There is nothing more beautiful than being able to make your opponent look like their fighting ghosts. Making your opponent miss drains them both mentally and physically and can give you a huge edge in a fight. Fighters like Ali, Tyson, Mayweather, Roy Jones, Pernell Whitaker, and many more were masters at making opponents miss and it gave them a huge competitive advantage.
This is something that many fighters don’t do well. A lot of young up and coming fighters focus on the two things we just discussed. They want to throw faster and harder punches and everything becomes about the punches until they get in the ring and realize not only do you have to land them, but you have to know how to avoid them.
So in this article let’s dive into how to improve your head movement.
Train Your Brain and Body
When it comes to getting good head movement, there are two things that we will need to train. First, it is the reflexes. You have to train your brain to be able to process the punches coming at you fast enough for you to tell your body to do something about it. It’s about creating the right mind and body connection to create the correct reaction. The first step is creating the right way for your eyes and brain to process the information that doesn’t include fear. The best way to get used to punches coming at you is to fight, which is why sparring is super important.
The second part of the puzzle is making sure your body can move as fast as your brain does. It’s no use in seeing the punch coming if you don’t develop the right fast-twitch muscles in your hip, neck, and torso, to react to those punches. If you ever saw Roy Jones dodge punches with his hands down, then you know that he moves incredibly fast for a human being, faster than someone can throw a punch.
If you ever feinted throwing a punch at someone who is untrained, you will see them cover-up in the most ineffective way, or worse, just close their eyes in fear. This is because their body and mind aren’ trained to take it.
I had a great defense and was great at slipping punches when I was training daily. It’s what I trained to do. However, I never played basketball. One day I had a game with my friends and someone passed me the ball and rather than catch it I dodged out of the way. This happened because that’s what I conditioned my body and mind to do in fast situations that can’t require a normal, and formal version of thinking. This is why it’s called a reflex and reflexes.
Dedicate Time to It – Punch, Move Your Head
I recently had an MMA fighter ask me how to get better at head movement and I replied “do it.” This answer was met by laughter from him and his friends with a sarcastic “thanks coach.” However, I went on to explain that I’m being 100% serious. In fact, I borrowed this mentality form one of my coaches growing up when I asked him as a youth how to do more pull-ups, his response was: “do more pull-ups.” It’s such a simple, yet genius logic that can be applied to anything in life.
The only way to get better at something is to do more of it. Many fighters want better head movement, but don’t dedicate time to it as they do to their punching. Instead, they just sprinkle it in here and there and hope that somehow, their head movement will improve over time. You have to treat it like your punches, constantly try to make your movement faster, less predictable, and more fluid.
The only way to accomplish this is to make sure to dedicate multiple rounds a day strictly to head movement. In fact, Mike Tyson has recently admitted to Tyron Woodley on his podcast that he would often do head movement drills for hours. He mentioned that when you do that everything you do in a fight becomes absolutely automatic. When you practice slipping the left, the left is coming at you in a fight, you won’t even have to think about it, your body and mind will just know what to do.
Dedicate a specific time each day to work on your head movement. Pay attention to the way our body moves and how fast it moves, try to perfect each motion and work on improving the motion with each repetition.
Head Movement Drill
Move Your Head After Every Punch – Work the Combinations
This is one of the best ways to practice head movement because it makes it a habit to keep your head moving and ensures that you give it equal treatment as your punches in a more well-rounded way. In fact, Cus D’Amato had Mike Tyson do the drill in this very fashion. After one punch he would move his head twice, after 2 or more punches Mike would move his head 3 times.
In your case, I want you to move your head after every punch. This is a pretty simple drill where you move your head in two different ways after each punch or combination.
Another way to do this drill is to dodge the very punches you just threw. So if you just threw a jab, right, hook, then you will slip right, slip left, and roll under the hook.
Again, this makes it so you are forced to dedicate equal time to defense as you do on offense. This is one of the keys to being a good defensive fighter.
Remember the key in boxing is to hit and not get hit.
Isolate it in Sparring
A lot of times when people spar, they make the mistake of trying to win the sparring match, rather than what they should be doing, which is picking something they want to work on for the day and train that. So if your defense is slacking, then you need to work on it in sparring and isolate it as the main focus. The only way you’ll learn to use something in a real fight is to practice it in a real fight.
Don’t be a dummy and tell your sparring partner “oh I’m just working on head movement today” because then they will unload on you unrealistically. Instead, have it be your secret and still counter and punch your opponent in order to keep them at bay and treat it like a real fight. The focus is on head movement only in your mind, this way you can still simulate a real fight.
Slip every punch you can slip when the opportunity presents itself and then do a mental count of how many landed, how many times you fell for a feint, how many times you were timed on the way out or in and how many times you were able to slip punches without looking for them. That’s the point that you want to get to. Moving your head the right way without mentally and verbally registering “here comes the jab.”
