yeah, that is super helpful. Um, okay, I I gotta be selfish for a second because uh I was talking to I had Rob Cole on a few episodes ago and he convinced me he's like, okay, no more guard pulling. I I gotta work on my my wrestling in top game because I really enjoy passing, but I d don't get on top a lot. End up pulling guard and then struggling from there. But um, as someone who's I'm very tall and skinny, I'm like 6'2 and I weigh like 155. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

6'3, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Okay, yeah, yeah. And uh for the standing engagement as a tall person, I mean, that's kind of like a constraint in and of itself. And so I'm absolutely I've been wondering, I've been talking to uh uh uh dang it, Jonathan, right? Yeah, Jonathan Crinsia in the school group. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we were just talking yesterday, but um about how like as a tall person, maybe there's like certain kind of wrestling techniques or certain kind of directions that maybe are not as effective or harder to pick up.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

Um, so yeah, how have you like maybe in your own game or how would you help someone constrain certain types of games to help find their style in the standing engagement?

SPEAKER_00 38:50

Um, so yeah, obviously, like like I said before, it's gonna depend on the athlete. You know, if someone's psychologically a little more cautious, we're gonna approach differently than someone who's like hard nosed and just wants like like I I'm an idiot and I'll just I'll bop my head on someone a hundred, like I'll put I'll use my face as a weapon. I don't care, but not everyone's like that.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Yeah, I'm definitely more on the cautious side for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

One that I'm really one that I'm really big on, especially in like the standing engagement for jujitsu, is um like taking shots from space is very difficult. It can be very risky because as you lower that height and you start reaching, you oh you expose yourself to lots of attacks.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

That's all the time, like constantly getting sprawled on. Yeah, yeah, that's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

And so one of one of the things to focus we like to focus on is we just like put a condition in between that. And so like instead of saying don't shoot from space, um being really focused on some conditions that let you get close and stay close to your partner. And they can be really, really simple. It can be as simple as um uh don't reach for your partner until your head is touching them, like touching a shoulder, like you have that head position, or spend a round or two just maintaining the condition of being in between or outside elbows. And this is some of the stuff we've been doing in the school group, but it's like that space that you're trying to navigate and getting close to someone, it's very there's it's variable. There's lots of stuff going on. You don't have, you're not holding them against the mat. So there's a lot of movement, and people get like you get a little frantic sometimes in there. And so spending some time getting used to what those more stable connections feel like. So just playing around where you stay on the you just try to stay in a 2-1-1. Um, and then you back out the standing engagement and start working on looking to get to that north star you just set with the first two rounds. Um, but yeah, I'm really I my head is usually at being really careful on getting people to reach until they have a lot of exposure to that standing situation. So we've even done rounds where like you have to keep your elbows touching your body until your sh one of your shoulders is touching your partner. So you can't like you you're just focused on, oh, I killed my camera. So you're just focused on not uh reaching.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Got it. Yeah, because okay, that's that is really good. Uh so once you start to once you start to build that that skill of getting inside and outside and like not not reaching too much, then how do you bridge the gap from that capacity to then being able to get to a better connection?

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Yeah, yeah. And so um, sorry, my camera just dogged out on the code.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

No, no worries.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

So let's say we get someone who's really like they're getting to those connections really well and they're doing a good job there. Sometimes they might, you might like observe a tendency in the athlete, like maybe they really like grabbing the legs. So we would start adding in some tasks for them to interact more with the legs. So maybe, okay, you you did it, you did a week of maintaining a certain positioning on the elbows. Now this week, while keeping that position on the elbows, you need to reach down and touch the back of a knee. Start maintaining that condition while it increasing the amount of access you have to the lower body. And then, you know, the next week, now you need to pick up the leg. And then the week after that, now you need to pick up the leg and start putting hips or hands on the mat. Um, but you can base that experience around that really robust connection that they've experienced, however, you're setting up overhook, underhook, elbows, head position. Um, so they kind of have that uh home base in the standing situation, and then just start adding pieces on on onto it from there, tapping legs, touching your partner's foot with your foot. Um, you I mean, I you can kind of get silly with it. I think the more important thing is that like you're intentionally trying to do the tasks that you've set out for yourself, however goofy they might be, you're being focused on them, you're trying to do them, and you're getting like 10 to 15 minutes good training and being extremely focused on that stuff. But knee touches, foot taps, um, locking hands, like there's lots of good ways to build up to a more robust connection and then start moving our partner around with it.

