 Hey guys, this is Matt Beck from gratitudeeducation.com and freesaloneducation.com. Basically, today, what I want to work on, we've been getting together the last couple of Monday mornings. And basically, I'm just doing this right before we start the salon day. So, what I want to focus on today is controlling weight within a haircut. And what I'm going to do is show you an exercise that I like to do that is basically, it's a haircut, but it helps work on understanding how weight moves within the haircut. So, if you guys have any questions throughout this, that's the cool thing about this being live. You can type them in. If you type them into the comments, it should pop up. I should see it. I'll be able to answer your question. But basically, what I'm going to do is start off by sectioning off the top. Basically, at the parietal ridge, back to mid-crown, we're going to cross over there, and we're going to clip this section away. So, I just want to make sure that this section is even. I think what we really want to focus on with this class is keeping a very consistent sectioning and very clean sections. So, who cares how well we cut this hair today? That's not really the goal. If we're working on different fundamentals every week, then today would be sectioning and understanding where we're pushing weight, not necessarily the outcome of the haircut. So, we'll twist that up. I'll clip that away. So, that's our first section. So, hopefully, you can see that. Just a nice little rectangle on the top. Then we're going to work, and I'm going to clip away. Basically, the whole point of this haircut is to follow the curves of the head. So, if you're following the curves of the head, you're going to understand how the weight distribution is going to change throughout the head shape when you're cutting hair. So, let's look at here. If you look at how my comb is going to rock on her head right here, normally we would just split this right at the division point and section it away, but what we don't realize is there's a curve that happens before that. So, if you don't understand that there's a curve happening, then you can't understand where the direction of the hair is going and how it's going to affect the weight distribution. So, my first section I like to do is just right at that bend of the head. So, we will take a nice little parting there. I'm going to comb that back, get it out of the way. And again, I'm just going to comb this section out, twist it, keep it nice and clean. Every classroom I teach, I always see people grabbing with their butterfly clips and just really kind of shoving the hair out there, not keeping it clean and organized. You can't have a great haircut without keeping it organized. So, right at that little round of the head right there, that's where we're going to draw our line. That's going to change on different people based on their head shape. So, just be careful. We're not going exact. So, whatever you're doing at home is not going to mimic what I'm doing here. Now, tilt your head. We're going to look for that bend in the head again. And I'll just section. Nice little parting down. Comb it out of the way, the rest back. If you have our parting, basically pretending like I'm putting this into a ponytail, so combing it straight out from the head, twisting, and then we'll clip it away. So, really, you're just getting that temple area out of the way. Another clip. Some classes I teach, the hairdresser has three clips that they bring with them. Well, if you want to really section out hair, you might want to have at least six clips. So, if you're sitting there thinking I need to buy some more clips, then you can also do that on our website as well. Now, what I'm going to do is just divide the back in half. So, just draw a line straight down the back. And once I have a basic line drawn in the back, what I'm going to do is split that right at the occipital bone over to behind the ear. And really, the reason I picked the occipital bone is because that's another curve. So, that's a curve that's happening up. So, my head is transitioning away from me, so I know that when I'm cutting the hair if I section them into two sections. If I just grab the back of the head and I start pulling the hair out to cut it, I'm not going to... It's not going to help me guide me through the haircut. So, hopefully somebody's making an appointment. It's a great thing about a live class. So, now what I'm going to do, I'll move to this side so you guys can see. Same thing, section from the occipital over to behind the ear. What I'm going to check first is make sure that this is balanced. When it's perfect, you're not going to grab a perfect section every time. So, out of the way. So, that's the sectioning for the haircut. Very simple. You know, only five different sections. I guess six if you count the bottom. And what we're going to do is we're just going to start off by cutting a layered cut. So, we're going to work on a 90 degree angle. So, basically what a layer is going to do is remove weight. So, basically from zero to 89 degrees, we're keeping weight or we're building weight. And then after 89 degrees, then we're removing it. So, as I'm working through the head shape, it's important to understand really only a couple different angles. Is understanding 90 degrees and understanding if you're below 90 or above it. And that's really all I think about because obviously we're not going to know what 75 degrees looks like. So, what I'm going to do is start off with a vertical section in the back. Let's grab our scissors. I'm going to lift the head a little bit so it's comfortable for me. And what we're going to do is start off by working. I want