Theme of the Week: Control the Head

Where the head goes, the body will follow.  This is why when you throw a spinning strike, it’s often helpful to turn your head first – it brings the rest of the body along.  This is also why when you want to upset someone’s balance, you push or pull their head – it takes the rest of the body with it.

This week we’ll be exploring different ways to control the head and where to take it from there – strikes, sweeps, throws, submissions and whatever else presents itself.  The overall goal, when gaining control of your partner’s head is to eliminate their offense and get them strictly into thinking about recovering their balance.  If you can keep them there with head control, you can decide where you want things to go.

For today’s class we looked specifically at two counters – one off a right roundhouse and one off a low backhanded stick swing to the knee.  Both shared a head control motif – but while one move stepped to the inside, the other went outside.  Hopefully students took away a sense of possibility for head control when going either way.

Check out the student’s thoughts here.