Bending the Attack

If you have to deal with multiple opponents then you will need to affect the group to a degree that will allow you to escape. Think of a rocket trying to escape earth’s gravity into orbit; if there is not enough juice then it will fall back to earth.

The best way to affect the group is to affect their measurement of your actions. If you were to attempt to move through a group of attackers by going between attackers then this will allow them to more easily measure you, and calculate how they can intercept your intended trajectory. Aiming at visual gaps only allows the attackers to measure your progress and pounce on you in seconds.

An important rule to live by for fighting multiple attackers is that you are only allowed to deal with one attacker at a time in the shortest amount of time. At no time are you allowed to split your attention to any other flanking attacker when accelerating at the chosen safe zone. Your defence from the attackers coming at you from the side (on you flanks) is acceleration at the immediate attacker.

If you look at the diagram below, you have one individual represented by the dots with A and B and seven opponents. The individual starts at position A and accelerates through an attacker, avoiding the two attackers on either side through sheer acceleration and comes out to position B. The individual then has to continue their acceleration if they are to outpace the next lot of incoming attacks. Going through an attacker provides you with momentary invisibility to the incoming attackers that are ahead of you in your line of progression i.e. it affects their measurement and makes it much harder for them to time your actions and intercept you.

Bending the opponent’s attack, stops the attackers coming in from the side (those flanking you) or from behind to grab you and take you to ground. If you are not bending the opponent’s attack, you are not moving fast enough. You have to be ahead of where the attacker thinks they are going to intercept you if you are to bend their attack. The flanking attacks should be running into the ‘debris’ from your accelerated progression.

Even under high acceleration you can train the ability to see safe zones ahead. In survival situations, we see much less of the world so that we aren’t distracted by non-relevant data, from the task of getting to safety. However, you still see enough of the world to navigate safely. All you need is sufficient snap shots to take account of the changing world ahead to see your path. The path is the line of progression where you know you should be able to stay safe from the ever changing battle field.

The concept of future time is the ability to recognise safe zones as the real world changes around you. When you run down a steep incline, you have to continually make split second decisions about your direction, taking in the surface at a glance, looking for tree branches to slow you down, looking for spots to place your feet, etc. The brain does lots of calculations in fractions of a second and keeps doing them. Safe zones are momentary, you predict them and they disappear as you reach them. It’s not quite the same as for a group attack but it’s the closest analogy I can come up with.

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor

Keep Your Hands to Yourself – Non Grab

When fighting multiple attackers, you need acceleration to give you sufficient momentum to generate a mass effect, which will dismantle the group’s intentions towards you. Just about every time you lose acceleration, it will be because you did not adhere to the principle of non-grab.

The theory of non-grab is pretty simple - never grab or be grabbed. It is a cornerstone of defence against multiple attackers. In practice however, it can be a lot harder to maintain. One of the hardest skills to learn is letting go of our addiction to locking onto resistance, be it mental or physical. Even when well trained, we still lock onto persuasion and aggression and resistance in a foolhardy hope of gaining something. We want to control how events will turn out. When things go wrong we want to slow the situation down to a point where we can hope to regain control of the situation.

Time wasting always allows the group to take control. The group attack comes with its own social dynamic and each member of the group will respond off a particular trigger, and it’s not necessarily the same one for each attacker. This is why you act first in front of a group, because the group will find it harder to focus on your intentions. The group will retain its advantage if they have the time to measure your progress. Your aim during a group attack cannot be directed to defeating anyone, or proving a point. You have to remain busy and free from the resistance, accelerating all your actions as if your life depended on it – which it might.

So you come face to face with multiple opponents and you immediately decide that you would like to be elsewhere and accelerate at the first attacker in your path to the exit. You have avoided being mentally grabbed by the group - chalk one up for freedom.

The following are examples of mental grabs. If a member of the group has done something such as demand something from you or insult you, or asked for a response and you hesitated in order to accommodate them then you have been mentally grabbed by the group. If you froze for a moment because you panicked, then that is a mental grab. If you take the time to assess the group then it’s a mental grab. If you are progressing through the attackers and slow down to engage one attacker for more than a moment then that is also a mental grab.

A good rule for defence against multiple attackers is ‘avoid all mental grabs’ and freedom as a philosophy can be of great benefit. Acceleration is also a key component of this as it allows you to defocus. Basically you decrease your mental grab on your opponent, by turning off your analytical thinking; this is accomplished as a by-product of the action of accelerating directly at the centre of an attacker. Also, defocusing, when it affects your opponent, is a way of dismantling their intention to get you.

Defocusing therefore works both ways, for both you in a positive way and your opponent in a negative way. As you accelerate, you become less affected by the distractions around you. The opponents in the group can be seen as just another set of distractions. If you focus on those people as a problem to be overcome you will lock onto the potential resistance, and end up fighting their resistance with your own resistance.

If you can defocus enough, you may then appreciate how resistance is only a distraction to people because they see it as a problem. The strategy for group defence really requires you to see each attacker as a safety zone, not as a source of resistance.

The physical grabs are more obvious and they are as important as the mental grabs. If an attacker grabs you or you grab them, then it could be all over and you won’t make it to the exit. You cannot maintain acceleration and hold onto an opponent at the same time. Without acceleration you cannot have energisation in which to dismantle the group’s intention. It is only when you understand the importance of time in a group attack situation that non-grab will be critical to your strategy for dealing with multiple attackers. If you lock onto any resistance, the group will be given the time to take you to ground.

