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