ALTA Week 5 Striking

Striking – Head Movement 

Good head movement makes you harder to hit and stacks the odds in your favour during any fight. In this section we’ll look at 4 types of head movement as individual techniques and then we’ll look at where, when and how to deploy them.

4 Individual techniques

1. Slip: This is a side to side evasion (no up or down and no turning of the head). Think of rotating your shoulders as you take your head off the centre line. If you slip to your left, your right shoulder goes forwards and vice versa. This gives you a wind-up for your own counter punch after the slip. Make sure that you keep both eyes locked on to your opponent even though your head is moving sidewards. The slip is good to avoid straight punches like jabs and crosses.
2. Roll: For this, you fold forwards at the hip and complete a U-shape arc with your upper body. Like the slip, make sure you rotate your shoulder as you roll, to facilitate a wind-up for your counter punch. Again, keep your eyes locked on your opponent and only go low enough to get under a hook punch (any lower is unnecessary and slow). Rolling is good to avoid hooks and straights. 
3. Pull: This is where we use the touch step from week 1. Take a short back step with your real leg and lean your upper body slightly back away from a punch. You can push off your back leg to return quickly with a counter punch of your own. Use this sparingly. Of all the head movements, is the one that puts you out of balance the most. 
4. Level Change: This is quite simply a duck. Although, you keep your upper body shape intact as you do so. Keep you guard up, eyes forward and perform a quarter squat with your legs. Any straight punches aimed at your head should pass over the top. This is very useful to initiate a takedown as your partner takes a wild swing at you, or if you want to get a wind up for Bodyshots or uppercuts. 

Move your head OR your feet, not both

Especially when you’re first learning head movement, do it while your feet are planted so that you have full balance and shape. As you get more experienced, you’ll be able to coordinate some footwork and head movements together (like “Bop the Baby”). For now, you can just switch between moving your feet (moving around your partner) and then moving your head (with planted feet in the yellow or red range). 

When should you move your head?

Simple answer = Always. Think of punching a focus pad held by your training partner. If they keep it in one spot while you take aim and fire, you’ll hit it every time. What if they keep randomly moving the pad, zipping left and right, up and down with short, sharp, darting movements? How many times would you land then? You should do this with your head. The amount of times you get hit will drastically diminish. Now, you’ll still get hit… just not nearly as often. 

Reactive versus Proactive

This is related to the previous paragraph but needs to be said nonetheless. Moving your head when a punch is on its way to your head (reactive) is extremely difficult to do. The majority of us don’t have that reaction speed. It’s like if someone pointed a gun at you and you planned to jump out of the way once you hear the bang. We all know that once you’ve heard the bang, you’ve already got a hole in you. Similarly, if you see a punch on its way to your face, it’s probably already hit you. In that regard, being proactive with your head movement is far more effective. Just don’t be there!

Movie Reference

In the animated movie “Despicable Me 2”, Gru and Lucy Wilde have a run-in with a chicken who’s credited as “El Pollo Loco”. Lucy corners the chicken and throws a 3 piece combo at him. He slips, slips and level changes in what can only be described as the best example of head movement in Hollywood. Next time you see this movie, you can’t miss it.

Head movement while attacking

You can and should absolutely also be moving your head while you yourself are punching. Now you can revisit all of your previous punching techniques and ask yourself “How can I take my head off the centre line as I throw this punch?”. 

Never a single head movement

The last concept is the idea of combining head movements. If you slip and just return to neutral, it’s likely the 2nd punch of your opponent’s combination will catch you. Always assume there’s a 2nd punch and make sure you perform a 2nd head movement. So for example, after every slip, do a roll. After every level change, do a pull. It doesn’t really matter which movements you combine and in what order, just try not to do single head movements. 

How to drill

1. Selfie Video: Put your phone in selfie mode and balance it on a shelf to record yourself shadow boxing directly at the lens. Then as you play it back, see if you can easily touch your nose on screen with your finger. If you can, your head movement needs to improve more.
2. Partner Drill: Have a partner throw half speed punches at you while you evade them. Make the distance and movement realistic and speed up or slow down as necessary. After 1min, swap jobs and repeat.