The 2+2 Forum Archives: How many 5 year-olds.....

This is my first post on this board. I was emailed a link to this discussion because I was told it would amuse the boojum out of me. I am now without boojum. Mad props to the originator.

I have worked with kids of all ages for many years. The five year old mark is a great place to put this test, because most 5's haven't yet been exposed to team sports, real guided learning, group activites, active violence or anything more physically intimidating than a slide. If you made the age even 7... much harder. That being said, I know nothing about martial arts, the human limits of endurance, how to swing a 5-year-old, etc. If I had to guess, I'd put my number at around 25-30.

Unless one of them was Caitlin. I met Caitlin when I was the arts-and-crafts director at a summer camp back in the mid 80's. She was five, small for her age, and looked like your average little spindly girl. But she could gnaw through brick, run up the side of a building, scream loud enough to bust your eardrums, bust reinforced glass with her forehead and kick through the rear door of a '78 Chevy Nova. Caitlin had moments where she became posessed by the demon Ba'al, the strength of 10 grown men, and her brain produced a natural version of PCP. We don't know how or why. But when she went on a binge, we got "the big guy" from the swimming instruction program and stayed the heck out'n their way.

You get one or two like that in your crowd... fuggedaboudit.

Now, I'm a lazy, shortish, bookish, couch-potato who spends all day working on the computer. So, for contrast, I asked my buddy Neil, who works out and is trained in two martial arts, what he thought of this insanely entertaining topic. His email to me was highly illuminating. I share it with you now:

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I have done quite a bit of competitive sparring. I have had to defend myself simultaneously from ten attackers (fellow martial arts students of varying age and expertise, but all adults) for periods of five minutes. I make the analogy because in the posts the assumed critical turning point was being brought to the ground by the children - which was also the end of competition in sparring. (note: A focus of my training has been countering being grabbed)

Here are my thoughts, based on my training and experience;

1) Staying vertical while competing against trained adults - for even five minutes - is utterly exhausting. To the point of physical collapse. Even for someone who has been training for that purpose, and preparing over a long period of time.

2) Staying vertical while competing against a group of average American adults who have no previous martial arts experience or training is not so hard. That is assuming I am only defending - as long as there is no actual requirement for me to attack and knock the others out. (much more risky) The reality is that, even with serious training, more than three attackers get in each other's way and are not a factor until the first ones are eliminated and there is room for them to get in. Barring shear bad luck (often a determinant) a limit of up to ten minutes to stay on my feet against a group of untrained adults is a reasonable expectation. I hesitate to guess how many adults I could knock unconscious. However, I am confident that I could stay on my feet over a period of ten minutes. Say... four tries out of five.

3) I could render a child unconscious in about four seconds. Pacing myself, and using the same time limit to exhaustion, that is fifteen per minute or a total of 150 over ten minutes. Even completely exhausted, I am going to grant myself that it would take six 50-lb children to pull me down.

So my personal estimate is 156.

Now.

What if the adult is my most senior martial arts instructor, instead of me? I have seen him take down a group of five simultaneously attacking black belts without breaking a sweat. He can defend against all of the students until after we are all exhausted without ever going down himself. And believe me, we are giving it all we've got or he would *really* kick our butts.

If the adult chosen is my most senior martial arts instructor instead of me, I would increase the estimate of time-to-collapsing-fatigue to an hour, conservatively. He could also render them unconscious as soon as he touched them (say 1 to 2 seconds, or avg 1.5 sec. ea.) That would make my estimate for him a total of 40 per minute x 60 minutes = 2,400, and I will grant him ten to pull him down even while completely exhausted.

That makes my estimate for a senior martial arts instructor a total of 2,410.

Since one of the stipulations is that this is happening inside, the real answer is "as many as will fit in the room."

Thanks for the mental exercise!

~ Neil

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I love Neil. He always gives any question his full, intense scrutiny.

Thanks for really brightening up my weekend.

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