The mistake that people make with dealing with multiple opponents is that they don’t give it the total commitment it requires. Ask yourself this question ‘How many attackers would it take to drive your mind into a survival response?’ At a number, be it two or five attackers, you will decide that you do not have the resources to intimidate, persuade, manipulate, dominate or eliminate the threat. Only then do you start to think differently from the two person battle.

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor.

The Strategy Merry-Go-Round

What do football and martial arts have in common? Football managers / coaches have their systems, which is their strategy of how their team will play in order to beat all other teams. Every now and then you see a team come up with a system that dominates their league for a season or two until the opposition works out how to neutralise it.

In the 1990’s a couple of guys from Brazil did something similar to the North American martial arts scene. In doing so they helped kick-start a branch in the arts that went mainstream over the next decade. Whether you like the outcome or not, I think martial arts owes some gratitude to anything that shows up weaknesses. There was an influx of acrobatics and performance art around that time, so that debt of gratitude might be bigger than we know.

The boys from Brazil had a pretty simple strategy, get the opposition to the ground as quickly as possible, where they knew they could dominate them. Fast forward to the present and you have exponents training up their skills to become well-rounded in striking, grappling and submission. As competitors become professional, they cannot afford to have an obvious weakness in their stand-up game or their ground game that an opponent can easily take advantage of.

And yet, well rounded does not mean equally proficient in all areas. Exponents still have a particular strength in one area and they tend to rely on it to win the bout. You now see fights where someone is particularly strong in stand-up and their opponent is a submissions expert but each is still skilled in the other areas. An exponent will have sufficient skills to hold off their opponent’s attack, while they look for the opportunity to attack their opponent with their own particular strength.

So even though the competitors are much more rounded in their skills, you could be forgiven for thinking that we haven’t moved very far from the adage that ‘attack means you want to damage and control your opponent, while defence means you want to hold off the attack long enough to attack again’. The result is that your attention is still split between attack and defence.

When you think about it, everyone is still on the merry-go-round of strategy; all that happened was that it got more refined. In some ways it is like a game of paper / scissors / rock where someone will have a thicker piece of paper and the opponent will have sharper scissors and someone else has a bigger rock, but everyone has all three components.

What does this have to do with fighting multiple opponents? Well firstly, multiple attackers will make you aware of any weaknesses or delusions you have in that space, especially if the group is any good. The important point for group attack however, is that you have to get off the merry-go-round of strategy, as all those strategies and techniques that you come up with to try and get advantage, will get dismantled very quickly, especially by higher functioning groups. Your attention cannot be split between attack and defence; there is no time for that.

If nothing else, just recognise that you will probably need to think differently when facing multiple opponents. Strategies that can work well against a single opponent will likely not translate.

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor 

Give me Freedom

If you had to choose a philosophy that would best assist the mind and body to act as one, when fighting multiple opponents, then I would recommend that you choose Freedom.

Freedom has many facets to it. There is the freedom from both physical and mental resistance, freedom from distractions, freedom from fear and anxiety; the list goes on. As you explore the idea you will see a connection to some of the philosophy in the arts that has been around a long time.

Freedom from distractions is one way of describing the survival response, that is, fight or flight (ignore freeze). This response does not waste time on thinking; it only utilises time to get us to safety. When the body is under extreme threat, it is capable of shutting out irrelevant information from your senses, as well as any extraneous thoughts, or even most of the memory of the action we actually took. You see examples of this when people escape from extreme danger by the narrowest of margins. They don’t know how they did what they did to survive; their memory of the event is full of blank moments, what I refer to as darkness.

Freedom from distraction is a useful thing in a group attack situation. If you were to judge and assess a situation, it would require time which you cannot afford to waste. When time is limited, as in a group attack, the real world moves away from your imagination of the strategies and techniques you can attempt, faster than you can find solutions or even act upon them.

When you stand before a group of attackers and you see all those bodies between you and safety, your mind naturally tends to thoughts of anxiety. Congratulations, you have been successfully distracted by the group – their physical presence and imagined potential threat has resulted in a mental grab on you. The answer to break out of this spell is to move, to accelerate at the nearest attacker and force a reduction in the information being gathered by your senses so that you experience blank moments. The process of accelerating towards the centre of an opponent’s attack is the Energy Worlds solution for trying to pressure our imaginations to stop, to find darkness and release from distractions.

Freedom from resistance is an important goal when dealing with multiple attackers. You don’t have time to get caught up fighting the resistances of your opponents. Spend a moment too long on one attacker and it gives the rest of the group a much better chance of bringing you down. Stalling is the classic response when you want control of others; it is a sign that you have decided to fight your opponent’s resistance with resistance of your own. This means you have decided to stop progressing towards safety and take control of the situation and even take some time to reconsider your options. When your progression stops, your freedom is lost and you have given attackers time to measure your actions and the opportunity to collectively act to drag you to ground. Your best chance for safety is to free yourself from any imposing resistances.

If it is obvious that attaching yourself to resistance in a group attack is a dangerous option, then why do so many people still get caught up doing it? Examining our social thoughts and conditioned fears may provide an answer. Consider then your need to bolster your ego, to win, to dominate, hurt, or subdue others, or the need to physically or mentally attach yourself to others. Freedom from these desires will help to free you from being trapped by your mental resistances.

