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I just got back from my shift as a bouncer at a local club last night/this morning (2000-0330 GMT. This shift caused a significant disruption to this month's challenge but I'll post about that in my challenge thread for people to shame my weakness after I've slept) and I got into a bit of an altercation without any backup due to circumstances and it looked pretty dire. Luckily things were resolved relatively easily. But this got me musing about fighting multiple attackers. When I say fight I mean specifically street fighting, which will generally be in self-defense unless you're either a sexy Brad Pitt who makes explosive soap. The following are my thoughts; I can't speak for their originality but I think I make some sound conclusions and I'd like to hear the thoughts of people with a wide range of different disciplines and experiences. Just a note I'll be using two dichotomous shorthand terms: being "hot" (which is where you're in a high stress/adrenaline situation where your training becomes of limited use due to either panic, freezing up, uncertainty or just the sheer pumping of the adrenal gland) and being "cold" (the total opposite. In a controlled environment which you will have certainly had time to prepare for. This is where your training is useful in a conflict situation.). So fighting two people is like fighting anyone on the street: you should think about the worst thing that could reasonably happen and you should act based on that. This logic works well for me because it reminds me to remember that people get their heads stamped on and get paralysed in street fights or even just hit their head too hard crashing to the ground and get disabled. In street fighting, as people interested in the sociology of violence might be interested in, adding an informal group element to violence tends to lead to an equally informal "cumulative radicalisation" element where people act more violently than they would have done in the same situation independently. This is how we get people getting attacked and kicked to death by gangs of "hooligans" like you see in the papers (this might be a very British joke, sorry). The basic point I'm trying to here is one we should all know about street fighting and especially attempting to fighting multiple people: don't do it you numpty. No matter how good you are it's something you can only do with luck and it's better to not be in that situation. That said there are occasions where you might not be able to escape a violent attack from a group of two or more, in which case you should think about whether you want to risk getting kicked to death and fight as if your life depends on it (because it realistically might). There is therefore some relevance in thinking about the plausibility and method involved with fighting two or more attackers. Also on a website called NerdFitness I can't be the only person who fantasised about being a badass secret agent or ancient warrior capable of dispatching many opponents. So it seems to me that the old adage of "the best defense is a good offense" applies here, because if you rely on counters you run the risk of two attackers attacking at once in a combination of ways you're both not prepared for and wouldn't be able to even if you were because you were "hot". By this logic the aim is to stop your attackers attacking you in the quickest way possible and avoid being attacked at the same time. For that reason I think the best approach is to use strikes rather than grappling and locks because these latter two things require too much focus on a single opponent while you run the risk of getting walloped in the back of the head. I also think throwing would take slightly longer and even only being fractionally is not insignificant in such a fast paced event. However, even with this, if you want to win a fight against multiple people with strikes you have to put them down hard and fast. This is because you can only fight them one at a time whereas they can gang up on you. This leaves you with time for one, or two strikes on them if you're fast, to put the first person down to engage with the second. So you're basically relying on perfect power, speed and precision. Not only do you need to be able to land a better hit than Led Zeppelin IV (one for the oldies) but you also need to be able to do this while you're "hot". If you can do this you're Bruce Lee meets Hannibal Lectern or just a real life super hero. But we can make the situation a little less impossible through two ways. The first is by controlling your distance between yourself and the two attackers; by being significantly closer to one than the other you have more time to engage with the first opponent and put him down. The second is through the use of positioning, where you will place attacker B inbetween yourself and attacker B, preventing an immediate attack. Both of these things can be accomplished by controlling footwork and moving yourself around the attackers with clever and fast footwork. This, however relies on you having the time to make those crucial spatial alterations as well as the clearheadedness while "hot" to manouvre in that way. It doesn't seem theoretically impossible but it does seem extremely difficult and down to chance again. In terms of changing the distance between yourself and your opponents this can also be done by pushing one attacker further away from yourself, giving you time to close in on the other opponent and engage. I would personally use a teep for this, which is a fast and effective Thai variation of a pushkick, although most martial arts have a push kick or at least attack in some form. Another Thai move I could use is a clinch, in order to maneuver one attacker between myself and another attacker; again this is only what I would use as a Thai boxer, most martial arts will have a way to gain leverage over an opponent and move them in a desired way. There's no real point to any of this. I was just thinking about the plausibility of making the odds more favourable in a fight against more than one people. If none of this makes sense I'm sorry I've had a smoke of a "funny cigarette" since work to help me sleep. If it does make sense I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts. Nak out