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.