The problem with freedom, as a concept is that it tends to runs counter to many social aspirations of winning and showing the world that you are somebody. It is why many people struggle with the idea that you don’t have to defeat the group. The power of having a total focus on freedom is that you don’t care about the group, what they may do to you, what you think you need to do to them, what the people watching the encounter may think, etc. All those thoughts that get you nowhere can be discarded and instead you can concentrate on those things that will make a difference such as acceleration and exits.

I have a theory that doing a martial art actually gives you a heightened anxiety towards violence. Learning a martial art reinforces the idea that you might be attacked. This leads to the situation where you become more anxious about the possibility of being attacked than you would be otherwise.

If people lack the ability to get the job done, then their fear of the bully or random attacker means their anxiety levels are even greater. Struggling in battle with fellow students or getting dominated by senior students within the club / school they train at only makes it worse. Usually their fear is based around someone who is bigger than they are. They have to consider a couple of times every week whether they are able to handle different sorts of threats. Dealing with these “what if” situations, on a regular basis, on how they could be attacked, only maintains and reinforces the anxiety in their minds.

If they quit the arts then it’s likely they would gradually let go their fear as they would realise that it's not easy to get into a battle if you don't want to. It is relatively easy to de-escalate most situations or avoid them in first place. You would then find something else in life to worry about. To a large extent we create the threats and associated fears that we live with. When this happens the arts are not a comfort but a source of anxiety, or perhaps it is just another example of pain and pleasure being different sides of the same coin.

The philosophy of freedom provides release from these fears and anxieties and allows you to enjoy your art more fully. A focus on freedom means that you are usually going to get the best outcome in terms of preventing injury. You act to maintain your freedom from any threat so you don't have to worry about how you would have to approach different self defence scenarios; it enables you to cut down on the required thinking time when it matters most. It is pointless to worry about the possible outcomes of an imaginary situation and its associated fears and concerns; it just becomes more baggage to carry around. Freedom means you cannot carry mental baggage; you have to let that baggage go at some point, which requires you to be comfortable within your own skin. This means you have to know yourself.

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor

Abandon All Techniques Ye Who Enter Here

Why do the techniques found in strikes, kicks, grappling, throws, wrestling, ground fighting, etc. work against a single opponent, but start to break down when applied against multiple opponents? The simple answer is time. Techniques require time to effectively apply them and they struggle to be effective when a certain level of chaos is reached. Techniques start to break down heavily when you get just one additional attacker.

While they may not appreciate it, the combatants in a two man battle have the luxury of time. In a two man battle, the situation is somewhat like a game of speed chess where there is time to plan your next move. Techniques are generally based on countering one set of resistances at a time. The theory for their application against a single opponent is you need to assimilate information from the opponent fast enough so that you can find the right response for the up and coming attack. A large number of exponents are very good at speeding these processes up to appear superb at resisting an offensive. They still however require time.

When it comes to multiple attackers, there is not enough time to prepare solutions that take time to sort out and execute. Logically, what we see now, cannot be happening now. The brain receives the information in a delayed fashion and then it takes extra time to process it and act on the newly assessed information. When you are confronted with a time-critical situation, the visualisations you initially create in your mind of how you should respond have little bearing to what you should do as the battle progresses. The real world moves away from your imagination faster than you can find solutions or even act upon them.

In a group attack, time is limited to spending only one moment on an attacker. If you spend too much time on one attacker then the opponents you are not focusing on will let you know that they are there to be dealt with as well. It’s a mistake to assume that you have time to measure and assess each attacker, as that is when the group will take you to ground and the scenario gets worse for you from then on.

So what do you do about the chaos to be found in a group attack situation? How do you tame it and get it under control, so you can use your techniques? The answer may not be one you want to hear. To excel in the multiple attacker environment you have to embrace that increased level of chaos and confusion and learn to thrive in it. Think of it this way - the more you can accelerate through the attackers, the greater the chaos you can create. It’s a strange notion that chaos could be your ally and that you might actively seek to enhance it and be lost in it (to the group’s eyes), but advanced multiple attacker strategies have a tendency to turn the usual rules on their heads.

So what about your techniques you ask?  The answer as usual is not clear cut. They may work if the group of attackers is low functioning but if the group is high functioning then your techniques will almost certainly fail.

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor

The Best Offence is a Good Defence

When you are standing in front of a group of attackers, how do you perceive them? Do you think you have to defeat the immediate attacker in front of you, and then the next one, and so on?

Our thinking for defence against multiple attackers has been heavily influenced by our experiences and training for the single opponent battle. We believe we have to defeat the opponent in front of us in order to win the battle and achieve safety. Against multiple attackers, this approach will get you bogged down in attempting to fight and defeat too many opponents.

We also condition ourselves to think of battle in terms of attack and defence. In reality most fights move back and forth between the two, unless it is one-sided with a fighter being heavily outclassed by his opponent. The result is that your attention is usually split between attack and defence.

The classic proposition is that ‘the best defence is a good offence’. For dealing with multiple attackers you should consider the opposite to be true. The best defence in a group attack is to accelerate through the group along a line of progression to an exit. This gives you a valuable offensive capability – your accelerated mass. The important distinction here is that you are not setting out to attack the group. There is no ‘offence’ being undertaken, and importantly, you don’t have to defeat the attackers in front of you.

What you have to do is ensure you get to safety in the shortest time possible without getting taken down by the group. At no time do you want to control the opponent; you cannot afford to spend time attaching yourself to either resistance or your surroundings. Your mind and body have to be at ONE, and therefore if your body is accelerating through the group to the exit, then your mind cannot be stuck on one attacker.

