Main Phase

Game Descriptions

Once warmups are completed and students are ready to move on to the main phase, the coach should begin to move into the primary focus on the session. This should be evident from the first game the coach asks the students to play.

The coach should use clear, simple language to describe the task at hand. Students should know exactly what the constraints and win-loss conditions are, and whether they will switch back and forth or stay on one side of the game for the duration of the round. Although there are many ways to do this, a good starting point sounds something like this:

Top Player starts in X position, Bottom Player starts in Y position. Top Player's goal is to maintain chest-to-chest contact and head-and-shoulder control. Top Player cannot win this game, they can only defend. If Bottom Player escapes, they win. You are not allowed to use any submissions for this game. Switch every time the Bottom Player wins. Any questions?

As noted before, this should not take longer than 60 seconds. If there are questions, take the time to answer them even if it goes past the 60 second mark. That timer is an ideal, it doesn't have to be perfect every time. It's there to keep coaches from getting carried away with their role as instructors, but it's worth taking a moment to answer questions so students aren't confused when the game starts.

Don't Tell Them How

Notice the lack of explanation in terms of how to accomplish these tasks. The point is not to give them techniques or hints, it is to give them the physics of the situation, and an opportunity to find solutions. If you simply hand them a technique or set of techniques, you are handicapping their development by not allowing personalized solutions to emerge.

Many coaches get caught up in the idea of "correct" technique, particularly with new people. They believe certain training wheels must be put on the average beginner, otherwise they'll derail their training. While it's true that suboptimal technique development is always possible, when the focus is on physics, the chances of something that doesn't work sticking around are much lower.

Part of the problem with the Traditional Method's focus on technique is that it emphasizes practicing sets of moves without any kind of reality check. When a beginner does the "wrong" technique repeatedly, it creates the potential for poor habits that carry over into sparring. But when they are placed in live resistance situations, the good solutions emerge and the bad ones go extinct.

Game Structures

The coach has a variety of ways they can structure the games within the main phase. Here are some baseline ideas you can use:

• Create a sequence of games that are interlinked: Play games that simulate a sequence you'd see in sparring or a match, as guard passing -> half-guard -> side control -> mount. For each position, play a single game to cover the most important invariants.

• Focus all games on a single position, but with varying constraints: Play games that revolve around one position, but change the conditions through each round. An example of this looks like turtle position, top player maintain chest-to-chest with no hand connections -> hand connections allowed -> hand connections and one hook in -> submissions allowed.

• Completely unrelated games: Don't create any connections between games, just make players rotate around different scenarios. This builds adaptability and keeps things interesting. An example would look like turtle position with one hook in -> open guard passing -> mount control -> triangle setup games.

These are just some ideas, coaches are not bound by any sort of protocol in this system. All that matters is that the fundamental principles of building adaptable athletes are followed, which means coaches and students are both free to experiment.

Intensity & Round Structure

Many coaches make the mistake of assigning percentages to intensity: "Do this at 40%." That's an ambiguous goal, and one that's physically impossible. Our bodies simply don't possess that kind of fine-grained control, nor does anyone have an objective measure of what "40%" looks like compared to, say, "50%" or "80%."

Coaches should use time, rather than percentages, as a way to increase or decrease intensity. When someone has more time to explore, they will naturally modulate themselves to preserve energy, and they will push themselves harder if they have less time.

Just imagine how you'd behave if someone told you they would kill you if you didn't get them $1,000 dollars within 30 minutes. Now picture the same scenario, but you have 30 days to get the money. Both are bad, but in one case you can gather your thoughts and take your time (to some degree), whereas the other you have no choice but to scramble for an immediate solution.

Although the stakes aren't that high in martial arts, round time is an effective way to modulate effort. The standard block in the FCS is six minutes, which is a good medium between urgency and exploration. If the goal is to drive more urgency, the clock can be brought down to three minutes (or less, depending on the game). And if the goal is to go deep on a specific situation, then ten minute rounds are appropriate.

Between rounds, the coach should have a 1 minute timer that they use for their explanation of the next game. This ensures maximum training time and minimum lecturing. It also forces the coach to improve their communication skills, as they only have that short period of time to get the invariants, win conditions, etc. across to a group of students. Long-windedness is responsible for most wasted training time.

There should be longer pauses added at random for students to get water and ask questions, especially when you're dealing with hobbyist beginners. As ridiculous as it sounds, most people at this point are not used to a full hour of actual training and will need time to acclimate.

One important caveat: some students have been indulged by passive coaches for too long and will waste copious amounts of time asking questions about the minute details of techniques. Coaches should be patient with these people, as in some ways it's not their fault—they've been conditioned by the Traditional Method. But it's equally important that, for the sake of session efficiency, the coach is assertive enough to sideline those kinds of questions until afterwards or in one of the extended pauses.

Similarly, some students will spend entire rounds walking through details with the training partners. This is often done with the best intentions, but it interferes with both students' learning. They should spend the round searching for solutions, not talking about technique algorithms. The coach should always be on the lookout for this behavior and gently nip in the bud before it spreads to other students.

The Edge of Chaos

In order to maintain their engagement, as a coach you need to walk a line between order and chaos. Quality sessions tend to be messy, with lots of failure and experimentation going on. But that can go too far: if students are getting too sidetracked or start to deviate too far from the constraints of the game, learning can be diminished.

On the flip side, you don't want the session to be too orderly either. Many Traditional coaches try to keep their students in lock-step, doing exactly as their told. In those situations, students aren't going through the solution search process and are therefore not learning in a meaningful way.

This is a line that is always in motion. Coaches and students will both fail to walk in on many occasions, and that's fine. It takes time, experience and familiarity between the two parties for the best possible environment to emerge. Watch the session, observe what works, then optimize from there. Coaches should never shy away from asking for feedback, and students should always give it if they feel it may improve their training.