Starting an ecological jiujitsu academy, what and why is this blog?

Hello friends, 

If you’re here and you understand the title, the what of the ecological jiujitsu academy is self explanatory. Therefore I can start this post off with the why of starting an ecological jiujitsu academy. If you know what jiujitsu is, but not what ecological is, and you are inquisitive, I recommend googling it as I won’t explain it in this post. If you don’t really know what jiujitsu is, then this post is not for you.

Why am I starting an ecological jiujitsu academy?

My name is Andy. I’m 36 years old. I’ve been training jiujitsu since I was 19. The last 3 years I’ve been solo sailing around the world on my 38 foot monohull. Which means in practical terms, I’ve been training only 2 or 3 times per year; when I stop at places that have academies. For example, Haiti and Cuba, unsurprisingly, do not have jiujitsu academies, where as Colombia has several very good academies. In 2024 I sailed around the Pacific Ocean. I can inform you that Tahiti has good jiujitsu academies, no other place I’ve visited so far in the Pacific has any jiujitsu. That is, most of French Polynesia, Samoa and Tonga. For a number of years I have been thinking about starting an academy. At the end of 2024 I fetched up in Fiji. Fiji has one jiujitsu academy at the moment on the main island. That academy is in the tourist capital of Fiji, Nadi. There is no academy in Fiji’s capital city, Suva. I decided that this was a good opportunity and I would stay in Fiji and try to start an academy. 

That explains why I’m starting an academy, now to explain why I want it to be ecological. For a number of years, probably closing in on a decade, I have been dissatisfied with traditional teaching methods in jiujitsu. I’m talking about the warm up, demonstrate, drill, (positional) spar, formula that almost every academy uses. I like to pretend I’m intellectual, so I will assert that the reason I was dissatisfied is because I didn’t believe this was the optimal way to teach jiujitsu. And this is true… but also I find the formula boring. I found it boring when I was settled at one academy, and it only got worse when I started travelling full time. I have trained jiujitsu in many countries, which was a wonderful experience overall, but I’ve also been shown a lot of arm bars by people who have been training half the time I have. I have been teaching jiujitsu off and on for at least 10 years, and I’ve always explored ways to break out of the traditional formula. When I teach, I try to focus on concepts rather than demonstrating a specific technique. Of course I would demonstrate techniques, but I would focus on the concepts behind the technique. If I showed a back take, rather than ensuring each person could perform the technique well, I was more interested in them understanding the concepts of taking the back, e.g. connecting your chest to the opponents back is important, and all back take techniques will include you connecting your chest to your opponents back. 

When I was a blue belt in 2009/10 I learnt a lot from Ryan Hall instructionals, pirated and watched on my PSP on train rides, thanks Ryan! I love the way he talks about the mechanics of positions and the concepts. I am an engineer like Ryan. In 2018/19 I was following Jon Thomas and I find his ideas around teaching and learning jiujitsu very interesting. I recently discovered ecological jiujitsu, a few months ago. I know I’m slow on the uptake and ecological jiujitsu ‘broke out’ last year some time, but I am not very online, hence the blog, which we’ll get to later. Actually I have a confession. The title was misleading, sorry about that. I am not starting an ‘ecological’ academy, I am investigating ecological jiujitsu and testing it out to see if it is a teaching methodology I want to implement at my academy, but that title doesn't have a click bait ring to it for reddit. This confession leads us naturally on to: what is this blog?

What is this blog?

I plan to use this blog to document my journey learning about ecological jiujitsu and trying to implement it into a new academy. The ‘what’ is always quite straightforward, but it’s the why that I find interesting.

Why this blog?

This is a two parter: why document the journey, why use a blog.

I want to document the journey because I have found there are not many resources available for ecological jiujitsu. Greg Souders seems to be the father of this methodology in jiujitsu. He is only one person and so far has not put out a lot of educational content. Maybe this is an unfair and inaccurate assessment objectively, but as a person eager to learn about ecological jiujitsu, I have struggled to find resources. So far I have only found one or two YouTubers who talk about ecological jiujitsu in a general way. What I am really searching for are detailed explanations of games I can run as a coach and the concepts behind the ecological approach and constraints based learning. I want to be in the future where every YouTuber, like Chewy, has content on ecological methodologies, and there are many instagram accounts covering it. A future where even creators who don’t endorse this methodology, talk about it and direct eager neophytes, like me, towards creators who will help us learn.

I want to be in that future now. 

Then why am I writing a blog? and not making these videos? 

It’s simple. I am not a video content creator. I have tried, and I don’t have the requisite skills. Possibly I could learn them and with time become an adequate video content creator, but I don’t have the drive for that. What I do have the skills for is writing. I consider myself a fairly decent writer and have had an article on sailing published in a magazine. I have written a few blogs in my life and I like reading things like “Writing to Learn” by William Zinsser. I have decided that I would rather write good blog posts on the journey of learning ecological jiujitsu than make bad videos on the subject. It might not have much impact in todays information consumption environment of 30-90 second long video clips, but I hope that this content may help and inspire other creators who will make YouTube and Instagram videos on the subject in the future. Or maybe it won’t inspire anyone to do that, but it is my contribution to the available resources on this subject. 

At the very least this blog is for you, whoever you are, the niche blog reader in the niche of ecological jiujitsu believers in the niche of jiujitsu practitioners. For sticking to the end of this blog post, I salute you sir (or madam… probably sir).

In the next posts I will actually write about what I’m doing to learn about ecological jiujitsu, what I am learning and how I am trying to implement this methodology at my new academy. If that sounds interesting to you, subscribe or something? The more people subscribe the more pressure I’ll feel to actually write regular posts.