This points us in the direction of having a focus on freedom. You are not fighting the attackers; you are fighting for your freedom. If you accept freedom as your philosophy for dealing with multiple attackers then you realise that you couldn’t care less about either attack or defence as they are a distraction in themselves. Just do whatever it takes to maintain your freedom when you face a group attack – all else is wind.

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor

The Body as a Weapon - the Mass Effect

How can you affect the attackers in a group? Are you planning to strike them, kick them, or manipulate them somehow? Maybe someone told you that you have to knock out the first attacker and the rest will give up (hopefully). You don’t have much time in a group encounter, so you might have to take them out with the first hit. The problem then is that the average student of the arts will find it difficult to take a person out with a single punch or kick.

In a two person battle you sometimes see people go at it hammer and tongs and they are both still standing at the conclusion (if the battle stays upright). Welcome to reality. In a group attack, you cannot afford to spend more than a moment of time on any one attacker and once the situation activates and people are moving, it becomes difficult to get proper timing on any strikes.

So we are back to how do you affect the attackers in a group? Your safety in a group attack is best served by accelerating along a line of progression to an exit. This acceleration will help to disrupt the opponents’ measuring of your actions which will affect their ability to effectively get their punches, kicks, etc. onto you. The flip side of this coin is that your acceleration can only be maintained if you don’t attempt to strike your opponents in return. Reaching with a punch/kick or a grab leaves the other parts of the body slowing down.

So, if any attempt to deliberately strike your attackers will diminish your acceleration and therefore reduce your safety, then what are you left with? The answer is – your accelerated mass. When you apply your accelerated mass in particular ways, coupled with the ability to keep your system together when you encounter resistance, you create the mass effect, and it will give you a pretty decent offensive capability against multiple attackers.

To maintain the mass effect, your whole body must continue to accelerate, creating momentum, which makes your body the weapon The unusual part is that it is a by-product of your defensive actions i.e. when you are good at it, the group gets shredded but it is not a deliberate act on your part; it is the outcome of your acceleration, full energisation, total focus on freedom, and absolute commitment to get to an exit no matter what.

It’s also fortunate that most groups are low functioning, where a reasonable proportion of the group is fairly lazy. You see this where some members of the group will let others do all the hard work of taking the individual down and then they will come with their strikes. They wish to get their bit in on the target, but they prefer not to risk themselves in the process. The lazier members of a group usually get out of the way when they see someone with a decent mass effect headed in their direction, as your acceleration gives them only a moment to decide what to do.

What I like about the mass effect is that it gives the smaller individuals a better chance against the group and that to me reflects better on the martial arts promise. Lastly, when you are deciding what offensive capability you should attempt to deploy against multiple attackers, beware of delusions of grandeur as they are often expressed at the expense of your safety.

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor.

Keeping it Together

 

The safest way to deal with multiple attackers in the shortest possible time is to accelerate through the group of attackers to an exit. When I say that you have to go through the group, I don’t mean that you duck and weave around individual attackers. That will take time and slow your acceleration. Instead you have to go through an individual attacker, not around them and this presents a problem.

Imagine you are accelerating at the first person in a group of attackers, your legs are driving you forward and then you make contact with an opponent with your arms and upper body. When people normally encounter the resistance put up by an opponent, they lose the whole body coordination that they enjoyed when they were running freely. This results in a loss of acceleration. Moving through an attacker is easily said, but not so easily done and it all breaks down at the mid-region, as it is the weak link.

Think of the mid-region, not as a set of strong stomach muscles, but as the muscle and bone structure in the stomach region, lower back and sides of the body. When the top part of the body is encountering resistance or an opposing force, it is the mid-region that needs to act, to lock the upper body to the legs, to enable the whole system to keep moving forward at speed. It is not something that you can think about in battle, as you don’t have time; you need it to operate automatically.

E-theory stipulates that the speed of progression of the legs, mid-region and the shoulders are the same. If you can maintain your ‘E’ then you can maintain your acceleration as you move through each attacker. This enhances your safety as well as giving you a better chance of disrupting the group’s actions.

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor

Acceleration - Move it or Lose it

I cannot emphasise enough the importance of acceleration in defence against multiple attackers. Whenever I refer to ‘acceleration’ I am talking about the acceleration of your entire system, to generate something called the mass effect. Acceleration is at the core of every concept that makes up the Energy World – a framework designed to give people advanced skills in dealing with multiple attackers.

Acceleration, in combination with other skills provides you with a whole lot of advantages:

It wrecks your opponent’s ability to measure your trajectory and it dismantles their timing of your actions. Acceleration enables you to get to the source of an opponent’s attack before they expect you would be able to, and this helps prevent them from being able to use their weaponry on you.

Acceleration helps prevent attackers from grabbing you and taking you to ground. When your progression is slowed then this allows more than one attacker to get to you at the one time. Just as you don’t want an attacker to grab you, neither do you want to grab an attacker as it has the same negative result on your acceleration.

When you slow down, you are more vulnerable to the group because group members can track you and measure you more easily. They can also grab you or tackle you or strike you more easily. Acceleration is a key part of your safety in defence against multiple attackers. It will enable you to outpace the surrounding attacks and by moving through attackers, you also leave them in your wake as human debris that helps prevent other attackers getting you from behind.

Acceleration when used in conjunction with reduction enables you to create a path through the opponent’s resistance. This enables you to maintain your acceleration as you move through each opponent, otherwise you would be slowed down too much by each attacker, giving the group a better chance of taking you down. It should be noted that most people cannot perform the skill of reduction to any great degree because they cannot hold their body together under acceleration and through contact with the opponent's resistance.

