In Lesson 11, you’ll learn one of the most useful tools in the entire series: a nunchaku grip change that lets you reverse your momentum, change directions, and completely redirect the flow of your sticks on demand.
This single grip change comes with four different applications. Once you understand the core motion, you can drop it into your movement almost anywhere—off your hip, out of a strike, or off either leg. It’s the kind of technique that quietly upgrades everything else you do, because it gives you a reliable way to break momentum in one direction and rebuild it in another.
What a Grip Change Actually Does
A grip change is exactly what it sounds like: you change how your hands hold the nunchaku mid-motion. But the reason it matters goes deeper than hand position. When you’re flowing with the sticks, momentum wants to keep carrying you in the same direction. A clean grip change interrupts that momentum and lets you send the energy somewhere new.
That’s why this move is so valuable. Without a reliable changeover, your combinations tend to run in one direction until they run out of steam. With this grip change, you can flow left, reverse, and come up into a fighting position without losing control of the weapon.
Setting Up the Grip Change
Start in a basic position with the nunchaku in your dominant hand. (Alex is right-handed in the demonstration, so mirror the instructions if you’re a lefty.)
The core motion is this: invert the sticks, bring your off-hand across with the palm facing away from you, and grab below. That off-hand grab is the grip change. From there, you release your dominant hand, and the weapon is now set up to travel in the opposite direction.
Practice just this piece first. Invert, grab palm-away, release the dominant hand. Get comfortable with the hand-off before you try to add movement, because every one of the four applications is built on this same core exchange.
The Four Applications
1. Around the Waist to the Hip
The first application brings the sticks around your waist to your left hip. As you arrive at the hip, the grip change happens right there at the hip line. From the hip, you spin the sticks up into your fighting position.
The hip acts as your reference point. Bringing the sticks in to the hip before the change gives the motion a clear checkpoint instead of a loose, floaty transition.
2. Diagonal Strike into the Grip Change
The second application starts from your right-handed fighting position. Come diagonally down with the sticks to your left hip, execute the grip change at the hip, and come up into your fighting position again.
This one teaches you to enter the grip change out of an actual strike rather than a neutral setup. Drill the first two applications back-to-back—one, two, one, two—until moving into the change from either entry feels the same.
3. Wrapping the Left Leg
The next two applications move the grip change down to your legs. Start on your left leg. Using two hands, wrap the sticks around the knee, forward and back. When you reach the inside of your thigh, that’s where the grip change happens. From there, come straight up into your fighting position.
Repeat the leg wrap on the inside a few times so the timing of the change—right as you reach the inner thigh—becomes automatic.
4. The Close Right Leg
The final application uses your right leg, the close leg to your dominant hand. Instead of reaching across your body, you keep everything close in and perform the grip change right there on the near leg. From there, bounce up into your fighting position.
Because this version stays close to your body, it’s fast and compact—useful when you don’t have room to swing the sticks wide.
The Real Secret: Let Your Body Do the Work
Here’s the detail that ties all four applications together. When you perform the grip change, you bounce the sticks lightly against your body—against your knee, against your hip. That contact isn’t an accident. That little bit of body language helps the stick bounce off your body and come out of the motion cleanly.
Think of your body as a rebound surface. The bounce gives you a moment of control and a natural spring that feeds the sticks into the next movement. Miss that contact and the grip change feels floppy; use it, and the change feels crisp and powerful.
Common Mistakes to Watch For
- Rushing the hand-off. The grip change is a precise exchange, not a fling. If you speed up before the off-hand grab is solid, you’ll lose the sticks.
- Skipping the body contact. Without the bounce off the hip, knee, or thigh, you lose the spring that makes the change feel powerful.
- Letting the reference point drift. The hip and the inner thigh are your checkpoints. If the change happens in empty space, it gets sloppy fast.
How to Practice Lesson 11
- Isolate the core grip change: invert, grab palm-away, release the dominant hand.
- Add the first waist-to-hip application slowly.
- Layer in the diagonal entry from your fighting position.
- Move to the left-leg wrap and find the change at the inner thigh.
- Finish with the close right-leg version.
- Only once each piece is clean, work on the body bounce that makes every version pop.
Final Thoughts
This nunchaku grip change is, as Alex puts it, the most versatile changeover there is. It lets you reverse momentum, change direction, and add a genuinely different element to your motion. Four applications, one core exchange, and a body bounce that makes it all click.
Take it slow, respect the weapon, and drill each application on its own before you string them together. Once this grip change lives in your hands, it becomes a tool you’ll reach for in your own forms again and again.