If I had a dollar for every time ….

For the last couple of years people have had great delight in trolling Krav Maga supporters. They are good candidates for it as some of their practitioners are heavy on the dogma.

Generally its MMA exponents that seem to be enjoying themselves at the Krav Maga supporter’s expense. The challenge issued by MMA is to join them in the ring to test some of Krav Maga’s supposed effectiveness. The response is ‘we cannot use our elimination techniques because the rules of the ring won’t let us, and anyway it is only for use in real life and death situations’. MMA then say it’s unproven and you are likely creating fantasies by only training within your school. Krav Maga respond by quoting their lineage back to Israeli Commandos and that MMA is just a sport so what would it really know about self-defence.

Keeping Krav Maga exponents out of the ring is a good thing for their marketing as they probably aren’t going to thrive in that environment even if you allow what some people regard as 'dirty fighting'. Their counter claim that MMA is a sport could be considered to be a petulant rebuttal but Krav Maga does have a point, namely that a martial art should be trying to account for everything in a situation, including weapons. They are focusing on a holistic vision of the arts, which is a good thing, but it’s their claims of it being a supreme battle proven system that makes everyone else roll their eyes. If only the rebuttals wouldn’t start with – I know this guy in the defence forces from Israel who ….

It doesn’t help them that people's vision of the arts in general is somewhat skewed. Students tend to see it as mainly unarmed defence, but a lot of martial arts incorporated the use of weapons as a significant part of their art.

Ignoring weapons for the moment, there is no doubt that Krav Maga practitioners can be good at unarmed combat. However, is their system going to create that ability in every student – I doubt it. The ones who get the practical experience they need to adapt their skills to suit the requirements of battle will do well. Krav Maga started as a collection of boxing, Judo and wrestling plus a few self-defense moves and it evolved over time. You would expect it to keep evolving and incorporating other ideas. Purity of system is an idea at odds with battle.

Anyway, it's not the system that matters in the end. Good fighters generally master a couple of things and tend to apply them with a high percentage of success. Plebs generally learn a new technique or a variation thereof for every situation, and have a low percentage of success on all of them.

Fighting multiple attackers is much the same. You need a couple of concepts that you can apply with a high percentage of success.

Be your own teacher

Fighting against multiple attackers is not something that most students of the arts are good at. Their instructors usually don't have solutions that work under battle conditions and there is a lack of good training programs in general.

Traditional training regimes tend to break everything down into well-defined, technical pieces. While this can create workable skills for a single opponent battle, it is generally a delusional process for a group attack. The pressure when you face a group of attackers has a tendency to wreck technique and technical approaches. Training regimes for a group attack end up having little resemblance in battle to reality.

Your instructor can actually set you on the wrong path to developing the skills you need to handle multiple opponents. Their ego demands that they can work out what is happening and provide a set of movements that the student will copy and get to the required answer. They translate every exercise and movement to fighting; they cannot help themselves, even when they know better. It is garbage more often than not, and yet the martial arts world revolves around meeting this expectation from the student.

The real barrier to progress is created by the student and comes from religiously following their teaching and rarely questioning what they are given. When the technical answer doesn't translate to fighting, they accept the idea that they will (hopefully) master it in the future, and move on to the next technique. This might stop them from getting too bored or frustrated, but it teaches them a bad habit; it teaches them to not be responsible for developing their art.

The philosophy in the arts is ultimately about doing something for yourself, but this is in conflict with the business model of the school which is about creating followers and possibly franchising the whole show. Schools then need to rigorously maintain the style and have the right lineage, etc.

So how do you get to a worthwhile training program for multiple attackers and avoid being led astray? I can guarantee that the program won't resemble what you are doing for single opponents. One of the hints I can give you is to think hard about how you can affect multiple opponents. There is a catch however in that the more time you take to affect the opponent, the more time you give the rest of the group to take you down.

Ultimately shielding and similar strategies will not work against the members of a functioning group, neither will you be able to knock them out with a single strike. Generally either the individual runs and dodges through the group without really affecting them, or the individual comes up to the first attacker and gets stopped, a bit like a wave hitting a sea wall.

What you rarely see is someone who accelerates into the group and can move through attackers. The first step in the process is to train your body so that it can hold together appropriately under resistance forces. Once you have this then you can begin to develop the skills your need for battle. The type of training that enables this skill is rarely done to the degree it needs to be done, particularly in training regimes that focus mainly on single opponent battles.

It takes very little time to successfully train a group that can take down most martial artists. So make sure you test your skills and use the experience to improve your training program.

Core Training

The main weakness for many exponents in the martial arts when facing multiple opponents is their body cannot hold together under acceleration, particularly when they encounter the resistance forces from members of the group. The result is they get stalled on the first opponent and this gives the rest of the group time to take them down.

You have to be able to keep the body together and acting as one unit, if you are going to be able to focus the energy generated by your bursts of acceleration. When you are in contact with an opponent you cannot split your energy.

The core or mid-region is an area that needs the correct kind of training. People train their core with exercises such as push ups, sit ups, yoga, pilates, etc. You need to distinguish however between training to strengthen your core and training to make a 'working core' that can function under accelerated movement.

A working core will ensure better coordination between the torso and the legs. This will enable you to develop better strategies for dealing with multiple attackers.

If you meet the Buddha, kill him

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. The Tao that cannot be named is not the eternal Tao. Whatever your concept of the Buddha or of the real Tao is, you can be assured that it is an image you need to kill, so keep practicing and move on.

You can apply the same principle to your martial arts. In a fight against multiple opponents, movies give students an idealized image of perfection. However, when the student tries their skills out against a group in the training hall, they can barely get past the first opponent. The solution for many instructors is to ensure the training is highly controlled so that students get a technical answer that somewhat lessens their fear of a group attack, but is never tested.

Many students are happy enough to scratch the itch of what to do against multiple attackers and put it safely back in the 'too hard' basket. Others practice the drills their system assures them will translate into battle.

I say 'if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him'. A higher functioning group will test whether your idealized solutions will actually work or not. My guess is that they won't.

The Resistance World

It’s what we do socially that entangles us in a world of barriers and resistance. This has shaped and developed traditional martial arts and has some major drawbacks when contemplating defense against multiple attackers. I think of it as the Resistance World and it is our personal struggle with resistance that defines how we approach our martial arts. The traditional methodologies of strikes, wrestling and ground fighting have a focus on either winning against or manipulating the presenting resistance, and while this may work against a single opponent, it lacks effectiveness when facing a group attack.

Multiple opponents require something extra, something that can be found when you can achieve full energisation of your system. This is similar in nature to a survival response; it’s where you fully energise and give everything you have for a few moments, with the end goal of getting rid of resistance and achieving safety.

The Energy World framework was developed to take an opponent through the complexities of a group attack. The development of these concepts was a way to understand what you have to do in a time strapped environment when facing a group attack. Time cannot be wasted, as time can either be your asset, or your enemy. A group of attackers can be a life and death affair; there is no time to indulge in endless technical solutions.

There is a free ebook called "Martial Arts against Multiple Opponents" that can be found on the web if you want to read more.