By accelerating through an opponent you become ‘invisible’ for that moment to the rest of the group. To their eyes you merge for a moment with one of their fellow attacker’s and this makes it more difficult for them to either measure your speed, track you, or anticipate your progression, especially with the limited time spent per opponent and the acceleration of your progression. Their focus on you as a target is decreased and this disrupts the group’s cohesion.

E-theory basically describes how you can learn to hold your body together under acceleration. When you encounter resistance and lose ‘your shape’ then you lose acceleration and therefore mass effect. It is your mass effect that will dismantle the group’s intentions, not your kicks or your strikes, or your techniques. The greater your mass effect, the more the group is shredded.

Acceleration enables you to enter real time where for a moment the brain naturally limits the input from your vision and other senses, which enables you to shut off the distractions of your thoughts and this lets the body’s reflex systems operate at their optimum levels.

With acceleration you can move through the members of the attacking group in a line of progression to an exit and this will enable you to reduce the time taken for the whole encounter, which adds to your safety. It will also enable you to deal with high functioning groups. Without acceleration your options are to back away from the group or try to keep to the outside of the group, and both of these leave you more vulnerable to higher functioning groups (these groups consist of attackers that can act in a coordinated manner to quickly round-up their victim, immobilise them and allow many attackers to gang up on the individual at the same time).

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor

How to Mentally Approach Your Training

Training for defence against multiple attackers can take some getting used to. Personally I found that it was the most fun I had as a student of the arts, however it can affect different people in different ways.

There are some students who initially find it difficult to deal with how random the behaviour is in a group attack, and the chaotic nature of it can freak them out for a few weeks. For some it is the shock of finding out that not everything in the arts fits into the ordered universe that they dreamt it to be. Their image of the arts has to undergo a slight adjustment and it can be hard on them.

Don’t panic! Just remember that one of the reasons why you learnt a martial art was so that you would know what to expect and therefore it would be less of a shock if you found yourself in a self-defence situation. Knowing how to best deal with multiple attackers is one of those boxes to be ticked off in pursuit of becoming a well-rounded martial artist.

If you do experience some initial effects from training group work then don’t be afraid to speak to your teacher or instructor about them – they are there to guide you through issues like these.

My advice is to revel in the unique experience that group attack work can provide. You should give your techniques a rest and focus instead on accelerating your whole system to where you need to go. When playing the part of the individual, you need a total commitment to the idea of Freedom and that can give you an insight into the arts that you would never otherwise get to.

You can learn a lot from being the individual facing the multiple attackers, but there is also a lot to discover from being a member of the attacking group. When you are part of the attacking group, try to stick to the individual like glue and don’t let them have a moments rest or get away from you. Always be there, in their mental space and you will see the effect it has on them. Just doing that will change your perspective of what you can do as part of the group and what a high functioning group could be.

 

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor

Safety in the Midst of Multiple Attackers

It’s a natural reaction to back away from a threat or attempt to go around it. Conventional wisdom therefore says that you should get to the outside of the group of attackers, use one of the attackers as a shield against the others and try to only fight one person at a time. For most people that probably holds true, however for those exponents interested in advanced skills against multiple attackers you will need to get used to the idea of doing things a bit differently.

One of the reasons that advanced defence skills against multiple attackers is different from the usual fare, is that you have to account for high functioning groups. These groups consist of attackers that can act in a coordinated manner to quickly round-up their victim, immobilise them and allow many attackers to gang up on the individual at the same time.

The goal is still to fight only one attacker at a time, but a high functioning group will not allow you to use their members as shields, nor will they allow you to stick to the outside of the group. Your only option is to go through the attacker, not around them; you never try to find a hole to squeeze through between two attackers. To weave your path around the attackers is a sure fire way to allow the group to track your progress and take you to ground, or it gives them time to use their weapons.

You go straight through the nearest attacker, rather than go around an opponent to find the next attacker. You always attack the closest opponent regardless of any strategic assessment.

So using advanced skills you have to do something unnatural, that is, instead of backing away from the threat or trying to keep to the outside of the group, you have to view the attacking group as a sea of safe islands. The aim is to move from one safe island to the next in the shortest amount of time. Acceleration and utmost adherence to non-grab attitude are key elements of making this work.

It is possible now to outpace the surrounding attacks where every opponent encountered must be thought of as a potential safe zone along your line of progression to a safe exit. If you try to run around people or get stuck on one attacker, you will be a clear target and your chosen direction readily identified. By moving through attackers you also leave them in your wake as human debris that helps prevent other attackers getting you from behind.

So, how can you accomplish something like what I have described above? The answer to this is Energisation and it is too big a topic to describe in one paragraph.

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor.

The Boxer from Turkey

This is a nice demonstration of what I call a low functioning group where they attack as individuals, greatly reducing the effectiveness and relevance of the group’s numbers.

For the individual’s part, he was doing what came naturally to him, that is, he backed away from the danger to get a clear field of vision so that he could see who was coming at him and to give himself some time to prepare, so he could measure each attack.

