The Mind and Body

Multiple attackers as compared to a single opponent can demonstrate how the mind and body coordination is different for ‘flight’ compared to ‘fight’.

A survival situation where you are running away from the danger as quickly as possible is commonly described as flight. Your legwork dominates the situation and the mind is focused on such things as keeping your balance, staying on your feet, maintaining the ability to move as quickly as possible, etc. You get a sense of it when you run down a steep hill.

Against a group attack you essentially want to imitate a ‘flight’ response and deal with obstacles using reflex behaviour that your training has made more effective. It is all about generating energy through accelerated behaviour and affecting the opponents using your mass effect. Your progression is always to the exit where safety can be found.

A battle against a single opponent is generally described as a fight but it is not the type of fight you have in a survival situation where you are acting in desperation to save your life. A typical fight is more of a socially driven encounter.

In a fight your mind switches between attack and defense. When you are in attack mode, your mind is on your weapons e.g. your hands, feet, elbows, knees etc. as well as the targets on your opponent e.g. their head, legs, etc. When you are in defense mode, your mind is your opponents weapons and on protecting the obvious targets on your own body.

One way of summarising the above is that in a fight against a single opponent your mind is on weapons, both yours and your opponents, whereas in a group attack your mind is on the exit to the situation. Against multiple attackers your mind and body coordination is focused on your accelerated system and the snapshots of where you are going.

The problem people face in a group attack is that as soon as they come up against the resistance of a group member, their mind switches to a single opponent mode where it focuses on weapons. Flight mode and the associated energisation is then lost to the individual.

What is needed is a reprogramming of the mind so that you don’t switch to behaviour that focuses on weapons whenever you encounter resistance from an opponent. This is one of the keys to mastering attacks by multiple opponents.