Silent Killing - Section 5 - Crowd Fighting

One cannot always choose when one will fight and it may sometimes happen that one is faced with several opponents at once. On such occasions, unarmed yourself, your object is not so much to kill your opponents as to get quickly away from them so that you do not get killed. Pride is expensive if it entails defeat and death.

To escape from circumstances like these, a special technique is necessary.

For this technique, balance is essential and the instructor should now demonstrate how to keep your balance when swift movement is necessary in kicking while standing on one foot. Students can be paired off and standing on one foot, arms folded, they should try to kick each other off balance whilst maintaining their own balance.

Once this is mastered, it should be explained that, surrounded by a crowd, your only chance of escape lies in continual movement. This is so because, after you have taken up a new position, it requires a second for an opponent to turn and balance before he is able to strike you with any force. If one moves at least three feet in each second, there is obviously little chance of an opponent scoring an effective hit on you. At the same time, by the use of the blows previously learned, you will be able to do considerable damage while you are moving.

NOTE.

1. In addition to forward, backward and lateral movement, move also at different levels, sometimes with the knees very much bent. It all helps, if done at speed, to bewilder your adversaries.

2. Of necessity, there will be little room for movement, so make room moving into or against one opponent after another, attacking as you do so. Point out the value of the balance and foot work in which the students were practiced at the beginning of this section.

The information contained in the two above notes should suffice to prepare students for the actual practice, which is now outlined.

Five or six dummies should be suspended in a confined space; a boxing ring would answer the purpose. One student at a time should enter the ring and, with all the speed with which he is capable, he should then attack the dummies at random, using every kind of blow with hand, knee, elbow and head, from any position.

The practice is very exhausting and cannot be kept up for more than a minute.

The instructor must watch carefully for faults so that he can give advice afterwards.

Before the student tires he should be told to leave the ring and he will do so at speed, exactly as if he were actually making an escape.

To derive maximum benefit from this exercise it should first be done both by the instructor and the students in slow time, paying careful attention to footwork.

It should then be followed by many short periods in the ring and only an occasional longer one. It must always be remembered that the aim is to get out of the place and not to fight any longer than necessary.