The Head Movement Mini-Course
Video #1: 'Straight Slip' & Counter-Punch Summary
Here are the most important points from Video #1:
1. Slips should be small. The smaller they are, the faster they can be while also being energy efficient. If you make them small and fast enough, you can hit your opponent before his hand gets back to his face.
2. Your head barely has to move in either direction to make any straight punch miss... that means you don't have to know which straight punch your opponent will throw, you just need to slip.
And again, keep your slips small!
3. Just to further beat this into your now-rapidly-moving head, here's Deonte throwing random left and right straights, while I execute the same slip to one side. It makes either of these punches miss:
4. To learn how to feel and engage the muscles that will pull your head laterally away from a punch, you can try rapidly sliding your hands down the sides of your legs about 3 or 4 inches. This triggers your 'obliques' or side-abs...
(these gifs were derived from an earlier version of the video... so you might not recognize the footage)
5. Next, you need to learn how to pop your shoulder. You can do this by imagining a ball in front of your chest, and using your shoulder to smack the ball 45 degrees down towards the floor.
6. Now we simply combine those movements. By crunching your obliques and executing a shoulder pop, you have the entire upper body aspect of a "Straight Slip" executed perfectly.
7. You need to MOVE while you're slipping to open up the best counter-punching possibilities.
Hooks and uppercuts are the most devastating strikes that you can throw after a straight slip, but they're shorter than straight punches... so you have to close the distance during your slip.
Your brain is going to be screaming at you to back up when punches start flying, so right away we build the habit of stepping forward on your straight slips, which will distance you effectively for crushing people.
8. Feel free to practice slipping your head to both sides, while also stepping in every direction. This will give you absolute freedom of movement while you're moving your head.
9. Use slips to load up a punch. When you pop your RIGHT shoulder forward, all punches from the LEFT side are loaded up for immense power (because that punch will be thrown from the rear). This allows your torso to be wound and unwound during the punch, in addition to your punch having more distance to pick up speed on it's way to the target.
10. Get some reps! Slip to load up various punches, and throw them on the air until your core muscles are on fire. This is an amazing way to build speed, power, and muscle memory pertaining to the head movement game. Make him miss and make him pay for it!
11. Finally, now that you can slip to both sides, mix slips randomly into your punching combinations to keep your head moving unpredictably. This makes you significantly harder to punch, while also loading power into whatever strike you want to throw.
Keep an eye on your email for the next lesson!
The game shall continue.
...and have a fantastic day.
-Trav
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52 responses to “Head Movement Video 1 Summary”
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Great idea on the gifs!
This is good stuff.
Excellent movement!
Can anybody “pro” tell me what is the proper position of the head during the “head movement”? Not sure if Trav mentioned it, and every video is little bit different. When body “leans forward” left or right (pardon my english), should head be “stiff to neck” so it makes no movement, so it is “tilted with body” lets say 45 degrees? Or should the head be still in straight position (like when you stand – additional neck movement necessary here because body is tiled/leaned).
Brain can quickly adjust/process when we do head movements (right/left tilt) and perceive reality in natural way, but when U should receive a punch during fight, sometimes milliseconds can save you troubles… Thx.
The only real answer is that ‘it depends’! On a rear slip for example, you want to tuck your chin aggressively into your neck… giving yourself a double chin. When you do a U-Slip, you should be hunkering down like a turtle pulling back into his shell… or like a bomb just went off and you’re pulling your head down / shoulders up to ‘cover up’ in the midst of a startle. For the most part, the most ‘generic’ response would be to tuck your chin and try to pull your ears back so they sit in the middle of your shoulders.
this information is unbelievably helpful and you make i very easy to remember and practice. Thank you very much
Pretty good info. 🙂 I love the left hook so I like to slip left to load up on it for max damage while the person isn’t expecting it.
I had one day during gloved sparing at Shaolin where instead of having to dodge the punch as he stepped in I swept his foot with a quick hoo sweep and watched the short jab punch fly upward into the sky instead of hitting my face as his leg slipped out from under him, he repeated it again and I think the third time he just wanted to see what I was doing and what the hell was happening to his attack LOL. A few times I have learned how to maneuver behind most opponents but I still see huge value in learning how to break down these great movement techniques of yours as I sometimes find myself slipping fine but also slipping away even when I many times want to slip towards the opponent. This leads to a much harder time countering their attack as it takes me longer to get their timing which could lead to a mistake.
I can immediately see adding your techniques and methodologies will greatly improve my sparring ability. I have seen Master David explain and show some very similar concepts before but never have we drilled them properly as you show in your training. So only a few students really caught the concepts properly. We had one year where for some reason they experimented with doing Gloved Sparring twice a week for an entire year where usually it is just one or two months of the year, the rest of the time just regular light contact sparring, and I think in that year alone I learned how to really avoid getting punched and kicked and really learned how to properly use distance and timing to at the very least be very difficult to hit, but I did notice sometimes I just stayed barely out of their range but I also would sometimes stay out of my own range and that is counterproductive. I knew I had to work on getting inside and at one point I was better at it than I am now so I’m trying to get back to that skill and seeing you do it with ease made me confident in your ability to teach that skill. With most people, I can move in easily but I have a few people that have been able to land a technique here or there when I’ve made a mistake LOL. With your drills and techniques added to the repertoire maybe I’ll make fewer mistakes in the future and have more success closing the gap again.
Wow,I’ve never impressed panties off girls,maybe I need the vid.
Any differences when slipping a hook or an upper cut. Not everyone throws nice straight jabs. I noticed in the original challenge video you would slip toward the side the punch came from but not always.
I appreciate you taking the time to share your moves. Self defense is something everyone should know. Tough experience push the need to start training to defend and progress right into a forward movement of defense for others when needed. Thank You Trav!