Measuring - I got my eye on you

Whether you are dealing with a single opponent or multiple opponents, they still need to measure your movements in order to get their way. When the attackers in a group want to execute a tackle or a take-down strategy, they still need good timing to be able to disrupt the individual’s stability. If the measurement and timing of the group members is incorrect, it gives the individual more of a chance to escape.

The effective use of measurement and timing is all about improving power and energy transference. Importantly, you can only time the event if you can measure it. One of the reasons you use acceleration to affect your opponent is that it affects their measuring ability, which also affects their timing.

The more you force your opponent to re-measure, the more their progress stalls.  This means you are messing with their targeting system. A strategy that does this well is reduction, where you force a change in the opponent’s vision while making your head the only viable target. Flight is another strategy that makes it difficult for the opponent to determine how fast you are coming in, allowing your mass to invade the attacker’s space with less resistance.

The harder you accelerate directly at the attacker, the more you force them to re-measure your actions, the more you affect their timing. What you cannot afford to happen is to allow the group to force you to re-measure your own actions and end up hesitating as a result.

Weapons always provide a clear example of how you can be suckered into re-measuring your actions. If one of the attackers was waving a weapon around as a part of a group attack, then what do you do (apart from wondering why you aren’t already running away as fast as you can)? You don’t have time to back off while other attackers are bearing down on your position. Going back to first principles, the attackers will use a weapon to stall your progress, to make you re-measure the situation. Weapons are displayed to grab the individual’s attention and the role of each attacker in a group is to slow your progress to make the job for other group members easier and this builds group cohesion.

The important lesson here is that you don’t wait to be distracted by attackers; just accelerate, aiming to change the attacker’s vision. The more you force them to re-measure, the more you force them into a defensive action, which hopefully gives you the time needed to escape the situation.

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