Relax
When it comes to defense, and fighting in general, the most important thing is to stay relaxed. Ven when you get clocked hard, rather, especially when you get clocked hard, is when you need to stay relaxed and act as if nothing new occurred. Continue moving, punching, and defending as if nothing just happened. Don’t let it anger you, or worse, scare you into fighting a different fight. The second you let feelings take over, you’re not far from losing the fight if you’re against a smart fighter.
When you are relaxed you are able to be in the flow much better. You don’t overthink things and naturally react to them the way you should. Think of the way kids react to a ball when it is thrown at them gently. They never experienced it before so they close their eyes and cover-up, even though within that time they could’ve caught that ball three times. It is the same with punches, the more scared and less relaxed you are, the faster they seem when they are coming at you.
The best way to practice relaxation comes from the previous tip and that’s through frequent sparring. The more you work on your head movement in sparring the more you will get comfortable with the punches coming at you. Then, the more punches that miss, the more confident you will get, and the more relaxed you will be when you’re in front of someone that is punching.
Try Dropping Your Hands
A lot of fighters struggle with the fluid motion that comes with being good at the head movement. They are too stiff, rigid, and limited in their movement and end up looking awkward. This is because they are too tense. Even when they are practicing they are already moving with the fear of being hit int their body and mind. Sometimes this is hard to practice because most fighters don’t know how to relax at all, not even when they throw their punches.
What I ask students to do when I’m coaching is to drop their hands to their waist, but not just put them down, just drop them completely relaxed and keep them relaxed and loose. This is usually met with confused looks because it’s the opposite of the basics that I teach, which is “hands up and chin down.”
What this forces you to do is to relax your whole body and make your head movement uninhibited. Try keeping your hands down and move your head, you will find you’re moving more freely. Do this for a few rounds and then put your hands up to your chin and move the same way. You will see a much more improved version of yourself.
Don’t Overcompensate
One thing many fighters forget is that a fist, even when gloved, is not that big. A lot of fighters use too much range of motion, and most importantly, too much energy and time to move out of the way of a punch. All you need to do is move just enough, within a millimeter away from the fist to avoid contact.
From there you will use less stamina, and be in a much better position to counter. Jermaine Taylor is one of my favorites when it comes to this. He would counter jabs by slipping them, and he was so close to the punch that he would push the punch away with his head once he slipped, in order to create a better opening for the counter right that’s’ coming back.
Mike Tyson was another guy that was excellent at not swinging too far out the way, and so was Floyd Mayweather. Watch these guys defensive maneuvers and you will see in most cases the punches almost look like grazing shots sometimes.
Stick to short, efficient movements.
Do it With a Partner
You can practice head movement alone through visualization and the mirror, which is a very useful tool for practice and getting better as proven by science (cited earlier). However, if you can get a coach or training partner to work some drills with you, then that’s the best bet. Get someone to wear gloves, or use the mitts, and get you to work on head movement.
If you’re just starting out, have them call out the shots before they throw them. However, as you get better, learn to react to punches without them having to tell you what they are going to throw.
Remember to Mix Punches In
What you don’t want to become is one of those fighters that spend the whole fight defending. I’ve seen many fighters look really slick in the fight and make their opponent miss, then they walk away from the loser of the fight because they didn’t do enough offensively.
Exercises for Better Head Movement
There are a few exercises you can do to improve your head movement.
Reflex Bar
I recently got one of these and boy does it help you improve your head movement and eye coordination. It makes you move your head every time you throw a punch and force you to react extremely quickly. Highly recommend this.
Slip and Sway Bag
The sway bag and slip bag are other tools that force you to move your head constantly. Anything that reminds you to move your head and trains your eyes to perceive things coming at you is going to help both train your body, and your mind, this way you’re not destroyed by fear when punches start flying.
Mitts
If you have a partner, mitts are one of the best ways to work on head movement because you can work combination into it, and you can have your partner throw random shots at you to see how you will react. This is one of the best ways to practice your head movement, just make sure to make it the main objective for the session if you hope to get the most out of it.
Rope Bob and Weave
This is a simple workout where you tie a rope at two ends and end up bobbing and weaving between the two. Going back and forth, this helps you train the movement necessary in your body for good head movement.
Heavy Bag and Shadowboxing
This is something you’ll spend the most time doing in practice and it should be something that includes moving your head half the time. Remember the formula, try to move your head one time for each punch that you throw. At the least, do one defensive maneuver for every punch that you throw.
Sparring
The best of the best is going to be practicing it in sparring because this is a real live person throwing punches at you. This will help you better than anything else to prepare for a real fight because there is no predictability involved in this exercise.
If You Want Better Head Movement, Move Your Head
When it comes to moving your head for boxing, you want to make sure you’re focusing on it in training. Many fighters who aren’t good at it are simply not doing it. You want to make sure that you’re actually taking the time to practice it in every single type of training that you do. Also, make sure to practice every single type of head movement that there is and do it better each time out. Guys like Roy Jones Jr. Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather weren’t just born great defensive fighters. The unique skills they had they acquired over years of training those movements in the gym for hours at a time. So if you want to improve any aspect of your game, isolate it in sparring and deliberately practice for hours on end and you will see yourself improve in a short period of time.
Remember, it always works if you work.