to work short to long because I'm not trying to cut a concave layer in this. So, we're going to start short to long. So, vertical section about a half an inch wide through the back here. So then what I'm going to do is comb this out. See if it turns so you guys can see this. So, I'm going to comb it directly out from the head. But my focus is right here in the curve of the head. So, as that head starts to peel away, I want to make sure I slightly elevate my finger. So, combing here and we're just going to start by removing just basically making it a nice clean line with this haircut. Man, it doesn't have the greatest hair. So, you'll see my hand slightly elevates as I work through this haircut. So, we layered it so there's no weight build up. So, that's important. Now, I'm just going to work my way through. I'll take another section directly to the left of that. Comb the rest out of the way. And I'm going to push this new hair into what I just cut as a guide. But then, as I move my way forward, I'm just going to push it to the previous. So, I'll turn again so you guys can see the elevation. So, you'll notice I'm combing away from my body. That's another important thing with haircutting is to make sure that you're never pulling the guide to your hair. You always want to comb the new hair, the hair you're about to cut to the guide. There's our guide. We'll get out the scissor. Keeping an even tension in the hair here so you can see I lose tension. This is the whole second knuckle thing here. You can see how tight the hair is on the bottom. But then, as the hair gets closer up to my fingers, this is very loose because I don't have the same tension. So, that's why I want to make sure that I'm always re-combing and not cutting past where that tension changes. It doesn't matter. Maybe you have tension in your second knuckle. So, just look at where that tension changes and decide when they're... if your haircut is going to be consistent or not. Again, moving to the left. And this, we're staying balanced so everything's just coming straight back from the head. We're not pushing weight one way or the other. So, what I want to do is have an even weight distribution in the back of the head. I'm going to split that section in half so that I'm not dragging my new hair too far away. We're going to push that 90, there we go. And then elevate slightly, not much, to create 90 again. And we're going to do one more section right in the corner and it's going to be the same thing. You guys will be able to see this sectioning better when we do the other side. Straight back from the head, find the guide. This is slightly going to push a little bit of weight towards the corner, right behind the ear. The great thing about that is it's going to fill in where we start missing hair. You'll see it ends up being a nice square line, a little bit of weight pushed forward. Now I'm going to work my way through the other side, staying on the same side of the head. I don't want to move any further, I don't want to switch sides or anything because I want to stay consistent with that as well and I always want to be cutting short to long. I'm going to split this in half where we started our last section. Keep a little bit of hair for my guideline for the second side. Take out a vertical section here. Now I'm going to be combing towards my body, so that's the only big change in this part. Before I was combing away, now I'm combing towards because I want to push and pull the new hair to my guideline. So there's my guide. Move a little closer to you. Start cutting and then elevation, slightly higher here, just keep it at 90 degrees and cut. Moving to the right, pulling the new hair towards the guide. Find your guide, that's at 90, coming straight out of the head. And this is at 90 as well, straight out of the head. Key thing here is to make sure when you're working with weight distribution and where I want to push the weight to, I'm working a couple different ways because I'm working on how I'm pushing the weight, if I'm building it or removing it, is one way and then the second way is how am I over directing. So if I'm over directing slightly, I'll start to push the weight off to the edge. So really, any haircut that you're looking at and you look at them in a magazine or maybe you're going over it with a guest, you're looking at, okay, so this haircut that she loves maybe has a little bit more weight in the front, but it's slightly a lighter haircut, maybe it's more layered, right? So now I'm going to know what to do. How do I over direct the hair to push the weight to the corner, but still have it feel light? And the way that we're going to do that is, you know, over directing the hair back, but elevating it and then understanding that there's curves on the way there, so I don't want to round too many of those corners, so I'm pushing extra weight over to the side. So those are things that we're going to work on throughout the next five weeks as we get together on Wednesdays. So let me finish up this bottom. And really what I want to drive, you know, drive home today is that we're focusing on consistency with our elevation and our direction out from the head. That's really all it is. So we're going to kind of get off on rants about that, but just understand that that's really the important part. You can't see anything here. I'm going to turn this straight out from the head, 90 degrees, make your cut, slight elevation, keeping it at 90, cleaning the hair. Now, a lot of people would say, you know, I could have had a haircut done by now. And you can. You can get haircuts done very quickly. You can bust through them in the salon. You know, when I first started cutting hair, I