Does Boxing Head Movement Work In A Street Attack?
You all know that my ‘conscious bias’ is personal safety and self-defense.
Everything I contemplate teaching and practicing must:
Work during sudden violence.
Enhance my survivability.
I've always been a huge fan of the sweet science - I love boxing and have studied and trained in it since 1976.
While I learned many traditional methods, I always unconsciously and consciously ran whatever I learned through my personal safety bias for practical self-defense.
When I took on the responsibility of teaching professionally, I exclusively focused on creating drills to enhance safety and survivability during sudden violence.
My personal challenge was whether I could take the sport aspects of boxing head movement and adapt them to the street.
I asked these two questions:
Would it work during sudden violence?
Will training 'this' enhance my survivability?
Applying the neural patterns of good boxing head movement to self-defense was fun. But I discovered that ‘context’ and ‘scenario’ played important roles in how we could apply slipping and head movement.
I filmed a 33-minute lesson for our paid SUBSTACK tier. (If you're NOT on our paid plan, there’s still a ton of info in the article to get you thinking about this. You can always upgrade😉)
Read the full article first and then watch the video lesson.
The movements I teach are foundational principles built around this reality: sudden violence often hijacks executive function. The body's primal reaction to this is to deploy the startle flinch.
Pro fighters flinch - even during sports matches.
It's not always about ‘technical’ skills! Street or ring, situational awareness is real!
When 'awareness' is compromised, the body defaults to its survival system and we flinch!
Our survival system can be conditioned to convert faster when you attach the right stimulus in training - this, my friends, is the foundation of the SPEAR System®.
Here’s a synopsis of that process and what you will learn in the video:
🥊 Sport versus Street modifications
🥊 How and why learning [Sport-Boxing Slipping] can help you in the street when you're surprised
🥊 Offensive (Combative) Slipping
🥊 Defensive Slipping
🥊 Emergency Slipping
Caution!
Do NOT analyze these drills from a sparring perspective!
You're not going to have duct tape on the floor in a real fight!
These drills get you in touch with kinesthetic perception and proprioception so you can get your head off the line and out of the way of an incoming attack.
Visualize and practice them. And if you want to learn directly, come train with me in the Garage Gym!
If you have any questions, please post in the comments.
Coach B