Mobility Trumps Stability

When you’re outnumbered, mobility trumps stability.  Actually, that’s not entirely true but most of the time, if you are facing more than one opponent, it seems wiser to keep moving and try to position yourself in such a way so that you are fighting only one person at a time rather than standing still and getting hit by all the people coming after you.

Many martial artists will argue that training to fight multiple opponents is a fool’s errand – that no amount of training will help.  I disagree.  I think if you are a great striker and you move well, you could handle two or maybe even three unskilled opponents.  I’m not saying you’ve got great odds.  But I think it is possible.  Awful in the extreme but possible.

Even if fighting multiple opponents is an untenable goal, the footwork required to drill against multiple partners transfers beautifully against sparring a single opponent.