Windermere Police Chief Dave Ogden hosts self-defense class at West Orange Dream Center

Windermere Police Chief David Ogden has learned a thing or two about surviving dangerous situations during his nearly four-decade long law enforcement career, which included stints as an undercover narcotics agent and 14 years on the Orange County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team, so it’s more than fair to call him an expert on the matter.

In Ogden’s opinion, the most important thing a person needs to learn to survive a life-threatening situation is to be aware of your environment. That’s why, during the women’s self-defense class he led at the West Orange Dream Center June 7, his primary focus was on situational awareness.

“I’ve been teaching women’s self-defense classes since the 1990s, and to be honest with you, women are always interested in what are the best ways to protect themselves,” Ogden said. “My response is always to be situationally aware, and I think that’s what this class does. We really focus on teaching tactics and talking about all the things that happen in a critical confrontation: the mental, the physical and the physiological aspects. … The very first thing we focus on is being situationally aware and training yourself how to be aware of environments. This (is) as simple as just recognizing where the exits and entrances are when you’re out at a restaurant … or thinking ahead of time about what you would do if, say, a robbery occurred? What that does is it buys you a few extra seconds ahead of time if something does happen, because you’ve already thought of a plan to exit out this door or take your kids and secure them in that room.”

The concept is called the OODA loop principle — Observe, Orient, Decide and Act — that aims to give people a quicker reaction time during a critical encounter. Ogden said although this principle only saves you a few seconds, in life-or-death situations, those few seconds can make the difference. 

This sort of practical approach is what makes the self-defense classes Ogden leads so effective. The goal isn’t to teach complex martial arts techniques to people who have never done anything of the sort. The goal of these classes is to teach various techniques that help people survive common dangerous situations. 

“One of our biggest focuses is to try and get our students to understand that self-defense is just as much mental, emotional than it is physical,” he said. “That’s why we focus on building some good tactical principles, (such as) combat breathing exercises, looking around, not getting tunnel vision, not getting auditory exclusions, which are things we understand as law enforcement and SWAT team members that can help them get through a challenging or a crisis situation.”

Ogden, a fourth-degree black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, also brings a practical approach to the physical aspect of self-defense by applying simpler BJJ principles that lean on the martial art’s focus on leverage to overcome deficits of size and strength.

“The students get to see in class how leverage and understanding body dynamics and position, when you used correctly, is efficient, fluid and can be effective with little effort,” he said. “We all get scared when we try to use our strength and our muscle to get out of certain situations and we’re not able to. As martial artists, though, we know that the most important thing you can learn is proper technique, and the nice thing about this class — and Brazilian jiu-jitsu overall — is in a short time period, like a few hours — our students learn not only the proper technique  but also gain the understanding that if they execute that technique even just 75% correctly, it’s enough to create distance, help you get away, get somebody off of you long enough to find an avenue to escape, which, ultimately is what we’re trying to accomplish here in this class.”

These lessons and Ogden’s approach to self-defense really hits home for his students in a variety of ways.

“Going into the class, I was really nervous, because I was just scared that everyone else was going to know what they’re doing, and I’d feel lost but they did a really good job of making it not feel high stakes at all,” said Tiana Brooks, one of the students at the June 7 class. “I feel like I usually train my body to be physically strong, but I never focused on how to use that strength for self-defense. I learned more of how to do that from this class and mentally one of the biggest take aways I had was to be a bit slower and more present. Not necessarily hyper vigilant … but to put more emphasis on paying attention to certain things.”

Although there is not a formal class schedule as of press time, Ogden and the Dream Center are aiming to host another women’s self-defense class before the fall.