It's a theory of learning, it's not one tool. It's the theory all of practice is based on. It cannot co-exist with doing dead drilling as a regular, long term part of practice. Some people who are primarily ecological still do some dead drilling with either new students or unfamiliar situations. But there are clubs all over the place banging out their 963rd armbar dead drill or uchikomi in Judo, and those people implicitly reject the ecological theory of learning.

I’m not really sure you can or should ignore takedown entry/uchikomi….

I’m not really sure you can or should ignore takedown entry/uchikomi….

Dead reps are on the black list for ECO, but I am not sure if its total waist of time. I’ve been thinking about strength training and simple move like benchpress needs billion reps to be most effective. After ten years and still you get better. Same with striking…boxer drills his compo or jab for years. I get that you need to be able to apply and rolling is more about feeling and timing, but still the ability to move and do a technique gives you a wider window of oppertunity. (I don’t do dead reps in BJJ but I do them a lot in kickboxing.)

When I say uchikomi, I'm referring to the common judo practice of doing 10 reps of a throw entry against a non-resisting opponent, usually to a count. Anyone who subscribed to the ecological approach wouldn't have it in a class that isn't for newbies. I consider it a 100% waste of valuable training time because it simply doesn't have any chance of achieving perception-action coupling, amongst other reasons. I do ecological games that are all about entries, setups and grip fighting. Probably the most important thing to train to be honest.

Oh, cool. You do it right and all those teams that dominate Judo do it wrong. Gotcha!

It's fine if you reject the ecological theory of skill development, but you can't have it both ways.

I don’t reject it, I’m just not married to it, nor do I shun the fact that anaerobic and aerobic systems need to be trained. BJJ is still fighting over concepts and semantics and, generally speaking, lacking the physicality in practices that Judo and wrestling have had for 100+ years.

Just watch some stuff on BJJ Globetrotters inaction library. Would there be an example of an instructor who does eco?

However I personally think cooperative and less resistance games are also very valuable, especially in the first few years of practice and also later when learning new things and concepts - and I think this where Souders would disagree? Also, from a larger picture of 'considering the human learning psychology' the Eco / CLA inherently does not include e.g. the topic of emotions and motivation - I think any coach needs to consider those as well. Why do people come to the class in the first place, how do they feel there etc. So don't forget those as well.

Dutch coaches game for kids - 4 goals and 2 balls!

I find cooperative games to have no space in a 1vs1 combat sport. The resistance instead, can be scaled throught constraints to deal optimally with different environments (age groups, hobbist/competitors and so on). but it can not be manipulated verbally or addressed directly (go 50% means absolutely nothing).

Mind you, if I as a coach create a task that 'uke' stands still with two feet parallel shoulder width and I give the 'task' to 'tori' that 'Find ways to block out both heels of uke and knock them backwards making them fall on their arse.' This would still be 'eco' (since all learning is eco :) and you can also say this is CLA for grappling - there are just quite a lot of strict constraints.

Same would be flow rolling - neither of players is trying to WIN. The COMMON GOAL is to keep the game going, to move and make it fun.

Footbal example: one team move, one team doesn't. Ehm.