Every few months, someone declares the ecological approach “dead,” “exposed,” or “obsolete.” Usually with confidence. Often with conviction. Almost always while arguing against a version of ecological dynamics that simply does not exist.

Joshua Janis’ recent piece, “The Ecological Approach is Dead for Blue Belts and Beyond,” is a good example of this pattern. It reads less like a critique of a theory and more like a critique of a caricature, a strawman stitched together from Instagram clips, poorly run classes, and second-hand assumptions.

You can’t kill a theory you haven’t understood. And strawmen, no matter how confidently attacked, don’t count.

Let’s Start With the Core Problem

The entire argument rests on a false premise: that the ecological approach (ED / ECO) is a “games-only, no-teaching, no-instruction, no-guidance” ideology.

It isn’t.
It never was.
And no serious practitioner or researcher in this space claims it is.

Ecological dynamics is not a method. It’s not a drill library. It’s not “let them play and hope for the best.” It’s a theoretical framework for understanding how skill emerges through perception–action coupling under real constraints.

If your opening definition is wrong, everything that follows collapses. That’s not nitpicking, that’s logic.

The So-Called “ECO Paradox” Isn’t a Paradox at All

Janis argues that ECO is inconsistent because people who claim to use it still watch instructionals, attend seminars, and share ideas. Apparently this is meant to be a gotcha.

It isn’t.

This is a basic category error.

Learning about movement is not the same thing as learning to move. Conceptual information does not equal motor skill. No ecological account denies explanation, demonstration, shared language, or communication. What it challenges is the idea that explicit instruction is the mechanism by which skill is acquired.

You can hear a detail at a seminar.
You still have to organize your body under pressure to make it work.

Those two things are not the same, and conflating them is not a critique, it’s confusion.

“ECO Coaches Talk Too Much” Is Not a Theoretical Argument

Another claim is that ECO classes involve too much talking while setting up games and constraints. Supposedly, this reveals a contradiction.

It doesn’t.

Explaining a task is not the same as prescribing movement solutions. Designing representative environments requires clarity. Talking is not the enemy of ecological coaching, poorly directed information is.

If someone talks too much, that’s a coaching issue. It is not evidence that the theory itself is incoherent. Blaming execution errors on the framework is lazy analysis.

The “Game Structure Problem” Confuses Expected Behavior With Failure

We’re told that once skilled players understand a game, they revert to what works. Ego kicks in. Exploration dies. ECO stops being useful.

Yes. Of course they revert to what works.

That’s called self-organization.

Exploitation following exploration is not a flaw, it’s a predicted outcome of dynamical systems. If behavior stabilizes, the coach manipulates constraints. If players game the game, you redesign the task. This is not ECO “hitting a ceiling.” It’s ECO doing exactly what it says it does.

If your games stagnate, that’s not a theoretical limitation, that’s a design failure.

Experienced Grapplers don’t need to rediscover mechanics: Is Just an Assertion

This claim is stated confidently and supported by… nothing.

Skill development doesn’t stop at pattern recognition. Attunement, calibration, adaptability, and stability under pressure continue at every level, including elite performance. The ecological literature explicitly studies experts for this exact reason.

Saying “Experienced grapplers don’t need to rediscover mechanics” isn’t insight. It’s an appeal to intuition dressed up as wisdom.

Athleticism and the Myth of False Positives

The argument that constraint-led games create false positives because athletic people can dominate is simply backwards.

False positives thrive in isolation. Dead drilling hides inefficiencies. Representative tasks expose them. If strength wins, that’s information, not a mistake.

Athletic advantages don’t invalidate ecological practice. They are constraints within it. Pretending that drilling somehow neutralizes physical advantages while games exaggerate them shows a deep misunderstanding of what constraints actually do.

Anecdotes Are Not Arguments

The seminar example, (learning four ankle lock details in a few hours),  is anecdotal. It does not disprove ecological dynamics, nor does it challenge any of its claims.

Hearing a detail is not equivalent to acquiring a skill. No one disputes the value of shared knowledge. What’s being debated is how skill becomes functional under pressure, not whether humans can talk to each other.

Using a seminar anecdote to dismiss a theoretical framework built on decades of research is not analysis, it’s storytelling.

The Article Refutes Its Own Thesis

We’re told ECO is dead beyond blue belt.

Then we’re told ECO dramatically improved their wrestling, positional understanding, reactions, and movement.

You don’t get record improvements from a method that’s “dead.” You don’t rely heavily on something that no longer works. The contradiction isn’t subtle,  it’s structural.

“The Truth Is Somewhere in the Middle” Is Not a Conclusion

Ending with “the truth lies somewhere in the middle” sounds reasonable, but it’s not an argument. Truth isn’t determined by compromise. Sometimes one framework simply explains more, predicts more, and holds up better under scrutiny.

Ecological dynamics isn’t a religion. It’s a theoretical account of learning. Disagree with it if you want, but at least disagree with what it actually says.

The Final Irony

The closing paragraph emphasizes individual goals, motivation, context, and meeting the student where they are.

That is ecological thinking.

Those are constraints.
That is task–organism–environment coupling.
That is the very framework the article claims to move beyond.

Final Thoughts

This piece doesn’t kill the ecological approach. It doesn’t even wound it. It attacks a strawman version of ECO that serious coaches and researchers don’t recognize.

Bad implementations exist. Sloppy interpretations exist. Overcorrections exist. None of that invalidates the framework itself.

No coach has all the answers. None of us do. We’re all trying to figure this out in real time, inside complex systems with humans, emotions, incentives, bodies, and environments all interacting at once. And ignorance , in the literal sense of simply being unaware of the depth and complexity of human movement and behavior, is completely forgivable. We all start somewhere.

What’s less forgivable is willful ignorance: making strong, confident claims without doing the basic work of understanding the ideas you’re critiquing. At that point, it’s no longer an honest disagreement, it’s a refusal to engage.

Every critique raised in the original blog collapses under even a modest, non-superficial understanding of the ecological framework. Not because ECO is beyond criticism, but because the arguments aren’t aimed at the framework itself, they’re aimed at a caricature. You can disagree with ecological dynamics all you want, but first you need to understand what it actually proposes. Attacking a strawman may feel productive, but it doesn’t move the conversation, or coaching forward.