Down the Rabbit Hole
Things outside of the conventional strength & conditioning stuff.
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Down the Rabbit Hole
The Art of Coaching with Ellee Beckman
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A four-year-old “breathing fire” to escape a closed guard sounds like chaos until you see the coaching underneath it. We’re joined by Ellee Beckman, owner of Art of Coaching and a Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach on Australia’s Sunshine Coast, to talk about teaching kids with a constraints-led approach that actually respects child development. If you coach youth sports, run a kids martial arts program, or care about motor learning, this conversation will challenge how you think about “instruction” and what real skill looks like under pressure.
We dig into how Allie moved from early childhood education into jiu-jitsu, why she and her partner built their academy around ecological dynamics, and what happens when parents ask for specific techniques instead of better learning. We also get practical about the cultural friction: some adults love games-based training, others want direct instruction, and kids programs can get pulled toward a win-at-all-costs mindset if you let it.
The most useful section might be her method for making concepts stick through storytelling and simple analogies, as well as how she scales games for four- and five-year-olds using Parten’s stages of play. We break down brain breaks, 30-minute class design, safer takedown cues, and how to adjust constraints across age groups without losing the thread of good jiu-jitsu. If you’ve ever wondered how to build confident, creative kids who can problem-solve on the mats, you’ll leave with ideas you can use immediately. Subscribe, share this with a coach or parent, and leave a review with the best coaching cue you’ve heard lately.
Welcome And Guest Introduction
SPEAKER_03Hey guys, Jeff here, back with another episode of Down the Rabbit Hole. And today we have my special guest, Allie Beckman, who is the owner of uh Art of Coaching. She is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach and early childhood educator, and uh her and her husband uh run their own uh jujitsu facility out of uh Australia uh on the Sunshine Coast. Uh she's highly regarded in the martial arts community for utilizing play-based constraints-led games and storytelling. I wanted to get her on, guys, because um I'll I'll put the link in um in the show notes, but her Instagram page is absolutely amazing. Uh, I found her work um after well while I was doing some research on Greg Sautters, because I was very interested in his work and the CLA and how he used it with mixed martial arts. And then I saw her videos, and her work with children is just amazing. As a former um teacher uh and someone who just loves motor learning and and teaching, I think what she does is just magical. Um, you know, and I can I'm only saying this from afar from from from the videos I've seen and the podcast I've listened to, but I think she just does amazing work. Her way of telling stories and getting kids engaged and having fun and making it relatable, and it's just it's awesome. And so we have a great podcast, guys, with with Ellie, where we get into all things education, early education, learning and and and play. Um, this is a great, great podcast. I will uh I will put her links to her courses and and uh information in there. I hope you guys enjoyed this much as much as I did. Uh I had so much fun talking to Ellie. Um, yeah, please give this uh a like, share, and subscribe. Thanks. Ellie, it is an absolute honor to have you on, ma'am. I have I have been a big fan of yours from afar. I love your social media content. I have purchased your your your art of coaching courses. Uh I'm a huge fan of yours. And so to be not face-to-face, but face-to-face via Zoom to speak with you, ma'am. This is this is an honor. Thank you so much for taking the time.
SPEAKER_00Uh Jeff, I'm really I'm happy to be here. I'm so
From Childcare To The Mats
SPEAKER_00excited for where this conversation is going to go. We've already had a good laugh before this even started. So I'm excited to see this go.
SPEAKER_03Um, yeah, if you don't mind, ma'am, like I'm I I'd love to kind of tell the uh the listeners a bit about you. Like how did you become, you know, the art of coaching? How did you become a BJJ instructor? Is that something you always wanted to do? Like what kind of legend to where you are now, ma'am?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's such a funny niche little area that I found myself in. And it, I mean, I started working with kids when I was 18. I wasn't great at school. I wasn't an you know a scholar, I was an academic, um, struggled a lot at school actually. And so I was like, well, what am I gonna do? Because I'm not going to university because I'm not gonna get the scores to get in. And so I looked in my local area, I saw there was a traineeship job for working in childcare. And I was like, oh yeah, I've got younger brothers, I reckon I could do that. Um, and then that started there. So then I have worked my way through education um in the last sort of, I mean, now 12 years ongoing. Um I did my diploma. I I then eventually was like, do you know what? Actually, I think I I can go to university, I can do this, and of course I can. I don't know why I had the doubt in the first place, but I did. So I went to uni, I did my teaching degree, and then worked mainly in sort of like early childhood and I suppose like prep kindergarten style sort of thing. I tried like senior primary, um, tried high school, and they're mean. So I was like, I'm gonna go back to prep. They listen to me down there. Um, that kind of sort of set where I was at. And then, you know, jujitsu was never something that I thought of myself as doing. Yeah, I was never sporty or athletic. Um, and I sort of 2020, everyone in the world was shut down, and my little part of the world where I was living was open. We were allowed to do whatever we wanted. We were shut off from the rest of the world, but we could do stuff. And I was like, you know what? I really do want to try something. I've always I don't like being punched, didn't