Tighten the loop in judo
Hey what's up? So I have a new blog post today and once again it's about judo. My reflection today is from a podcast I heard recently about the employement of the OODA loop in the armed forces.
OODA loop quickly
The OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act loop) is a decision-making model developed by United States Air Force Colonel John Boyd in the early 1970s. [...] The approach explains how agility can overcome raw power in dealing with human opponents.
So the OODA loop is a decision-making loop, and I think the link between raw power and agility to defeat an opponent applies interestingly to judo... in a different way than one could imagine
Judo isn't about decisions, it's about reaction
Judo is fast, like really fast and especially in competition (see shiai for more details). Thinking about the technique and executing it is very rarely how it goes: you see an opening or an opportunity and you react by reflex with a technique or situation from training. A lot of it is making your grip and your position as comfortable as possible for your best technique to be effective. This cannot work if you have to think during the fight.
The average reaction time of a human is 0.25 seconds when dealing with something visual, so if you need to see or feel the technique, think about it's application and enact it, you are looking at close to half a second to execute a throw. In half a second, your opponent as already recovered their balance.
Impose a decision loop on your opponent
I surmise a theory, that if you are able to impose a decision loop like the OODA on your opponent, you force them to stop "reacting and executing" and more thinking and acting. It costs them time, energy and increases their stress as well as creates opportunity for you.
When your opponent has to react to your ko-uchi/ouchi and then to take a step back, you are already making them extend their time and create a decision loop:
- "Do I defend? what is he going to do next?"
- "How can I attack? I feel his ko-uchi is particularly vicious, maybe I should pay attention to that"
Generating charos
The core of the OODA loop in armed forces is to increase one's loop to maximize actions in real battle scenarios, while disrupting your opponent's. Disrupting your opponent's decision can rely on several factors:
- Disabled detection (think taking out radar stations, creating smoke and such, so Observe)
- Broken communications (Orient and Decide)
- Stop fuel lines (Act)
I believe that by pushing your opponent with precise attacks and a good kumi-kata/disruptive techniques, you are effectively introducing chaos in a similar way with your opponent. I can say that I have experienced such situations even with lower belts than me, attacking aggresively and decisively against me, even though they were technically worse.
This is something to try, but this quick reflection was interesting for my part.
