Nicky Ryan is no stranger to innovation in Jiu-Jitsu — and in a recent appearance on The Simple Man Podcast, he weighed in on one of the sport’s most talked-about training philosophies: the Ecological or Constraints-Led Approach (CLA).

While he’s intrigued by the method, Ryan believes the best results may lie in blending new-school strategy with traditional practices:

I definitely like what Greg (Souders) is doing. I think that there’s a lot of uses to it.
Me personally, I would do it differently.

Souders’ system emphasizes positional sparring with unique restrictions, rather than classic repetition-based drilling.
Ryan, who has begun implementing similar ideas in his work with teammate Nicky Rod, offered a specific example:

What we’re doing with Nicky Rod right now is something along the lines of “you’re not allowed to level change down into a chest to chest position until you’re past your opponent’s hip line”.

This completely eliminates body lock passing from butterfly guard.

We’re getting him away from those camping split squat positions and just having him do vertical standing passing, doing high stepping to north south.

Rather than relying solely on constraint-based games, Ryan prefers a more hands-on coaching style:

I think a good medium is what I’m trying to do now with Nicky Rod – where I’ll sit on the side, watch him do this positional round with these constraints, and then I’ll give him suggestions on things he could improve on.

From there, he allows room for some technical repetition:

He’ll drill it a little bit… Just go through the motions, get the mechanics down, how to move his body and get a feel for it.

Ryan was clear that he hasn’t deeply studied CLA, but expressed interest in seeing Souders’ process in person:

I’d be interested in coming out when I’m able to train and kind of experiencing how he runs the room for myself.

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