Do You OODA?: How to make a midcourse correction anytime, anywhere.

This winter I made a very specific decision to train up in a very specific way for my first race in April.  I knew I needed lungs on hills so running and sled work were givens.  I also knew that on the certain course I was going to race on, the distance between obstacles was very minimal on the second half of the course.  They were rapid fire.  So I figured the right method to train was explosive reps for short counts.  After all, most obstacles don't require high-reps.

In hindsight, perhaps you too can see the tactical flaw in this method.  Although the reps are short per obstacle, when you stack obstacles back-to-back, the reps multiply accordingly.  It was an error that cost me in endurance.  The Crossfitters call this AMRAP.

So I am making an early season course correction.  I was convinced of this just moments ago when I looked on Facebook and saw a picture of an obstacle at an upcoming race in the U. K. - a monkey bar over 100 meters long.  For the metric challenged, that's 328 feet - longer than a friggin' football field!  Plus, I should have known better with the 125+ foot Tyrolean Traverse rope on the ABF Mud Run course that I have only successfully crossed once.

This kind of tactic is known in military circles as the OODA loop.  This technique was developed and taught by Air Force Colonel John Boyd and became the basis for modern supremacy in air warfare.  But his method works just about anywhere, including the obstacle course.  It is a way to see, anticipate, calculate, and adjust (or OODA - Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) real-time to overcome and defeat any opponent.  It is a difficult technique to master so I won't go into it here.  Just download and read as much as you can on this and get to work.

The lesson here is, don't make your routines static.  Everything else will change and then you risk loss.  Do the OODA to avoid the OOPS.