like Muay Thai, didn't like boxing, saw this thing and went, this sounds cool. I'm gonna try it. Uh, went to my first class and loved it. And so then just kept going from there. And I met my partner on the mat. Um, so he had moved from Sydney and I met him. And I think he's probably the reason that I did stick with it for as long as I did. Um and you know, we we've been to Brazil, we went and trained in Brazil, which is amazing. And then when we got back, my partner was like, I want to open an academy. Will you help me teach the kids? I was like, Yeah, of course, no worries. Like, seems easy enough. Uh so I did, and I remember doing my first class with the kids, and I I remember looking back at when we were training at the other academies and watching the kids' classes and being like, these kids don't really seem like they're having very much fun. This doesn't look like they're learning anything. And I remember my partner coming home, he was a purple belt at the time, and he had taught some of the kids' classes, and he hated it. I was like, why? Like, as someone who works with kids, I know it's hard work, but why do you hate it? And he's like, I hate teaching people that don't want to be there. Like, why am I trying to force these kids to do something that they don't want to do? And I was like, okay. But until I saw it myself and was like, this doesn't make sense to me. Um, from my experience with teaching kids and from how kids learn, this doesn't look aligned at all. And so then when we opened our own academy, I tried actually my first, I think it was probably the first week, I did try and do like more of a traditional class. We did the you know, the shrimping up and down the mats and stuff. And I was like, this isn't good. And at the time, my partner, when he decided to open the academy, he already knew about CLA. He had already been doing a little bit of research into it. Um, he knew who Greg Souders was. Um, and he went, no, no, this is what I want to do, this is how I want to do it. And I was actually skeptical. I was like, I don't understand this thing. How, how do I teach a skill through this? But, you know, he probably was the one who was like, no, just let's try this, let's keep and he taught me as we went through. And then all of a sudden I was like, no, this makes so much sense, of course. Like it's so developmentally aligned to how kids learn. And when I started seeing what was happening on my mats, I was so amazed at the skills that they were demonstrating without me having to explicitly instruct them to do particular things. So then it all kind of has come to fruition where I started the Art of Coaching Instagram page, maybe like two and a bit years ago. I I started it, I did nothing with it for a really long time. I was really scared. And, you know, I pushed through and started posting a few things here and there, and I was getting good feedback. I think I ended up with like a hundred followers, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever because people were actually interested in what I had to say. Fast forward to a year now, um, and we're going on nearly 20,000, which is incredible. Um, but more than that, I just feel like people are starting to recognize that the way that we think that we should teach kids and the way that we think our programs should look is maybe not the most effective or the most efficient way. And any impact that I have on kids is incredible. So that's where I'm at now. It's been a crazy ride.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. So 2020, before you uh opened, were you were you a school teacher? Like you were working in the city.
SPEAKER_00So we opened, yeah, we opened our academy in 2023, and I was working um in like it was still, I guess, what you would call. It's so funny when I try to like make the terms between American and Australian. Uh, but I believe it would still be like your daycare, I suppose, or perhaps like the the first year of elementary school.
SPEAKER_03Preschool, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So we preschool, yeah. So we mixed those kinds of things together. So I taught a lot of preschool,
Opening An Academy With CLA
SPEAKER_00was my my main area. That was my happy place, was five and six-year-olds who are pushing boundaries a little bit, but if I push them, they'll still listen.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, did you just kind of cold turkey go all in, or did you kind of gradually, you know, stop the teaching and and start doing more of the the instructing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was it was a bit of it was kind of cold turkey, but not. Okay. So I stopped teaching when we had gotten back from Brazil in 2023. Um, but I continued actually um to work. I was working as a support worker with mental health and disabilities. So I also worked um with a lot of, I did work with a lot of youth with mental health and disabilities, uh, but I mainly also worked with adults uh experiencing sort of more complex needs around their mental health. Uh and I was doing that because um I loved it. It was a it was a really nice change from teaching. I got pretty burnt out in the end from teaching for as long as I did, and I'm sure many teachers can experience the same thing. Uh, so when I switched over to support work, it felt really aligned. I felt like every day was different, but I was still really making an impact in people's lives and helping them. And so I did that for a long time while teaching the kids' classes, and then when the art of coaching sort of started gaining a little bit of traction, I realized that I couldn't do everything at once. So I have officially been like unemployed for uh nearly, I suppose, almost a year.
SPEAKER_03Wow, okay. Well, congratulations. Um, when you started to work into the uh your your own facility with the the CLA, um how was that received by people in the surrounding areas? I I mean I it's when I talk about it here with sports outside of jujitsu, it's kind of like uh okay, you know, it's people don't know what to make of it. So I'm just always curious, you know, uh what you what you saw, what you heard from from people when you first started introducing this just alternative way of coaching.
