I have been knocked out twice, both times were by headbutts. One, I never saw coming– I walked into the “wrong” bar, and a seemingly friendly patron who was interested in the part of town I was from, smashed his skull into mine, as I started to answer. The other was during a verbal confrontation, that I thought I was handling – there’s having control, and then there’s the illusion of control. Both times, I was fortunate that there were other people with me, and that my assailants didn’t follow their attacks up. Both incidents occurred in Glasgow, in my early twenties, and very close together; in the city (and outside) such attacks are affectionately and referred to as the “Glasgow Kiss” – or more recently as, “receiving a face full of dandruff”. Most of the pain we experience we forget quickly, it’s part of our natural human condition. I have experienced acute back pain, due to two fractured vertebrae, and whilst I can remember how extreme it felt, I can’t recollect the actual feeling. I can’t say the same for being head-butted; I can recall quite vividly the concussive force generated, the moment of impact, and the nauseating headache that followed when I returned to consciousness (think about the worst hangover you’ve experienced, crammed into 10 seconds). Since then I’ve had a morbid fascination with head-butts, and using the head, as an attacking tool.

Most real-life confrontations occur at nose-to-nose distance, with participants of the conflict, up in each other’s faces. If you’re not keeping your hands out in front of you, to manage and control the space between you and your aggressor, they are filling that space by moving in, and crowding you – if you think reality affords you the same amount of room as you have in your studio/dojo, to keep backing away into, you’re very much mistaken; you’ll soon be bumping into other people, furniture, cars, and objects, etc. In some situations, you may be so cramped you won’t have the ability to control range and put space between the two of you. In some, there may not even be the room – or time – to get your hands up. We can create perfect training scenarios that allow us to demonstrate and practice our techniques in a way that gets them to work, however we also need to acknowledge that there will be occasions, not necessarily only when we are caught by surprise, but where we aren’t able to position ourselves, or move to an advantageous/non-disadvantageous distance, etc. It is at these ranges that we become susceptible to close/short range attacks, such as headbutts – and also have the opportunity to use them pre-emptively.

When I was growing up, I was told a couple of things by my peers, regarding personal safety. One of these was to keep your chin down – tucked to your chest - when you talked to somebody who was acting aggressively towards you, so that your face wasn’t exposed to the head-butt, and the other – which I feel was a mix of the apocryphal, reality and urban legend, was never to grab somebody’s lapels because it was likely they’d sewn razor blades into their clothing, to prevent you grabbing them in this way; the reason people would grab clothing like this was to facilitate the headbutt i.e. they’d pull you in as they smashed the top of their forehead into your face – usually the bridge of your nose. The lessons I take from this sage advice, is to tuck your chin in and protect your face, when you can’t control range, and not to make lapel grabs (there are better places to grab clothing, if you are looking to control another person this way). If your chin is tucked, and somebody attempts to headbutt you – which in all likelihood, will be too sharp/quick of a movement to avoid – they will probably come away with the worst of it, cracking a thinner part of their skull, into a heavier/thicker part of yours. This will still hurt you, but it should hurt your attacker more; and for them it should be unexpected pain, as they were expecting to be the deliverer, rather than the receiver.

There are three ways I advocate using the head: to deliver concussive force, to use to drive and push with, and/or to grind/crush with. The classic method of delivering concussive force, is to bring your head back, and then smash it down on a soft part of the face, connecting with the thick part of your skull. Fortunately for instructional – not cosmetic purposes - my hair has receded to the point where my hairline, represents the point where you should make contact; a photograph of me from any of my books published before 2018, will give you the correct point you want to connect with; in later books you may need to make an appropriate age-adjustment. Don’t worry about this movement exposing you to a counter-attack, it is so quick and fast that anybody – who hasn’t already tucked their chin in, in preparation for defending it – won’t be able to react and respond in time. Another way to deliver it, is to drive the top of your forehead into your assailant’s face. Your head represents a good 7-kilos of solid, hard skull (apart from the face), and when driven forwards/upwards, with the strength of the spine and back muscles behind it, can be used as a focused area to concentrate force against an assailant and move them back. Another way the head can be used, is to grind the boney parts of the skull, into the soft areas of the face. This is something I teach as a simple defense/attack when you are clinched up with an aggressor i.e. grind your forehead into their eye-socket, to create movement. If you can control their head with your arm, as you grind your skull into their face, you will be able to move them in the desired direction – my default being to drive them toward the ground.

The head/skull is a good attacking weapon, whilst the face a vulnerable target. We need to protect one and leverage our attacking possibilities with the other. The good news is that the face is a relatively small target to protect, and the head is a large attacking tool, which is difficult to defend against.