To practice moving through a crowd have a group of your class mates line up in two rows behind each other. Your job is to move through the line up while the people in it push you from every angle. Quickly you will find that if you are tense you will be pushed back or out of the line up and will not get to the end.

Have everyone in your class gather close together. Get them to tread on each others feet. The trick is not to look down, tread on everyone else’s feet while avoiding your own feet being stepped on.

Again get everyone close together and have everyone push and pull each other around. The idea of this drill is to relax and escape the pushes of others while continuing to work on everyone else in the group.

This exercise can then be taken a stage further where everyone in the group not only pushes around their class mates, they allow their arms to fly out to hit the others around them.

Another skill to develop is the ability to use one person as a shield against others. In the situation where you have already been grabbed by one of your assailants it is possible to move in a wavelike motion to throw the person holding onto you into the path of the other attackers.

It is also important to be able to work on the floor in a crowd if your were to fall or be overwhelmed. Lay on the floor and have the rest of the class push and pull each other around. Also get them to tread and kick you while they do this. First practice moving on the floor so that your relaxation helps minimises the damage this situation causes to you.

Next practice rolling into a foetal position before climbing up the clothing of the people fighting around you.

In another drill we lay on the floor and have the class run at us. Our job is to not freeze and to get to our feet before the crowd runs over our position.

The training drills for crowd work have an infinite number of variations that are only limited by our lack of imagination. I hope this article gives you some ideas to start you off.