SPEAKER_00It's such a good question because at the time, uh because we started with it essentially, uh, we had a lot of members from other academies decide to join. This is more the adults program, not so much the kids. A lot of adults decided to come to our program. And they loved it. They loved the idea of this, they were really happy with this particular, you know, style of it. But then I think along the way, maybe there was like, you know, that controversy, controversy, controversy around um, you know, the debates between Greg and this person. And I think somewhere along the way they stopped trying to learn, I think. And what ended up happening was they were like, well, we actually would just really like to learn this particular skill, or we'd like to do this. And we were kind of like, well, that's not us, and we're really sorry, but that's not us. So we actually had um a few people and a few adults leave because of that, because they would prefer the direct instruction, which is absolutely fine. Uh for the kids, it was very, very well received. Yeah, um, I have had people come in and they're like, wow, I'm like this, it's just fun. And I like that that's the first thing they think of because even kids who were um, I suppose like competition kids or whatever, they were doing and performing really, really well using this methodology. And so when people say, you know, okay, yes, it's great, but can you build a world champion? Well, for starters, I don't want to build a world champion child that goes into against everything that I am. But if competition is your measure of success, my kids do pretty well. So then what started happening as the sort of it grew in my area, people would come to experience it, they would try it. I would then, you know, get wind of other academies starting to implement different things and trying these things. But the funny thing is, and I don't know if it's an Australian thing, uh, and I I like to speak about this because I don't even know if it's an American thing, but in Australia we have something called tall poppy syndrome.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And essentially it is kind of like you think of like a tall poppy, and uh which is like a flower.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And every other flower is trying to cut it down. So anyone essentially who is doing something better than you or doing something different than you, or looks like they're succeeding in another way, nobody acknowledges their success or is supportive or wants to learn from them. They just want to cut it down. And so this is something that I've experienced a lot in my own country. Uh, and if anyone who is Australian and is listening to this, they will 100% know what I'm talking about. And I don't know why this is a thing that we have here. Uh, but it hasn't been well received in my area because nobody has actually ever come to ask me what I'm doing, which is bizarre.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That's too bad. Um, now with the uh with the kids, that that was one of my questions I was gonna lead into. So, like, how do you handle when you've gotten those families, you know, those eight, nine-year-old families that are like they want the kids competing, they want them winning, they care more about that than anything else. Like, do you still work with them and you just kind of like how do you how do you maneuver through that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so when we first
Handling Pushback And Parent Pressure
SPEAKER_00opened our academy, we had this bizarre idea um that we would have a competition gym. Do not recommend terrible business model. Uh, because how do you build a competition gym without people that actually even realize that they like jiu-jitsu yet in the first place? But long story short, uh, I ended up with quite a few children from other academies who came to my gym to basically compete and to train really, really hard. It was an experience because yes, what you find then is I and my partner felt an insane amount of pressure to one make these kids perform well, two, to prove that our methodology works, because obviously it's different, and three, to deal with parents who were difficult to deal with, to be honest. Um and so naturally, over time, they've left because the environment's not suited for them. We were not able to give them this um specific thing that they were looking for. And I'm not mad about that. That's you know, part of your culture and part of your thing that you develop your over time. But I think part of it was they wanted their children to be able to do specific things. And even every time that I would be like, but why? You know, why do you want this? They'd be like, because you know, if they can, I remember really specifically a parent came to us and said that they they felt like their child was not getting like an arm bar from closed guard very well. So we developed the skill. We we created games explaining, you know, connection to the shoulder, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she couldn't quite get it. And that's okay. But like, he was like, look, if you just drill it 20 times, she'll probably be able to do it. I was like, okay, well, you can go home and do that with her. But why do you think that if you drill it 20 times with no resistance, that she's then going to be able to get it with resistance if she still can't get it with resistance now? You know, let's just hold up a little bit. She's also amazing at what she does, and she will get there, but maybe it's just not that thing right now. In the end, yeah, they're not with us anymore. I do have competition kids who are with me, um, and they're incredible. They train two or three times a week, they do other sports, they have a break between the days that they come. Their parents are the kindest, most supportive humans I've ever met. Their kids, you know, you probably see some kids on my Instagram. They're those kids because I've built those relations with those children. Um, and I love that they have balance, they they don't feel that pressure. And then when they get on the mats and they go to competition, you know, they do really well. They don't win everything every time, but they do really well, but they also walk off the mats and they're still loved and supported by the people that mean the most to them. And that is important to me.