SPEAKER_01 42:57

That is so helpful. Um, I almost wanted to write that down. I'll have to relist it. But yeah, knee touches, uh feet to feet tapping, and then uh locking hands. Those are such good uh simplified tasks, I think, to go from that hand fight early connection to that a better connection.

SPEAKER_00 43:13

Yeah, there's it's yeah, and you and then yeah, I think the other piece too is just like approaching it from both ends. So like it could it could be you would get better working on it from the outside in, disconnected to connected, maybe. It also it also could be that you know, for you, you would get better. I'm gonna do a bunch of rounds starting in the single leg and then back out from that connection, like the connection I want to get to. Um, so making sure that you're approaching that problem from both ends, both from disconnected to connected, connected to disconnected, and really exploring that space. Um, because the learning's not going to be linear, you know, it's not gonna be step A, step B. So get making your making sure you're exposed to both ends of that problem, both in the when the connection's really secure. Fighting to the secure connection. All of that's really valuable and making sure that you're exposed to all of that is super, super important because you don't, we don't, we just we don't know what the thing's gonna be. But as long as we're playing in that space and being focused on it over time, um, we'll probably we'll probably get there. But it's you know, you just got to give it give it some time like everything else.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

Yeah. Uh as a fellow tall person, do you find that under your underhook like gets crushed a lot by people who are shorter than you? And like, yeah, yeah. Do you find underhooks in general are are better, quote unquote, for shorter people than taller people, or when it's a short versus tall person?

SPEAKER_00 44:37

Yeah, I used to, I used to be a little down on them, and then um you I sat, you have to like sit and think about okay, like we make this thing called an underhook. Well what am I trying to do with this really? And the conclusion I kind of came to is like when we make an underhook, we're using that to control, like if you have an underhook and your partner has an overhook, like who has the underhook and who has the overhook? How do you know? And so in my head, it's who is dictating where the elbows can go. So if I make an underhook and I slam my bicep up into your armpit and you can just pinch your elbow down over my arm, you have an overhook. I don't have anything. I can't, I have no control over where my elbow is. I don't own your elbow at all. But if I make an underhook and I can keep your elbow away from your body, well, I have an underhook. I'm in charge of, I'm in kind of in charge of where this movement's going to go. And so, even something like that, just like, okay, today when you make an underhook, I want you to, I want you to try to keep your partner's elbows as far from their body as you can to start getting used to the entire space that that arm positioning is functional for you. But yeah, everyone's had it where like you make an underhook kind of guy when you're on top of them on the ground and they pinch your arm really hard and they just dump you over the side towards the arm that's trapped. It's like, yeah, you didn't have an underhook. You had a, you, they had the overhook. Um, so yeah, don't make an overhook, don't make an underhook just because you think it's a thing to do. Make sure you recognize what a function of that connection can be. Um, in my head, a lot of time with the underhook, it's man, can I keep my partner's elbows away from their body? Can I control that space between their elbow and their body? Because I might want to dip under it to go behind. I might want to go low to pick up a leg. I might want to connect my hands. Or as they struggle to get away, maybe I find I can find my way into a trip or something. But if they feel comfortable with their elbow position, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, trying to go back to functionally what you're trying to do with any connection is a really good place to start. Don't just make shapes for the sake of making shapes.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

That is such a beautiful example. Um, how about uh another one I thought of is like when I was messing with different passing and stuff like that and playing guard, I was like, wait, the day La Heva and headquarters, like where does the day la Heva start and the headquarters end? Like, when is it good for one player or the other? Could you maybe shed some light onto the the function of the daily he? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:59

The the way I think about it, so De La Heva, like that outside hook, you're making like this is gonna, this is hard, kind of weird to talk about. You're making inside position with that outside hook.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:10

I'm using that inside positioning of my foot to dictate the the top player's stance. Like I'm kind of I'm using it to starting to get outside of the knee so I can create more inside position, like if I was going for a baby bolo or something like that. Um, the difference between like a de la Hiva and that headquarters position is in the headquarters position, you have no inside access with that outside hook. I have it pinned on the mat, my shin is in your knee pit. Like you, that foot is not not anywhere near that inside space. It's not even in the air space of being in between my legs, right? If that makes sense. And you can see that a bit, like even if if you watch like you know, high higher level competitors, especially in the ghee where you see De La Heve a little bit more, they man, when that hook gets put in, they put their hand on that shin and they stuff that leg to the mat to get that hook out of the inside space. Um and so yeah, so like again, the the like functionally what that hook is doing is you know, giving them access to being more outside of the knee to access more of the inside space. And so as a top player, just don't, man, don't let those feet exist in between your legs, whether they're physically touching the inside space or they're in like, you know, if you had like a like a triangle that was sticking out on either side of your legs, like they can't exist in that airspace anywhere because they're gonna cause a huge problem, or that that foot's gonna whip in there when you're not ready for it. Um does that that does that help at all?

