Following on from last week, Olympian and Victorian Head Coach Carrie Smith shares what she has learnt about developing a competitive mindset.  OODA loop is the psychology breakdown of making decisions under race pressure. Please use this information with last week’s theory for the full picture. 

Observe

• Current situations
  • Poor start
  • Upwind Speed
  • Downwind into bottom mark
• Theories 
  • of the days weather/course position 
  • of the leg of the race 
  • of the points leading into last day

Orient

• Set improvement targets
• Determine root cause 
  • Technique (balance)
  • Speed/set up
  • Communication 
• Pattern of racing 
  • Trending left on the upwind
  • Cloud driven – head for clouds

Decide

• Develop solutions: the simple solutions to deal with the root cause 
  • Adapt plan
  • Accelerate earlier
  • Better gust response

Act

• Implement solution
  • Not allowed to accelerate after +5 seconds 
  • Focus on steering and timing up over waves
• Evaluate 
  • Have we found a solution? Did it solve the issue?