SPEAKER_03That's awesome. That's beautiful. Um, so curious, when you first started learning your partner introduced you to the CLA and you started using it, did you immediately put your flair of storytelling with it, or did you just kind of teach it way like I love so we were talking before we recorded, anyone listening? Uh I I love El's. You were a former teacher. I I'm I was a former teacher. I love the way you teach. I think it's amazing. I think it's so well needed in sports. I think it's awesome. You do such a great job with storytelling and connecting kids and getting them interested through that because that I mean, can we just real quick talk about the power of storytelling and like how how magical that is? Like that's that's it's so powerful for kids and and just getting them to buy-in and and everything. So, yeah, first of all, can we to be engaged? Yeah, can you talk about like was that something was that something you took from your previous education and just implemented with the CLA? Or is that something you learned over time? What how did you start implementing that kind of stuff? Because it it's beautiful, it's absolutely lovely. From afar, I I mean I've never been to your facility, but uh from afar it's it's it's lovely. Uh it's it's it's it's awesome.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Uh yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about this the other day, and I remember I was actually working at a childcare center. Um, oh gosh, I don't even know how many years ago now. But I remember how stressed I was at the end of the day because I was working with educators that were maybe not as competent, um, and and they struggled to control a group of kids. And it would basically be the end of the day, we're talking like 5:30 p.m., the center closes at six, they're having like a late snack, which is like a little cracker that they get at the end of the day or whatever. And you're trying to mangle and like wrangle these 20 kids that are all ready to go home and they're tired, whatever. And I could remember trying to read a storybook to them, and I I remember trying to sing songs. You gotta remember, like, these are little kids. And in the end, I was I remember so clearly one day just being like, What's that? And then everyone was like, looked at me and I was like, Can you see it? And they were like, What? And I was like, it's over there, it's quick, like it's behind you. They all turned. And from that moment, they were just they were captivated. And I was like, Oh crap, I've got to keep this story going. What am I gonna do? So in my head, it was like, and then I just started rambling this thing, and I was like, There's a dragon, but you can't see it, but it's magic. But if you eat your cracker, and then and it went, it went on and on. And I actually left that day feeling less stressed because obviously I'd managed to keep them engaged for long enough, and I was like, I'm pretty good at telling stories. Hey, that was like actually a really good one. And so when we started the academy, it I didn't make any connection at all with this. And what had happened was I it started with dirty feet because we were teaching God and the concept of God, and I remember being like, You've got to imagine that you just have really dirty feet and you want to put them on someone, and the kids were like, What?
Storytelling That Makes Skills Stick
SPEAKER_00Like, imagine you didn't wipe your feet, and then like, I don't know, my partner's wearing a beautiful white dress, and I just want to make them really dirty all the time. And the kids went and did it, and I was like, they're actually doing really well, they're remembering this thing, and so then I started it with like other little things, so it became more like little metaphors or analogies, things that they could just relate to in their life, or you know, fairy tales or whatever it was. I remember being like locking somebody up like a dragon and locking them in the dungeon, and that was close guard. And I knew it was working because I was had this little girl who was trying to escape the clothes guard, breathing fire on this person. And she was like, I'm gonna escape. And she was, and she did. She escaped and it was a lovely escape, but she was purposely like breathing fire like a dragon. But I kept them engaged for a long period of time, and so from there I started sort of developing more stories towards each concept that I was kind of teaching. Um, or at least like if I wanted to keep teach like a coaching queue of some sort, I would make it realistic or relatable. One that I have been doing lately is um I've been trying to teach double leg to like small children, and that's challenging. So we've been talking about, you know, making a circle around both legs. And what's it called when I make a circle around both legs? And they're like, it's a double leg. Like, yeah. So I still try to incorporate the language, but I teach them what something is first before I sort of encourage the language. But something that I was noticing was they were just like shoving their head between the legs, or they were like dropping themselves on the floor, or whatever it was. So I started using the cue of like talking on the telephone. So I would get them to use their ear to talk on their partner's leg, and the leg is the telephone. So it immediately put their leg, sorry, it put their head in the right place. So one, they're now learning they don't know what a guillotine is, but in you know 10 years' time, they're not going to get guillotined from there. But it also put their head in a safer place. They were then like talking on the phone, and all of a sudden they were laughing because they're chatting to their partner's leg, but they're engaged and doing a coaching experience that is what I was eventually looking for. So it kind of just grows and I make stuff up as I go, and then I'll be on the mats and I'll be like, oh, that was good. One of my kids this week said to me, um, when we're put like pinning somebody down, they were four, and they're like, it's like a flounder. And I was like, Pardon? Like, you know, the fish flounder? And I was like, yeah, they're like, he's pretty flat. You've got to like make him flat like a flounder. And I was like, love that. So my kids are really creative with it too. They're constantly coming back with the floor.
SPEAKER_03I was gonna I was gonna ask, do your kids like participate in the storytelling and come up with stories and and and things like that?
SPEAKER_00All the time. I won't even lie, I may have stolen one or two.
SPEAKER_03Now the CLA, uh when you first learned it, I mean not a lot of people have used it with four or five, six-year-olds. So, you know what I mean? Your partner was a purple belt, I think you said.
