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