Have a look at the video.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7X6WyjzXK8

How many people were actually attacking him and who started the fight? From what I can see there were three attackers overall but there were only two guys really after him for most of the battle:

• The boxer threw the first punch at a guy with a beard (call him person A)
• Then a guy in a white shirt (person B) came at him throwing a right punch which misses and his momentum cause him to stumble forward
• Another guy (person C) throws a kick that misses and also takes a swing and doesn’t really connect
• The white shirt (B) returns and gets hit by a left hook from the boxer and goes down
• Boxer then hits (C) with a right punch and (C) goes down, and he does not participate any further in the battle.
• Boxer pushes person (A) off and then backs away to get some distance and assumes a fighting stance
• (A) comes at the boxer and tries to throw a punch which falls short and he overbalances into the boxer and gets shoved to the ground, and the boxer backs away again.
• White shirt (B) returns again and aims a kick at the boxer but (B) is being held back by someone who has his shirt and luckily a big right punch from the boxer misses (B) mainly because the guy still holding his shirt changed his trajectory from that which the boxer was measuring.
• White shirt (B) then takes a sort of running leap at the boxer and runs into a left jab from the boxer and falls badly and hits his head, knocking him out.
• (A) then comes at the boxer again and gets hit with a left jab and goes down.

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor.

Relying on a weapon

I see blogs where people say that nothing really works against multiple attackers so carry a weapon. My first thought when I see this sort of advice is to wonder whether it is of any help to the average student of the arts. If it is illegal for you to carry a weapon and you are the law abiding type then you probably wouldn’t consider it. That said I imagine it depends on where you live and the environment you have to operate in.

The other problem with weapons is that they can delay your reactions while you access them. Having a weapon can also distract you from thinking about exits as your thoughts initially focus on your weapon and how it can be of advantage to you.

Having a weapon does not mean you will have the time to use it. Sometimes people are forced to react immediately to deal with the situation and only remember afterwards they had a weapon on them.

As this blog deals with the subject of unarmed defence against multiple attackers, that is probably the extent to which I will deal with relying on a weapon.

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor.

Seven Deadly Sins When Dealing With Multiple Attackers

Are these strategies for dealing with multiple attackers really deadly sins, or was the temptation of the title too much for me – probably a bit of both.

Whether using these strategies will get you into  trouble or not, really depends on the ability of the group of attackers. With low functioning groups you might get away with it. With higher functioning groups there are weaknesses in these strategies that will almost certainly result in big problems for the individual so I thought it was worth discussing them.

With any strategy for dealing with multiple attackers, it’s all about probability of success and each one of these strategies will be no doubt be successful some of the time. What you should consider is that while these strategies will work on occasion, the success rate on average is lower than other strategies and that should be front of mind when you determine the level of risk you are willing to accept.

If you really want to know whether a strategy or technique has any validity for you in a group attack situation then go and test it in a training environment against a higher functioning group.

 

1.  Go to ground

This is a deadly sin. If you can help it, don’t ever go to ground in a group attack situation. If you go to ground against multiple attackers then there is a much greater probability of multiple attackers wrestling with you and holding you down, allowing other attackers to kick you, or use weapons, etc. People can be severely injured on the ground against multiple attackers, so don’t be fooled, it is not a good place to be. You don’t want to be reliant on the group to stop the attack.

 

2.  Fight two attackers at the same time

This is a strategy that relies on your opponents being in exactly the right position for it to be successful. In demonstrations of this, the attackers are more actors than anything else.

Every now and then you see someone advocating that you can punch the attacker in front of them and at the same time deliver a kick to the attacker behind them or something similar.

I dislike this strategy because it splits your intentions and you stall for a moment to execute it, that is, you fail to keep to the basic strategy of keep moving.

 

3.  Go after the leader

I’m not saying that going after the leader may not be appropriate in certain circumstances, but in a general self defence situation you would have used up precious time that would have been better spent on exiting the situation. In fact, while you are trying to identify the leader you are hesitating and wasting valuable time.

What happens if you go after the leader and get trapped in a wrestling match?  You cannot assume that you are going to be able to take them out. The reverse may be true and then you are in real trouble. The leader is also not necessarily the best fighter in the group.

 

4.  Position yourself so you can fight them one at a time

The idea is to allow you to attack one person without being exposed to attack by others. There are various suggestions of how this could be done, for example:

• Keep your opponents in a line by backing away from them or by moving around the edges of the group. You position the attacker you are dealing with between you and the others until he is done, and then you move on to the next attacker, or you let the next one come to you.
• If you are in the middle of a room, try to stop attackers getting behind you by positioning yourself in a corner or hallway.
• Use one attacker as a pivot point to act as a shield allowing you to then throw strikes at oncoming attackers.

It’s a natural reaction to back away from a threat or attempt to go around it. The problems you face with backing away are that you cannot see where you are going so you might back into objects or trip over backwards. Attempting to keep outside the group and continually position yourself so that one attacker is always in front of you, shielding you from the others, really relies on the attackers being a low functioning group.

Can you ever rely on none of the group members being able to fight and that you can easily manipulate all of them? It’s no wonder they always demonstrate this at walking pace; speed it up and it would likely become a shambles. Don’t believe me? Try it with a higher functioning group and see for yourself. Once those group members really come after you there has to be a huge skill difference between the individual and the attackers for these types of strategies to work. That hardly helps the average student of the arts.

 

5.  Try to use a technique

Be wary of any techniques that suggest you can manipulate your attackers or work some other magic on them. When people try to use a technique they generally forget the rule of ’keep moving’ and the group can then focus more heavily on them.

Techniques rarely work under the pressures generated by a group attack. As the members of a group become more active, the chances of them being manipulated easily are vastly decreased. In reality, people are not easily used as shields.