SPEAKER_00He was a purple belt, he's a black belt now.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so well, at the time he was a purple belt and he's using it at a very that's a high level. How did you learn to scale it down to work with four or five, six-year-olds? You know what I mean? Like Yeah, that's a process, ma'am. I'd love I'd love to learn it was a process. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it actually took me longer than I care to admit to realize that it wasn't working.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because what would happen was even the six to eights in our age range, they were doing games, and I would try to do them in my four to fives, and it just wasn't working, no matter what I tried. And I was actually getting frustrated at it because, say, for example, um something that they they really struggle with. I mean, they really struggle to pin somebody down, but like say, for example, dirty feet. I always use this as an example because it's a good one, right? Um, they're trying to keep their feet in front all of the time, but the other person on top was just getting their tummy, and that was it. The person on the bottom was kind of forgetting that they had to do their job. And I'd be like, you need to move, use your dirty feet. Why are you not following the person or using the movement? Whereas, like my six-year-olds, they were able to do that. And for a long time, I was trying to give a different instruction, trying to like maybe a different story or whatever it was until I started thinking about back when I worked in education, yeah, and I remember learning about Mildred Parton's stages of play.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And I was like, um, maybe that has something to do with it. Because, you know, long story short, we go through different stages of play. It's not like a one goes through and then you meet each milestone kind of thing. You can go backwards and forwards, but essentially, four and five-year-olds or three to five-year-olds don't necessarily know how to play together yet. So you'll see a lot of the time that they might play tea parties or they might um do a role-playing game, like a mum's and dad's game, and they'll be like, I'm gonna be the mum. And then the other one's like, well, I'll be the dad. And then someone's a dog, and then they all go off and they do completely different things. Yeah, they don't play together, but they're playing the same game. And I started thinking about this, and I was like, well, that's kind of what's happening here. They know that they're supposed to be doing something, but they're not realizing that they have to interact to actually get their partner to do something as well. So Dirty Feet wasn't the best game in this age range because they weren't realizing that the top player was gonna get their tummy, and they had to try and do something other than just like frame like a little turtle on its back. So that was my first realization that hey, actually, I think this idea of play needs to be much more simplified for this age range in CLA because they can't play the same way you would set a game for an adult. They're not able to cooperate and create that resistance and that movement in order for it to be successful. But on the other hand, if you were like, hey, we're gonna do a drill for 10 minutes, there's no way they could do that either. So we have to find a way to simplify this language and to simplify the games that's effective for them to still learn.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely love that. If you do not mind, uh can you give an example uh of how the stages of play and then how you've kind of constructed your classes with that a little bit?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So um we tend
Scaling Games For Four Year Olds
SPEAKER_00to not really have as much like onlooker play. So onlooker play is where you kind of are just looking at somebody. You'll see toddlers. Um, you might be see somebody playing with something and they're kind of like looking over and they want to play with it, but they don't necessarily engage or or they do the opposite and they run and they take it from the person because they want it. And that's when you end up with the tantrums and the fights. But it's because they're not interested in the person, they're just kind of like looking on. Then we also have something called um parallel play. Now, this is the one that I think is from my experience the most common in this age range. And the parallel play is like I explained, you've got a parallel line, right? So you've got two kids that are playing something the same, but they never cross paths, so they never connect to understand what we call like cooperative or associative play, which is when they get into those older years, they're able to cooperate with each other, they're able to engage with one another in a way that um makes the CLA work the way that it does with the adults. So when I'm working with really young children, my games are generally much more simplified in that, you know, we might play, although actually they are getting much, much better now, but I think it's taken a long time to get to this point. Um, but we will do something like say I want to do a single leg game. Well, let me start, one person's just gonna hold the leg for as long as they can. They're gonna hold the leg, here it is. And that's a pretty easy, focused goal for them to have. They can do that without having to really worry too much about what the other person's doing because they're gonna have their goal, but it doesn't necessarily require the other person to do something for that goal to work. So they're like, okay, I'm gonna just gonna get the leg down. So things like that. One person's trying to get the leg back onto the floor, the other person's trying to hold the leg. We might talk about it as like, I have so many different stories at this point, but you know, one of them is we make magic chains and we lock them up in magic chains. Another one is like you're gonna, if I want them to take them down, we chop the tree down. So you're like the axe holding the axe, and you're gonna chop the tree down onto the ground, or you know, flamingos where they're standing on one leg. There's so many ways. Yeah. Um but for me, the most important part is if I have a game that requires, like, say, for example, a pinning game, uh, and this is something that it was actually my partner, he did an adult's class, and he was he's he's he's not like really, really big. He's Brazilian, he's like, I don't want to get his size wrong, but he's like 70-something kilos. Okay, and he's he's not this jacked bodybuilding kind of 70, you know, whatever. Yeah, but he was stuck on bottom side control um in this particular game. And he's a black belt, he's very experienced with what he does, but he was he was genuinely like, man, this guy's really fucking heavy. Like he still was able to do the goal, but in that moment after class, he was talking to me and he was like, that really sucked. I'm like, yeah, it kind of sucks. Hey. He's like, but I think what would have been better is if the top person had more of a goal here. So rather than just holding that static position, because also holding a static position for a really long period of time is also not really that realistic of what's gonna happen in the learning environment. But the goal was to just hold the position for as long as you could while bottom person tried to escape. And in that moment when he was like, I think it would have been better if we looked at, you know, the top person having to maybe move every three seconds, or which is using time as you know, the constraint, or you know, moving them from one position to another to give them a different outcome or goal, it would have allowed the bottom player the actual movement and resistance to be able to achieve their goal. With all that being said, the reason that then I took that to my kids' class and was like, okay, we're four to five-year-olds, they're not gonna be able to really get the whole change the position every three seconds. That's quite difficult for them. But I can use time as you know the outcome here. So rather than it being like you've got to hold your partner down on the ground as long as you can, and the person's gonna try and escape, I just use like 10 seconds or 20 seconds. Be like, okay, if you can hold them for 20 seconds, great, perfect, switch it over. So it's the same thing, but I'm just using a different way for them to meet the outcome that I'm looking for.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, love it. Um I heard you uh in a in another podcast, I don't remember which one it was, uh talk about your your your class, uh uh how you structure the classes, and I absolutely love that. Would you mind uh uh talking about like, you know, because sometimes people hear four or five-year-olds who in jiu-jitsu, like what? But you know what I mean? Like they they should be doing that. But I loved hearing how you structured it in like the little brain breaks that you give.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_03Can you please talk about that, right?
