Video review: “One against Many” by Branimir Tudjan

Here’s my long promised video review of  “One against Many” by Branimir Tudjan. Stay tuned for more as I’m also working on an interview with Mr. Tudjan. I’ll put it online as soon as it’s ready. Here’s the review:

The video starts with an introduction in which Mr. Tudjan explains the framework of his MOSS system: the three rules of self defense and some good advice on the realities of defending yourself and what you need to survive multiple opponent confrontations. He then goes on to point out the most common mistakes:

• Going to the ground
• Going for a lock or control hold
• High kicks
• Taking a fighting stance

This advice makes perfect sense to me and conforms to both my own training and experience. Good stuff.

The next topic Branimir covers is what he calls “The dynamics of fear”, meaning the adrenal stress response you get when you find yourself in a self defense situation involving several attackers. He explains that fear is common and totally normal in a fight. Instead of fighting it, accept it and use it to your advantage.

The last prelude to the technical portion is an explanation on the difference between the athletic and tactical response. It would take too long to explain this here but the discussion revolves around technique-based fighting versus principle based responses.

Next up is a big chapter on striking techniques. Mr. Tudjan covers a limited set of techniques he found to be most practical for fighting multiple opponents. Most of them are the classics we all know and love: palm strike, hammer fist, gouging and biting, elbows and knees, etc. But there was also the handball jump strike (both empty hand and with weapons) that I was surprised to find in the list. Personally, I like it a lot but it takes some training before you can pull it off in a real fight. You also need a solid load of guts and confidence in the technique. But once you’ve trained this technique well enough, you have a wicked surprise waiting for your attackers.

The techniques are presented in brief and Branimir doesn’t go into excessive detail about them, nor should he. The instruction is clear enough to get you started in your training and if you need more, there’s loads of videos on combative systems already. What he does though is stress the importance of innitiating the conflict with the strikes, to give you the space and time to move and escape. This is in stark contrast to a sports-fighting mindset where waiting for an ideal oportunity or countering is more prevalent. Good advice.

Now that we’ve covered the techniques, Mr. Tudjan moves on to one of the crucial aspects to making them work for you: developing the will to win. He shows several drills that teach you to never give up and keep on going no matter what. This is the first of many drills, all of them covering specific topics:

• Tactical footwork drill
• Tactical response blueprint drill
• Circle drills
• Advanced drills

You find these throughout the video and they are always focused on implementing the strategies and concepts shown before. Speaking of strategy, Branimir gives really good advice there too. Some of the points he makes are:

• Initiate attacks with deception
• Keep moving
• Use the attacker as shield
• Flank, dont go through the gap

Once again, you need to understand the fundamental difference between combat sports and a worst case scenario, like multiple opponents, to grasp the importance of these strategies. I’ve harped on this before, ad nauseam, and consider it one of the true tests of an instructor’s knowledge and experience. Mr. Tudjan clearly knows what he’s talking about.

The last few chapters cover ground survival and protecting a third party. The video closes with some final words from Mr. Tudjan and a few examples of scenarios against multiple attackers.

Conclusion

“One against Many” is an interesting video, crammed with solid information, loads of drills and practical advice. Branimir explains everything clearly and in a no-nonsense manner.  There is also no filler material on the video; it’s all instructional material or demonstration of the content. Something I always appreciate as a reviewer. What appreciate even more is Mr. Tudjan’s attitude: he doesn’t try to sell his system as better than others, nor does he try to sell you a Hollywood fantasy. On the contrary, he explains in depth how multiple attackers is a worst case scenario and there are no guarantees in a fight.

With that as context, he shows you the techniques and concepts that worked best in his experience and for the people he has trained. I found them to be valuable and accurate. So if you want a good video on the topic of dealing with several attackers, this one gives you plenty of information to start your training with. If you’re looking for some sort of MMA/movie/TV-series version of fighting multiple attackers, go elsewhere. But if that’s what you want, you’re probably better off staying in Lala-land anyway… :-)  

Highly recommended!

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