How the OODA loop relates to Hokutou Ryu Jiu Jitsu
What is the OODA loop?
Col. John Boyd was a student of tactical operations and observed patterns in battles. He noticed that often if one side provided a series of surprises and threats at a speed which the other side found hard to keep up with, the faster side would eventually win.
The OODA loop (also know as the Boyd Cycle) is a model that Boyd developed based on these observations. It simply stands for Observe, Orientate, Decide and Act.
Observe
Each person in a conflict begins by observing; themselves, the physical surroundings and their opponent.
Orientate
Once information has been gathered, an image of what is happening must be formed. This employs previous intelligence and generated assumptions.
This is the most important phase. By orientating ourselves quickly, we can massively improve our performance.
Decide
Once orientated, a decision needs to be made. This decision takes into account all the factors present at the time of the orientation.
We rely on our training here to make good decisions. If we have trained to make effective decisions based on recognised situations we will give ourselves a much better chance of making choices that end the conflict in our favour.
If you consciously try to thwart opponents, you are already late
- Miyamoto Musashi, Japanese Philosopher/Warrior
Act
This is what you actually do based on your decision, the process of carrying out the action.
This is the part that many martial arts concentrate on the most and kata is an example of this, where students spend hours in stances practising their strikes. Another would be the submission videos released by the Gracie family that are the last in the series and also the most popular Brazilian Jiu Jitsu videos. This helps demonstrate how people like the result, but often don't concentrate on the build up.
There is no doubt that the execution of the technique is important. After all, there is little point in going through the OODA loop quicker than your opponent only to be let down by poor technique at the end. But, what ultimately matters are all the little things that lead up to this point. Your observations, orientation, and decisions are what can lead to even a minor action on your part being the difference between winning or losing, life or death.
How can we use this theory to improve our Jiu Jitsu?
Repeated movements/exercises will build up our experiences and develop our fore-concious decision making skills. This will allow us to speed up our OODA loops, therefore giving us the opportunity to act in a manner to disrupt our opponents OODA loop, thereby gaining control of the situation.
HRJJs policy of out-thinking your opponent, rather than out-strengthening them is this idea in its simplest form.
A smooth running OODA cycle translates to good situational awareness. Situational awareness is the ability to collect, collate, and store data in a fluid, dynamic environment, accurately predicting future events based on that data.
- Ken J. Good, Director of Sure-Fire Institute
HRJJ uses simple techniques and concepts that are repeated throughout the style to build proprioception and improve reaction times.
Training your OODA loop
Observe
This can be improved by teaching where to look, how quickly to scan the surroundings and identifying key signals that should be looked for. Training in a rapidly changing environment also helps to speed up information capture.
Orientate
The simplest way to do this is to practice a variety of situations that build up anchors and experience.
Decide
When the conscious mind decides to do something an inexperienced tori may make poor choices. They may well know that they should block, however they may actually duck. An experienced tori would observe a familiar movement, orientate themselves (they recognise the movement as a punch), and decide to block. This is purely because the reaction is now controlled by the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind can process data far quicker than the conscious mind. By regularly training, these movements will become subconscious.
Act
If the body is trained to make a certain movement quickly, powerfully and accurately, the movement will be exactly that. However, if the body is not trained correctly, there can be mixed signals from poor decisions which make the muscles work against each other, therefore slowing the action down and making it weak and inaccurate.
Another important part of any action is commitment. The difference between lower grades and higher grades can clearly be seen in this respect, by observing how the higher grades commit to their defence entirely.
The US Marines have a term called "violence of action." Once a decision has been made they act with violence, meaning that they are going to follow through with their decision 100% and commit to its success. They are going to so overwhelm and intimidate their enemy that success is going to be guaranteed.
- Jim Wagner, Defensive Tactics instructor
As an example of training the OODA loop, imagine playing a computer game. It starts simply with moving targets which always appear in the same order and after the first few times playing chances are that you scored fairly poorly. Once you have played the game a hundred times, your score is likely to have massively improved. Youll know what to look for with the targets, orientated yourself to key patterns in the game, experienced knowing when to shoot and you know where the fire button is. Altering the game through various stages (i.e. increased number of targets, decrease their size, random patterns, etc.) forces improvements in observing, orientating and decisions while the action remains the same.
HRJJ not only tests the ability to perform techniques of the style, it also creates situations which will need those techniques to be applied from a variety of different environments. This helps build up experience and references, so you can recognise patterns in your opponents movements from all kinds of situations.
Interrupting the OODA loop
Weve looked at how the OODA loop can be trained, the next step is to examine how to interrupt the OODA loop. If you can prevent your opponent from finishing their OODA loop, you will have a huge advantage, allowing you to complete your OODA loop over and over again, while your opponent never reaches the end of theirs, or makes poor decisions if they do.
If you prevent your opponent from observing, they have no information on which to orientate themselves. To do this, you must block off their senses (i.e. prevent them from seeing, hearing etc.), which can be done, but is often very difficult.
Feeding false information will prevent the loop from correctly orientating to the situation. This can be arranged by distraction, changing speeds, shouting, whispering, acting strangely, faking attacks, etc. If orientated to this false information a decision based upon it will be a poor one, as will the action that follows. However for the majority this will cause a re-evaluation as they are unable to orientate with the given information. This will reset their thought process and start their OODA loop again.
Something to think about is how you appear to the attacker. You could choose to look weak, lulling them into a false sense of security (Mohammed Ali springs to mind), but that is likely to end up in an attack. You can also do the opposite, look confident. If you do not back down, firmly warn the attacker off, adapt a strong confident stance, the attacker is likely to think twice about attacking you. This will all play a part of influencing their decision process.
Finally, you can prevent them from acting on their decisions. This will mainly come down to controlling techniques i.e. If they decide they want to punch you, but they are in an arm lock, they cannot act upon their decision.
Summary
HRJJ provides opportunities to observe patterns in situations that are likely to occur.
All the non-verbal cues, timings, the bio-mechanical possibilities and constraints of the combatants are now identified, sorted, stored and are ready for retrieval by the powerful subconscious mind. New courses of action will be discovered and can be experimented with.
- Ken J. Good, Director of Sure-Fire Institute
This observation process starts creating a memory bank that ends up becoming a reference point from which to efficiently orient. This will increase your probability of success in the future.
During your training you will have the opportunity to improve your OODA loop, and to practice disrupting your opponents. I strongly suggest you use the opportunities given to you.
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