Multiple attackers

This article was forwarded by Tim Walker. The author's thinking is aligned with what Ed Parker thought about tying up his hands by grabbing one guy.

I've hammered home the importance of the cold hard fact: "you do what you train". Anything you do in a training environment is exactly how you are conditioning yourself to respond in a life-or-death situation. Most of my clients understand this principle in applying trauma to the body. They are careful to insure that they strike with a tight fist or make sure that they complete the rotation of their body to deploy maximum force upon the given target area of the other guy.So where do problems occur? Most people train for a one-on-one confrontation.They are excellent at handling the one guy but add in another guy... and watch the meltdown occur.I was training a well-known counter-terror unit a few years back and let them see first-hand the danger in this oversight.They had been training heavily in a well-known ju-jitsu system prior to my course. This was a combat sport-based system that is very effective in the ring.But it does no good to tell people that what they trained may have problems associated with it because often they have a strong emotional attachment to the training. Better to let them see a gap and then offer a solution.So I asked for the best grappler of the group to don his field gear and go to the end of the training hall. I then grabbed 3 other members of the unit and had them do a simple "sacrificial lamb" attack. This is where one guy engages the prey and locks him up, then the other 2 swoop in for the kill.Well, sure enough, the first guy engages and is quickly taken to the ground by the fighter and put in a very painful arm-bar. This guy was amazingly good at ju-jitsu and would be a terror in the ring -- except this wasn't a ring, and there was no ref. In fact, no sooner had the arm-bar been applied than the other 2 were upon him, had his weapons and could have "killed" him at any time.This simple gangbanger attack easily defeated a highly trained operator because he had handled a multifight like a sport competition. In fact, the unit later confessed that they had never trained with their weapons on the whole time they trained "hand-to-hand". The focus had been more to see who could make the other "tap out" first. This is a dangerous way to train for a lethal criminal confrontation.You must always treat every confrontation as having multiple guys. You need to be instructed how to be a "360-degree" fighter and to be aware of your surroundings at all times. In TFT, all fighting is against multiple guys even in a one-on-one training session. This means as I take out my current victim I'm aware of my surroundings and SEARCHING for my next victim.The training methods we use are beyond the scope of this newsletter. But if you've never really trained for multiple guys then you've never trained for life-or-death confrontations. Don't make that mistake.
Until next time,Tim Larkin Creator of Target-Focus(TM) Training