In an era where youth sports often push early high-stakes competition, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu coach Greg Souders wants to redefine what it means to develop young athletes.

His philosophy prioritizes play, exploration, and long-term learning over medals and early success — a stark contrast to the conventional “train hard, win early” mindset that dominates youth sports.

Drawing on methods like Teaching Games for Understanding (TGFU) and the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA), Souders developed a system built around curiosity and play rather than rote drills:

Kids come to the environment to learn with a completely different framework than adults do.

They’re mostly there for other kids.
They don’t care about what’s going on. They don’t care about the adults.

They’re literally there to play.

Understanding that attention spans vary with age, Souders designed shorter, tightly structured classes – 30 minutes for ages 5–7 and 45 minutes for ages 8–12 – blending focus and fun:

After 25 minutes, you lose them.
They start talking more to each other, they start wanting to play games.

His classes followed a simple rhythm: a few minutes of listening games, 20 minutes of jiu-jitsu-based activities, and five minutes of pure play like dodgeball.

Souders even repeated lesson scripts verbatim over three days to build familiarity, then changed things on the fourth day to keep students engaged.

But perhaps his most radical stance concerns competition.
Souders grew disillusioned with the toxic behavior of overbearing parents and the pressure it placed on children:

Parents were wanting their kid to travel and spend all this money, and they’re screaming at their kids on the mat.

The kids are stressed and they’re crying, and I wanted nothing to do with that.

He rejects the entire notion of “elite children”:

The worst myth is that there’s such a thing as an elite child.

There’s a graveyard of kids who got good early and burnt out.

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