If you are unlucky enough to face a high functioning group, they will dismantle or effectively shred any techniques, strikes, etc. that the individual may try.

 

6.  Spend too much time on one attacker

Sometimes in a group attack you get angry or frustrated with a particular attacker and you get caught up spending a few moments trying to dominate them. When you do this it enables the rest of the group to focus on you and even the less active members of the group will see an opportunity to have a go at you.

The individual does well in this video, except towards the end when he slows down to fight one of the attacking group which enables all three to focus on him. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6-rGQ4QnDg

I saw a youtube video of a promo for a two verses two MMA TV show. Crazy stuff, but in terms of multiple attackers it demonstrates, especially towards the end of the video, some of the difficulties encountered when they spend too much time focusing on one opponent i.e. they begin to get ‘king hit’ from the side and from behind. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT3qmC9PKWQ
 

7.  Attempt to strike vital targets

This strategy recommends you disable the opponent by attacking their vital targets. A gouge to the eyes, a hard strike to the groin, a kick to the shin or knee-cap, a punch to the throat, a hit to the temple.  It goes on and on but you get the picture.

I actually think this strategy is a deadly sin as it encourages people to focus too heavily on an attacker and when the opponent is also moving, it is difficult to get any of these vital target strikes to land accurately. Ask yourself the question 'what happens if I miss'.

Can you really strike someone that accurately when you are under pressure and therefore disable an attacker in a multiple attack situation? Just because the occasional person might be able to do it, does not make it a strategy for the masses. You might get away with it on the first attacker but that will only active the rest of them.  The alternative is you could be on your way, accelerating to the exit instead of attempting this sort of stuff.

 

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor.

Five Basic Skills for Dealing with Multiple Attackers

The following are five basic strategies that are applicable in a multiple attacker encounter, no matter what the style of martial art. They are designed to improve your chances of exiting the situation safely, and that is the most important consideration. Success is not about dominating or destroying the group, you just have to be able to get away safely to succeed and hopefully achieve this without getting seriously injured.
 

1.  Exit the situation as quickly as possible

In a group encounter your focus is essentially on how quickly you can get to the exits and out of the situation.

Situational awareness is important for safety. Don’t take that shortcut down that alley – choose your route with an element of safety in mind. Cross the road if you see a group of people acting in a manner you don’t like. Don’t respond to comments, from a member of a group, designed to draw you into an encounter. Don’t get pinned against a wall in the first place, and then you won’t have to worry about learning some technique to save you.

Don’t wait for the group to become a problem. Run away as fast as you can before the encounter begins. Don’t be concerned with how you might be perceived by others; just don’t wait for the group to engage you and then try to talk your way out of the situation.

Don’t hesitate, move!  In short, if you think danger is coming your way then don’t hesitate or wait to see how the situation evolves. Get out and let someone else be the victim that day

 

2.  Keep moving as rapidly as possible

Keep moving is the most basic strategy for defence against multiple attackers and is one of the most effective. It helps prevent more than one attacker getting to you at a time, and helps prevent attackers tackling you to the ground.

When you stop moving then you tend to engage against one of the attackers and the rest go in for the kill as well, as they now have an easy, stationary target. We all know that a moving target is more difficult to hit than a stationary one and as most groups are low functioning, the concept of keep moving adds greatly to your safety.

The greater your acceleration, the harder it becomes for the group to target you. Most people don’t move as quickly as they can because it prevents them from using their arsenal of strikes, kicks, etc. as effectively. You should balance this loss with the knowledge that it also prevents your attackers from using their weapons as effectively and there are more of them. Reducing the accuracy of your attacker’s strikes more than offsets the loss of your own, especially when the groups are higher functioning.

 

3.  Maintain your progression

Keep moving to the exit. Never start with a half-hearted attempt to fight your way through the group as it means your intention is lacking in commitment and signals to the enemy that you are willing to submit.

The thing you don’t want to do in a group attack is to get stuck in a corner or get pinned against a wall or run out of energy. You can’t get stuck anywhere so maintain your progression and get to safety.

You have a certain energy reserve which you don’t want to use up before you get to the exit. The solution to any distraction or hold-up is acceleration, as it will regain your vision and path.

 

4.  Spend only one moment on an attacker

You cannot waste time on any one attacker. Time is all important in a group attack situation. There is not enough time to apply your intentions to any one person as you would in a two person fight. You don’t have to destroy each attacker – that is a myth that increases your chances of getting hurt. To be successful, defence against a group attack requires that you spend only a moment with any one attacker. This point should never be forgotten in relation to a group attack. You have no time to slow your progress and fight each opponent.

Spend too long on a single person, and the rest of the group has a chance to focus on you. If you spend too much time on one attacker then you run the risk of getting tackled to the ground or of being hit from the side or from behind by other attackers. The problem for every technique you use is that it will slow you down, and this allows the group to focus on your position and your progress. Taking the time to control one individual means the rest of the group has more time to grab you and take you down. The individual does well in this video, that I found on the net, except towards the end when he slows down to fight one of the attacking group, which enables all three of the group to focus on him.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6-rGQ4QnDg

 

5.  Never split your focus

If you spend only one moment on an attacker, then you can move on to the next attacker without splitting your focus between attackers. Don’t be in contact with one attacker and focus on another attacker. Never try to strike two attackers at the same time. Basically, if you don’t split your focus then you don’t split your intentions.

The more acceleration you maintain during the encounter, the less time you spend per attacker, the less chance you split your intentions, which hopefully means you can maintain your goal of exiting the situation as quickly as possible.

