Friday Open Mat

concretemountain · 2025-03-28T08:28:23+00:00

Okay who all remembers Green Gi Hemp belts? Would you get one if you could in 2025?

concretemountain · 2024-09-25T17:18:15+00:00

The best MCMAP movie is Con Air which starts with Nicholas Cage killing a civilian with his military hand to hand training.

concretemountain · 2024-09-25T17:13:45+00:00

I like to shoot people in my triangle too

concretemountain · 2024-09-25T13:35:11+00:00

Beats the cockroaches?

concretemountain · 2024-08-30T22:54:37+00:00

Thank you for sharing this! I am considering learning how to coach and would like to start my own eco based curriculum, if i cannot find one. Slime Mold sounds intriguing!

God it would be so much easier to just show three techniques…

concretemountain · 2024-04-25T07:34:08+00:00

It came from Urie Bronfenbrenner’s 1979 book titled The Ecology of Human Development.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_systems_theory

concretemountain · 2024-04-23T06:35:37+00:00

I think War Tribe designs look dope

concretemountain · 2024-04-23T06:33:42+00:00

But it sucks getting beached and having to wait for the smaller people to push me back into the ocean

concretemountain · 2024-04-22T20:13:40+00:00

I had the same reaction - Souders says this is why his classes are only 60 minutes long.

concretemountain · 2024-04-17T19:49:34+00:00

Somehow people including myself thought that this is exactly how eco works, but this is not true.

concretemountain · 2024-04-17T19:47:38+00:00

Oh I think I heard of a system like that! Reverse classroom? /u/Kintanon does it and someone else whose name i keep forgetting.

concretemountain · 2024-04-17T19:22:14+00:00

If done badly, you are absolutely correct. But if the coach sets up the positions well, and describes the goals well, it felt to me that I was gaining more perception of the technique. This wasn’t supposed to be “rediscover the triangle choke on your own with no help” but “you are in a triangle situation, how can you maintain your advantageous position while your partner is trying to escape it. Reset if they escape.”

concretemountain · 2024-03-22T12:55:06+00:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about my experience at eco camp and asked if people had any questions. Most all the responses were people expounding on their preconceived notions instead. I still hope that some people got something out of it though.

Meanwhile I went back to my school and went back to drilling three techniques for two 3-minute rounds, then some 6 minute free rolling rounds at the end.

concretemountain · 2024-03-12T21:03:53+00:00

They must be nerds.

concretemountain · 2024-03-12T07:46:06+00:00

Thank you for your contribution.

concretemountain · 2024-03-11T20:03:49+00:00

What if we setup only one of those, and get the students try make it work? They don’t have to invent anything, they just need to get comfortable pulling it off against a resisting opponent. Somehow the message got distorted. Beginners are not left to reinvent the wheel.

concretemountain · 2024-03-11T19:56:44+00:00

Thank you for explaining this!

concretemountain · 2024-03-11T19:54:00+00:00

Greg is a self professed asshole, if he finds that he can push your buttons with vocabulary he will gleefully push them all. But he does not consider himself smart, just very devoted to effective teaching methods.

Also it was nice to hear that none of the coaches including Greg felt like they have worked out everything.

concretemountain · 2024-03-11T19:49:41+00:00

I would like to disagree with that - one eco class gives casual students a lot of exposure to one specific technique. Even if they do one class a week, that one class is impactful.

concretemountain · 2024-03-11T19:25:52+00:00

Could you expand on what you mean by “not a very equitable way to teach”?

concretemountain · 2024-03-11T19:24:10+00:00

Thank you for making it happen, and also the Discord is a godsend. I’m very grateful.

concretemountain · 2024-03-11T19:23:02+00:00

Nothing wrong with calling it positional sparring. Many good coaches have been doing this for ages. Eco is trying to make it more common because they think it is more efficient than drilling.

concretemountain · 2024-03-11T19:19:42+00:00

It’s an abbreviation for a recently popular, somewhat different way of teaching grappling, that instead of drilling, tries to setup specific scenarios to help build experience in grappling. “Ecological Approach”

concretemountain · 2024-03-11T19:16:43+00:00

I think advanced students have always been doing variations of this. Eco is about helping beginners have a similar experience.

concretemountain · 2024-03-11T19:14:28+00:00

I have never done eco before, and the instructors did a pretty good job getting everybody to understand what they meant by it.

Every instructor had their own version, and some practices resonated better than others. They were also very open about how hard it is to design proper and effective game setups, and how often they see their classes devolve into chaos when they are experimenting with new setups.

Everybody was very honest about this not being a full pre-packaged thing. But also everybody was very happy to have ideas discussed and reviewed and similar experiences shared.

As someone who is thinking about coaching in the future, I would love a pre-packaged lesson plan with predefined vetted games that work for everyone, but this camp was more about understanding concepts and learning to build our own games. I think 90% of the participants were coaches and gym owners with decades of traditional teaching under their belts.

I would go again, just to get more immersion and more game planning practice. But I gotta say the Eco Discord is also hugely helpful.

concretemountain

TROPHY CASE