SPEAKER_00Brain breaks is my favorite things.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh, and it did that is specifically come from my teaching uh because I remember the first time I saw it, I was actually on um like experience or prac for my teaching degree. I was in a primary school setting, it was like prep or year one, and the teacher was trying to teach it was English, and it was some anyway, they were trying to teach something. And she was like, These kids aren't focused, this isn't working. And I was like, Okay, so what do you do? She's like, We need to give them a brain break. And I was like, Okay. So she's like, All right, everybody stand up, and I want you to go and find something in the room that starts with the letter E and bring it back to me. And that was it. It's still related to what she was teaching because she was teaching English, she was still teaching um, you know, it was phonetics at the time, and then she just got everyone to bring something back. Yeah, and they did, they were engaged, and then they came to sit
Brain Breaks And 30 Minute Classes
SPEAKER_00back down and they were focused. I was like, how did you dupe this?
SPEAKER_03This is magic.
SPEAKER_00It was incredible. Yeah, um, and that's what it was. And so then when I was looking at the structure of my classes in my four to fives, um I was thinking, okay, I don't want to put something in my class that is there just to fill space or to fill time. Uh, but I'd really like them to be able to have a bit of a break every now and then from the really big cognitive load that we're asking from them to focus on, you know, jujitsu. It's a lot for them. Some of them are barely even able to sit and listen, and that's because they've never experienced a group learning environment, let alone when I ask them to sit on another person. It's a lot. Uh so the way that I structure it, my session is 30 minutes long. The reason that it's 30 minutes is, you know, after 30 minutes, they're done. They're so whether it's, you know, they're physically tired, most sessions are starting in the afternoon. So I don't know, many kids' sessions that are running in the morning or sort of during the day. Those kids have already had a full day, whether it's kindy, whether it's been at home doing something, whatever they've done. So they're already coming in quite full. The time of day they come in is usually, well, for me, it's 3:30 in the afternoon. They come to my class. They might have had lunch at 12 o'clock at Kindi or whatever it was. So there's a big break between, there's so many things to think about, but there was a big break between all of you know when they eat, when they sleep, when they've had a bit of a rest, the amount of work they've done during the day. They get to me half an hour, and I'm pushing them to really focus, to remember to to their body physically, but more mentally than anything at this age. So 30 minutes is more than enough. If you're somebody who, and I have experienced this myself, where they're like, I wish that my class was 30 minutes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I'm stuck with an hour-long session with four-year-olds. Yeah. If you can't change the time, and I understand you can't, rather than filling the space with just random things to be like, okay, well, let's do dodgeball again, let's actually fill it with like brain breaks. So you can use brain breaks strategically, split up throughout the session so that you can still reset their brain a little bit to keep trying to push through the focus. So they come in, they have their little warm-up. My warm-up is always something to do more with their listening. Their body, yeah, like they're they're fine. But their mind, I really need them switching their listening ears on and knowing what the expectation is. So when I do those, it's really simply things like um, you know, a red light, green light sometimes is enough for them to be like stop and go, the movement of stop and go, the movement of freeze. Um, I do ones where we have like a giant box and I'll be playing music, so they're welcome to run and dance. And then music stops, they roll the big box which has numbers on it, like a die. And then we've got to do that movement however many times. They get to pick the movement. They always pick push-ups, so they end up doing like 20 push-ups, okay or whatever. They love it, that's their choice. We come to the middle, we do jujitsu game, so that's when my really CLA-focused game is. Um, they do that. I push them again, I send them straight back to the middle. They don't go for a drink then. So I push them again, they come back to the middle because the the drink, that's a brain break. They're getting a brain break in that moment. So I'm strategic about when they use it. They come back, they do a second game, they go for a little drink, they come back. Um, and then we'll it really depends on the class and where they're at. Sometimes they'll do another jujitsu game. Sometimes I'm like, okay, let's do more of like a brain break game here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then we do like some back-to-back sparring. So all up, I'm pretty intuitive with when and how I incorporate things. So I don't think there's like a specific structure necessarily.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00But with that being said, I do try to do like two jujitsu games break, one jujitsu game sparring. So they're still getting like a little bit of focus time in between.