SPEAKER_01 48:37

Yeah, yeah, it helps a ton. And uh it this is starting to just show like the importance of not only understanding CLA and coaching, but also just how jujitsu works and then marrying the two together. Um man, I have so many more questions for you because there's like so many topics to go into on both sides. But maybe as we as we wrap up or come to a close, I'm curious if you had like uh if you had some advice to give to early coaches, maybe they're six months or a year into CLA, uh, how would you how would you help them to avoid some of the pitfalls or maybe learn faster and and get yeah, get their coaching skill uh better faster?

SPEAKER_00 49:14

Yeah, it's one I know uh people don't like this so much, but like you you gotta do your homework. I'm sorry. Like you gotta read the books. The CLA book is 170 pages, man. You can knock it out in a weekend. It it rocks, it's really easy to read. Um, but do your homework a little bit. It's you know, it's not terribly hard. Um, the second thing I would give people is just like when you started jujitsu, you you, you know, you have to recognize that coaching in and of itself is a skill. And you need to have that grace for yourself to um be uncertain when you're running class, give up some of that that security and control, and just understand that like you're gonna run some weird sessions, it's gonna be, it's not gonna feel good, it's gonna be weird, you might you're gonna feel stupid. Um, and that's good and normal. Um, and you there's you're not gonna break anyone, you're not gonna irreparably steer people wrong. People are actually pretty smart and capable um when they're moving around, and it's gonna be okay. Um, so do your homework, um, have space for yourself to run weird or bad classes. Make sure you're being intentional about that. So, what are you going into today's session to work on? Is it your language? Is it um scaling a situation on the fly? Maybe you don't plan the last 15 minutes of class and you you try to freestyle it based on what you're seeing in the room. So you can work on that skill of observing people. Um yeah, there's a lot there. Um you but you just you gotta go through the mess, man. I'm sorry. Like it's it's it's uncomfortable, it sucks. But you come out the other side with um with you just feel a lot better about it. And you you you you feel a lot more confident in what you're doing, and the results, the results get so much better.

SPEAKER_01 51:06

Amazing. Such good advice. There's so many good nuggets and very actionable uh tips that you gave throughout the the episode today, uh, along with some of the theory. And man, I I wish we could just dive deeper into so many of those different rabbit holes.

SPEAKER_00 51:18

Um another one, man.

SPEAKER_01 51:20

Yeah, yeah. We should definitely do a round two, and then I can think of maybe which rabbit hole exactly to go down. But um, yeah, I appreciate you so much coming on the show and and and helping me out. One huge takeaway was for me was just like when we think about all these classic shapes that jujitsu instructors direct us towards to think about what is the function of that shape, like not to just look at it at such a surface level, like that underhook keeping the elbow away is like I hadn't even thought of like what functionally is happening there.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

And there's so fun, you feel so silly sometimes with people. Like I've I've had like Greg say some stuff to me, and I'm just like, I'm such a dumb. Um, it just makes so much sense. But um man, it helps so much. And being man, being able to give some of that stuff, like give some of that stuff to people who are in their first year of training. Like, I've had some insane conversations with people who are been training for like eight months, where it's like, how do you know? Like, you know so much about grappling already. Wow. It's so weird to be talking about like playing between leg locks and wrestling up with someone who hasn't even been trained a year.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:21

You're like doing heel hooks and all that. It's like just crazy. Like it's it's frightening to think about just how much better people are gonna start becoming in the next few years because of just this discourse and training methodology we've been having.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

That's amazing. But yeah, thank you so much for coming on, Drake. Um, I do have to run, I'm sorry, but uh would love to have you back on uh in the future.

SPEAKER_00 52:42

Of course, anytime, brother.

SPEAKER_01 52:44

Awesome, thank you. Yep.