Head Movement and Evasion 101

This is a little 101 on head movement for boxers, kickboxers, MMA fighters etc. I’ll take you through a few stages of practice so that you can slowly develop the correct reactions and movements when trying to evade strikes. For most of these you will need a training partner. So if you are a fighter maybe pass this onto your coach or pad man. If you are a coach feel free to implement these ideas in with your beginners. 

Solo Practice 

Before we get to the partner drills. I think an important starting point is in front of a mirror or camera simply practising the fundamentals: 

Slipping your head to the left

Slipping your head to the right

Leaning back 

Rolling to the left

Rolling to the right 

Practice these in a sequence and then start breaking them up into groups and individual movements. A good progression from this is to start including some shadow boxing. Working techniques and combinations combined with head movement. 

This allows you to practice the technique of moving your head off the centre line, without having to worry about the stress of a stimulus such as a pad or fist coming your way. 

Remember the objective here is to get your head JUST out of range. You want your opponent to miss by the smallest possible margin. This insures full commitment from your opponent and creates a greater opening for you to strike with a counter. 

Introduce a stimulus

Once you are able to work the fundamental movements, it’s important to quickly move onto the idea of reacting to a strike. This can be done with pads or with a partner with gloves. I suggest starting with a set pattern, for example, slip left, slip right, slip back, roll left, roll right. 

What you are actually focusing on here is developing your ‘eye’ for responding to the stimulus of a strike coming your way. Once you are comfortable doing it in a set pattern, then get your partner to throw more random combinations of strikes your way. 

Always start slow, do not run before you can walk. Once you are achieving a 95% success rate of avoiding strikes then the speed can begin to increase. 

Introduce the counter strike 

Always remember, the objective of the game is 2 fold. Do not let your opponent hit you is objective one. But, equally important is objective 2, hit your opponent.

This is where the counter strike comes in. You can avoid strikes all you want, but to be truly effective you must get to a point where you make them miss, to make them pay. 

Start simple, take one of the fundamental movements, for example, slipping to the right (which would be to the outside of an orthodox jab in a closed stance) and combine the head movement with a counter jab of your own.

Here you are taking your head off the centre line to avoid the opponents strike, and delivering your own strike in response. 

Again, drill this on pads, or in sequence with a partner before attempting to implement this into free sparring. 

Take it into sparring

All the drilling in the world won’t make this effective in a real fight until you attempt to implement it into your sparring. The pressure and unpredictable nature of an opponent will truly put your training to the test. Be patient and work with partners you can trust. Remember, you don’t get tougher by taking unnecessary shots to the head.