Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. -Sun Tzu

Observe

Relax - Clam down and don't panic .

. It doesn't matter what position you are in, if you haven't tapped then you are still in the fight. Take a breath and calm down. This is essential to taking in sensory input.

Position- Where am I?

It may seem trivial or obvious, but if you don't take mental inventory of where you are, you cannot properly analyze the next steps.



Figure out where your body parts are. There have been many times where I have been in an unusual position and thought my arm was somewhere it wasn't, which usually lead to that arm being attacked due subsequent movements. My observation was wrong, which cascaded into the rest of the OODA steps.

Grips - Who has which grips?

Grips are the key to BJJ and our opponent's grips will tell us what they are going to do next.



If we are in their De La Riva guard, they have a deep bite on our ankle and start reaching for our belt, we know that berimbolo is coming. If, while in their closed guard, they start feeding our lapel out and around our head, we know the brabo series is coming.



Grips are like road signs that let us know what's coming up ahead. - Click to Tweet!

Weight - Where are they?

Like grips, our opponent's positioning can tell us what they are planning and we can best derive their positioning by feeling their weight and center of gravity. It can also tell us where they are vulnerable.



If we are fending off an over/under pass then the placement of their head tells us which side they are going to try to pass. If they are looking to the right, we know their hips are coming around to our left and vice versa.



If we are attacking from our De La Riva guard and we extend their far leg away, we can feel their center of gravity shift making them vulnerable to side to side sweeps.

Orient

Decide

Act

To Recap

We can strengthen each piece of the OODA loop with specific actions.





O - Rooted Plants Get Water

O - Instructional Study

D - Match Study

A - Drilling

I know a lot of moves from X position but not which to do when.

This is a problem with Decision: Fix with match study then drill the move in that context.

I feel like I know what to do but can't execute.

This is a problem with Action: Fix with drilling.

I'm unfamiliar with this position.

This is a problem with Orientation: Fix with instruction, follow up with match study of the position, then drill the moves in context.









Next Week - We Disrupt Their Loop

Written in 500 BC, Sun Tzu'sis the oldest military work in existence and offers a myriad of insights into strategic thinking. The above quote stresses the importance of preparation. Last week, I highlighted the OODA concept and how it can be seen in BJJ. If you missed it or need to refresh your memory, take a look here So, lets see how we can win first by improving our OODA processing.In the observation step, we are taking in sensory inputs. This is everything including what we see, hear, feel, etc. The most important of these sensory inputs is our sense of touch. Unlike striking arts, grappling is not dominated by hand eye coordination. Tactile sense is the prime sense that needs to be developed.We need to be able to accurately sense where our weight is, where our opponent's weight is, shifts in centers of gravity, and a number of other things that let us know what's going on in a position. This also enables us to keep a mental picture of how our bodies are oriented in space.This OODA phase is improved by remembering that Rooted Plants Get Water -elax,osition,rips,eight.These four things will help us collect the sensory input to analyze in the next OODA step.In this step, we are taking the sensory inputs from the previous step and turning them into courses of action to be decided upon in the next step. In other words, we are figuring out what's going on and how to respond.Improving our orientation ability is based on something that everyone reading this blog already does. Learning technique!The chief goal of this step is building a list of possible responses to what we are observing. We build this list by learning technique in class or instructional videos and books. Think of it like this...I'm playing half guard and lets say I only know one technique from that guard, the sit up single leg sweep . As I am trying to use this sweep, I begin to encounter reactions that stop the sweep or make it very difficult. I am accurately observing these things, things like a strong whizzer with a lot of downward pressure from my opponent, but I cannot orient to these inputs.Because I only know this one technique from the position, I can't build a list of responses to this reaction. But then I go out and buy Mr. Half Guard's brand new Ultimate Half Guard Secrets DVD! I watch this instructional, and lo and behold, there is a thing called the shovel sweep that will address the issue I'm having.Additionally, good instructionals will give you the triggers for a set of techniques. For example, when doing the single leg sweep from half guard, aggressive pressure from your opponent leaves him open to the shovel sweep. In this way, instructional study will strengthen the O-O-D part of the chain by telling us which inputs to look for (observation) and which technique to select (decision).So, now that we have surveyed the battlefield and amassed a list of tactical options, how do we decide which action to take? The answer: Match Study.Watching what high level practitioners are doing in competition will help us navigate all of the possible techniques for a particular scenario. You'll have a set of options built up from the Orient step and studying film will help you know which of those options to employ.This will also help us develop context for our techniques. During a match we can not only see what observational facts influenced the selection of a particular technique but also how that technique was then reacted to.Acquiring technical context, or what do we do when X happens, is at the heart of strong OODA decision making.We have decided on a technique to execute, how do we make our execution better? Drilling, drilling, and more drilling.Drilling helps us in two ways. It builds the muscle memory needed forexecution and it allows us to work through the details needed forexecution.Using the OODA framework, it is vital to drill technique in the context it will be executed. By that I mean, drill it with the needed inputs from our drilling partner and in the transition where we'll use it. If we are drilling the shovel sweep to go with our single leg sweep, then we need to drill the whole transition of coming up for the single leg sweep, getting pressured down, and then executing the shovel sweep.By using context, we will strengthen the entire OODA chain.We'll become more attuned to the tactile cues associated with resisting the single leg sweep ().We'll get used to adding the new technique to our list of half guard options ().We'll reinforce selecting the new technique (We'll build the muscle memory and technical detail needed to execute ().These things are not particularly novel on their own but I believe using the OODA framework is a way to give them context. It allows us to self diagnose the problem spots in our game.Now that we have a framework to improve our own OODA processing, we will start looking at ways of disrupting and degrading our opponent's decision making.