SPEAKER_03Now, do you only work with the four five-year-olds or do you coach the other classes as well?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I coach the other classes as well. So six to eights, I also teach those. Okay. At nine to fifteen, I teach two or three days a week, but my partner also takes his takes those classes as well. Okay. He's not a big fan of the little ones, so he avoids those classes at all costs. Um, but he's happy to teach the other kids.
SPEAKER_03Now, just curious, if you don't mind me asking, how do you scaffold up now for those classes? How do you take those games and okay, for the next age group and then for those teenagers? You know what I mean? How do you how do you scaffold those up?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it usually ends up being more along at more complex constraints, or to be honest, like sometimes it's just the thing that I want them to focus on, for example. So, you know, if we're doing like a circle game and I'm doing it when I say circle game, I mean like uh making a circle around one leg, making a circle around two legs, or making a circle around the body. Basically, it's making connections, meaningful connections around the body to create a takedown.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, four to fives, I'll just be like, make a circle, right? You can make a circle, fantastic work, guys. Then my six to eights, I'll be like, the way that I'll explain it, it's still the same. We're gonna be making circles, but remember, if I drop my head and I just run at my partner with my head dropped, you know, they're they're gonna know what I want. So even though, you know, you might be trying to trick them, so you've got to think about how you position your head. I want you to use, think about the little egg on your head, and if the egg drops off your head, then you know it breaks. So when you go to shoot for things, keep your egg on your head. Um, or you know, I might be more specific around you have to keep a collar tie and try and lift the leg at the same time. So it just it changes slightly, but not too much. The concept is still the same. When I get to my 9 to 15s, my storytelling doesn't tend to be there that much. They would find it a bit weird. Uh, but the metaphors and analogies is still there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I'm still gonna say, like,
Scaffolding For Older Kids And Adults
SPEAKER_00guys, if you're dropping your head like there's an egg on your head, imagine that it drops onto the floor. If it drops, it breaks. So when you go to shoot for things, you need to be able to keep your head up. That's why when someone's yelling, keep your head up, and the person's like, okay, and then they stand up straight, and then someone shoots on their legs because they kept their head up. So it's just a different way of explaining it. Um, but my nine to fifteens, I love because they take the absolute piss out of us, and it's hilarious. They're really fun. Um, don't get me wrong, I love my four to fives and six to eights, but there's something in that nine to fifteens where they've really built those like relationships with us that they can have a joke with you, or they come up with their own silly ideas, and that's creates a different way of the story and a different way of the game presenting itself too.
SPEAKER_03That's awesome. Um that's gotta be fun in a few years because you've only been open two years, three years?
SPEAKER_01Three years, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Three years. So I'm sure you're starting to see it, but that's gotta be really fun to start with those little kids, and then you know what I mean, by in in another three years, they're gonna be teenagers and just see the progress from you and your your games. That's gotta be such a that's gonna be such a cool, uh, cool thing. Um have you ever just for shits and giggles for for yourself and for your husband, just kind of swapped and he does the little kids and you do the the adults just to kind of constrain yourself and see you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00That's terrible. You know what? He is so good with the kids. He actually is so much better than he gives himself credit for. Um, but he's it's so funny. He had to come with me last week to a class, and he was like, What are you doing in that class? And I was like, What do you mean? He's like, they're not very good.
SPEAKER_01I was like, they're five. Okay.
SPEAKER_00And he's like, Oh, okay. And I was like, it's pretty, they're five. It's pretty normal where they're at right now. They're they're doing good. And he's like, oh, okay. I think he's just so used to not being in that space that when he comes down, he's like, Yeah, I don't understand like what's going on here. And I'm when I explain it, and he's like, Oh, okay, that makes more sense, right? Um, but yeah, no, he's I remember I taught one adult game. I actually would really like to explore that more for myself now. I'm only a purple belt, but I feel like I'm at the point now where I probably could teach a pretty decent adult's class.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00But I do remember my partner gave me the opportunity to teach like a Gii game years ago now. But it was when I was still not quite understanding the idea of CLA.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00And I was still probably trying to force a particular technique to emerge from whatever game that I was doing. And it was the moment that I realized I'd set them up, these two adults, in um, I believe it was like a lasso or something, I can't remember. They they'd got this giant, they'd wrapped it under the leg, and I was really wanting them to emerge, this Delaheiva with this lasso thing, and and my partner, no joke, he just was watching and he was like, This is not gonna work, but I'm gonna let you do it anyway. Um, he didn't say anything, and it didn't work at all. They just got stuck, and I was like, Why are they not why are they not getting this? And he's like, Well, you've constrained them so much because you only want this particular outcome to emerge, that the moment that the other person counters that particular movement that you want, they can't do anything anymore. So they're just stuck in this weird little position where neither of them can achieve their goal because you are trying to emerge a technique that you Like, and I was like, Oh and he's like, you know, I knew it wouldn't work. And I was like, why did you let me go through that? Like, that was actually embarrassing for me as an adult in the adult's class. And I was like, why didn't you tell me? And he's like, because that was how you were gonna learn. And when that happened, I do remember then it was like something clicked that I was like, okay, this isn't about taking techniques and trying to make them work in a game. It's not positional sparring, it's not this thing where you're like, you have to win this particular way doing this particular thing. It's much more like nuance than that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Now I know uh we gotta get going here, but I got one last question for you.