 

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor

Why Pressure is Key to Learning Defence Against Multiple Attackers

You can get a false impression that you have a technique or strategy that works against multiple attackers when in fact it is only working because the group of attackers is not strong enough. Most groups of attackers are low functioning i.e. they attack as individuals, greatly reducing the effectiveness and relevance of the group’s numbers.

A high functioning group will put the individual under a lot of pressure, which will test their real capabilities against multiple attackers. Pressure is derived from the attackers putting a mental and physical demand on the individual in battle. As the pressure level increases the amount of pressure experienced is not incremental; it is more like an exponential curve as you begin to experience high pressures – as seen in the diagram below.

What do these pressure intensity levels represent? The low to mid level is the range of pressure you are likely to experience in a social fight where an argument got out of hand and become a physical confrontation.

The mid pressure level or slightly above it, is where you would experience a serious battle against a single opponent. MMA competition for instance operates at this pressure intensity but they have optimised their fighting art so that it dominates at this level of pressure. What would happen if you added an additional amount of pressure into their battles, say two opponents against one? You would likely see the techniques etc. breakdown, particularly for the person fighting two opponents.

This is not to say that the MMA exponents don’t have the ability to deal with multiple opponents; they just cannot take the same approach as they would for a single opponent. MMA practitioners are skilled up just like any other student of the arts and if they applied the basic strategies against multiple attackers that help you keep safe, then logically I can't see why their outcomes wouldn’t be as good as the outcomes of TMA (traditional martial arts) exponents.

A high level of pressure is where things start to get interesting and this level of pressure can only really be generated by high functioning group i.e. a group that can act in a coordinated manner to quickly round-up their victim, immobilise them and allow many attackers to gang up on them at the same time. The attackers could also have weapons for instance. This high level of pressure tends to destroy techniques, strikes, and anything else you care to name that the individual has in their arsenal.

Some people might argue that high functioning groups are not ‘real’, that the chance of having to deal with such a group is unlikely. In a sense they are correct, but the exponents who are interested in developing advanced skills against multiple attackers will need high functioning groups so that they get the right experience with the right feedback for their training.

As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor.

How to Train Your Group for the Best Multiple Attacker Experience

The idea behind training the group of attackers is to enable the individual to experience greater levels of pressure than they could otherwise normally experience.

Where the group of attackers consists of members that are activated, cohesive, and battle focused, they are high functioning groups. Their only aim is to completely dominate the individual.

If the group fights as a bunch of individuals where some of them are slacking off and are looking for others to take the battle to the individual, then they are low functioning groups. When you see demonstrations of strategies and techniques to be used against multiple attackers, the groups are usually very low functioning.

I went looking through the internet for an example of a reasonable group for training purposes. After much searching the best one I could find was on the following link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6-rGQ4QnDg

You can see in the video that the group of three attackers is just on the verge of what I would consider to be a good group in terms of providing a training experience that tested the individual’s skills. What lets them down is that they are rarely pressuring the individual all at the same time. In the moments when all three are attacking, the individual has a much harder time and gets caught fighting one person while the others strike him from the side and behind. While the individual may have been vulnerable to being tackled at times, overall he got a good training experience.

If you know of other video of multiple attackers training of a similar standard or better, then please send me the link.

You can train students to be reasonable group through exercises such as roundup, corner trap, alley training, and line-up.  The key with including junior students is to make sure everyone pulls their weight so that the individual has no time to focus their attentions on any one member of the group. The more cohesive the group is, the greater the safety for each member of the group.

Roundup is fairly simple and needs at least two people. One person has to chase the other person, trying to round them up and the other person has to try to get away, always trying to face the chaser. Generally it only lasts for short bursts. You train this is in a defined area as you don’t want people running away too easily. The chaser gets practise tracking their prey and trying to manipulate their direction. This is an important skill when you are part of an attacking group as it makes the group members more active and it stops the individual using strategies like lining the group members up behind another attacker being used as a shield.

The corner trap exercise is great for training groups to act cohesively and to dominate the individual. See the diagram below. The individual is the white dot, ‘trapped’ in a corner for training purposes and the group has to keep them there. The individual’s job is to get through the group to a safe exit. Note that you have a couple of meters distance between the individual and the first members of the group.

Alley training is also easy to set-up if you don’t have an alley handy; you just use an existing wall and then also create an artificial wall or draw a line so that you have an ‘alley’ about four metres wide. Put five to six ‘attackers’ in the alley and get the individual to try and get out the alley (through the attackers). In these exercises you need to get the group focused on working together and aiming to takedown their victim as quickly as possible. The better they work together the less chance the individual has of being able to use a strike on one of them and the more confident the group becomes. Don't put pads on the group member’s hands as you want them to be able to grab the individual. Also make use of people in the group who have tackling skills.

Very quickly you find that the group will dominate the individual regardless of who it is. Once the group improves you will probably have to disable the group somewhat by putting pads on their hands to allow the individual some experience, otherwise they just get taken down in a few seconds. High functioning groups will take out a good martial artist with relative ease.

The “line up” as seen in the diagram below is an exercise that teaches the individual not to get caught up on one attacker as they try to get through the line. It also teaches them to go through a person and not through a gap. The groups’ job of course is to stop the individual from getting through the line. It teaches other group members to immediately come to the aid of the group member in contact with the individual, and also how to absorb the individual’s efforts.

 
As always with group work, train safely and under the supervision of a qualified instructor