SPEAKER_00We'll have another 10-15 minutes if you need me, Jeff.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, if you were gonna go back and teach, how has the CLA, since you've studied it, changed your view on teaching?
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's a good question. In like an education setting, like if I went back to teach as a teacher. Oh, I like that question. I've never thought about this. I think for me, because if I was to go back to teaching, I would prefer to go to primary or elementary school. I don't want to go back to kindergarten anymore. I think I've done my time. Um but something that I have noticed a lot, and then I make a comparison to, but I don't think it's necessarily like the right direct comparison, is I like to think of sort of CLA a little bit more like our early childhood setting where everything's play-based. And so, you know, you're learning through your play, and then you've got your your educator or your teacher who's designing learning experiences for you based on the play that you're interested in. And then, and I loved that. And then you go to primary school, and it's like you sit at your desk and you get told the solution, and then you kind of work backwards the other way. And I think that if I was to go back, I would probably get fired because I'd want to actually take everything that I do in
Rethinking School Learning And Closing
SPEAKER_00that play-based learning environment and apply it to primary. I really think that we're a bit backwards with this whole education system in Australia at least, uh, where we are kind of encouraging kids to sit for longer and extended periods of time and focus on things, worksheets and sort of without using our hands or problem solving or engaging with our peers and movement and stuff like that. So that would be where I would go is 100% more towards play-based learning in sort of primary education, which I know there are some that do it, but it's just not traditional.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's not traditional, no. But yeah, I'm just curious, you know, uh having gone through kind of traditional coaching, teaching education, and then once I've learned the CLA and ecological dynamics and that stuff, it's just it's definitely opened my eyes to learning and to teaching and and things like that. So I was just curious uh uh your your experience and if you were gonna go back and teach. Um how would that be?
SPEAKER_00I don't think I would funnily enough, Jeff. I worked as just a side note here for us. I worked as a Montessori teacher for many years as well. Okay, yeah, randomly.
SPEAKER_03They do a lot of that play-based stuff, right?
SPEAKER_00They do, yeah. But it's actually very specific in the way that they're able to engage with the materials. Okay. So uh you work for anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about here. Maria Montessori um was an Italian, I can't remember if she was a physical. I don't know if she's anyway. Yeah, she did her thing and she created this philosophy on education. Yeah, uh, incredible stuff. Yes. And she uses physical materials to be able to teach complex um concepts and things, um, things like trinomial cubes, binomial things, it's very cool stuff. Look it up. But basically, I remember working in this environment and working with the materials itself and being like, this stuff is insanely cool, amazing. But you're only allowed to use it one way. So if you were using it the wrong way, you would then be told that you couldn't use it anymore. Oh so even though you were given these beautiful resources and the the exploration and opportunity is there, it was still then kind of funneled into a way that could be used. Yeah. So I think that's like almost there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00In terms of like education and how I would teach, but maybe not quite there yet.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Very cool. Um, yeah, there's Montessori schools all around us as well. Uh I'm I'm loosely familiar with with with that. We've done some of the stuff with uh with my own children with just you know, here's seven toys for the month, and then we every month rotate the toys and things like that. But uh I love that. But uh Ellie, thank you so much. Um, this was an awesome talk. I again I absolutely love talking education, I love talking learning, and I love talking movement. Um, you have several courses, right? You you have uh a coach's one, and then you have like one for learning games, correct?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so basically the easiest way to do it is to jump onto the community, which has everything all in one place. So I have all of the games and I have courses um ranging from, you know, just basically the understanding of the foundations of kids all the way to the science. Like if you really want to get into it and understand child development and science behind things, there's that. We got things on how to deal with parents and what to do when a child cries, and all of those kinds of things, all based in this one place. But the coolest part is there's like hundreds of coaches all in the same place that talk to each other, support each other, um, and learn from that way. The games, I also have like a separate games pack, which is more just like the games there themselves. But the cool part of the community is then you sort of start to understand why the games work and how to send sort of adapt and interact um and change them to your environment.
SPEAKER_03That's awesome. Any chance you're gonna come to the states and and do some conferences or seminars here?
SPEAKER_00Hopefully next year. I would really, really love to be able to, yeah, absolutely. Um, so I'm very hopeful that 2027 is the year that I can sort of make my way to the northern hemisphere and start doing some seminars and things.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Greg Sautters is not too far from Pittsburgh. So you you you come, you two should link up and I'll be there. That'll be amazing.
SPEAKER_00But uh Definitely, definitely.
SPEAKER_03Ellie, thank you so much for for the time. Uh I greatly appreciate it. That was that was that was awesome.
SPEAKER_00My absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Jeff.
SPEAKER_03Um