thought it would be the coolest if I could be done faster than everyone else. But really, I don't think that benefits the person in your chair at all. And it's one of those things where if you're not staying consistent with the haircut and they go home and they try to mimic what you created, it's creating a shape that's going to be that shape no matter what. And if we just go in and cut and chop up hair and then we blow it dry and make it look pretty cool because we're good at that, and then they go home, there's no shape for them to even attempt to recreate. So if anybody out there, if you're not a hairdresser and you're watching and you get a 10 minute haircut and you're in and out of the salon and you can't do it at home, that's probably why. So you've got to really benefit the guest, create a shape on their head so that that shape falls no matter what. They shouldn't have a lot of maintenance to do at home. It's our job to make their life easier. So let's work through here. Now we're going to let down our next panel. Understand when we're looking at weight distribution and head shape here, the head is curving away. So as that head curbs away, my elevation would change to remove weight. What I want to do is just build up a slight little weight within this part of the haircut. So let me turn here. So we're going to take a vertical section here. Now, once I take that vertical section and comb the rest away, I'm going to get my guide from the bottom. Obviously that'll be pretty simple. But as I elevate the hair here, I'm focused in my mind that I want to leave a little bit of weight, but not a lot. So I just want to build up a nice little weight line, but I'm not trying to build up a bob on top of her layered haircut. So let's look at it this way. Look at the curve that happens in her head right here. It goes from this being 90 degrees to this being 90 degrees. So if I bring everything straight out here and cut it, which would be a typical quick layer cut, we'd just pull out here, maybe point cut through it, chop it up, that's fine. But what's happening is this hair right here is at zero degrees on the top. Because this is 90, so this is zero. So that's why we're getting such a huge weight line. What I want to do is slightly lower my elevation. It's going to be a busy day today. I'm excited. So slightly lower my elevation. So here's 90, so I'm going to drop it a little bit, just to start to build a little bit of weight. But then I still have to keep elevating and then just slightly drop it. So I'm pushing a slight weight line up the head but I'm not creating a huge heavy zero degree line. And that's my goal with this haircut. I don't mind having a little bit of weight, especially when you're creating really long, beautiful layers. You don't want to have all the weight completely removed unless they have a really high density of hair. So right here, remove the weight. Then I'm going to just take a section just to the left of that. Take a little bit of that hair that I just cut for a guide. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to create round layers. And I don't mean round by the fact that we're going to go up and cut all the weight off here. I mean round in the fact that we're going to open up the face. So all of this is going to be consistently following the round of the head with the section. So as we do that, we're going to round off every corner so there'll be no corners within the haircut. So again, straight out from the head, 90 degrees. Slight drop of my elbow. Cut a little bit. 90 degrees. Slight drop. Just working my way through. Slight drop. I'm going to change the elevation of her head. The only reason I like to do that is for my, you know, the sake of me because that allows me to be more comfortable and more consistent with her haircut. So it allows me to see really the shape happening. So we're going to bring this straight out. Still the guide is coming from the bottom. This guide will get a little bit longer because of the square balanced kind of shape that we put in the bottom. So the layers will in turn get a little bit longer as well. 90, drop a little bit. 90, drop just a little bit. Last section. Still grabbing something that previous. We'll use that as our guide as well. And then just slightly drop your hand. Just to build up a little bit of weight. And more, this is more of an exercise for me than something that's going to be a huge benefit to a haircut. I mean, it's a great haircut. It's going to lay really nice, but it's just really keeping the, just working on consistency and going through the haircut that way. Now I'm going to do the same thing on the other side. Again, it's the same way. It's just before I was pushing all the hair away. Now I'm going to be pulling it towards myself. I'll take a section out of here. My guide comes from the bottom. So at 90 degrees, drop slightly. Slightly below 90. Building up a little bit of weight. There's 90. Working clean, keeping all that hair combed out of the way. With this, I can see my guide from the previously cut hair. So, you know, I can also, once I have that below 90 degree line cut, I can just follow that. Again, no over-direction back. This is all straight out from the head. Just slightly directed to the guideline, but that's it. Because I don't want to, I'm not trying to create a huge square on the top of my head. I don't want to put too much weight in the corner. I like the top of the haircut to be nice and light. So this works well for me. The thing is following that guide in the last section. Still combing the hair towards me. So that part's definitely staying consistent there. Slight dip. And that is a nice layered back haircut. So the cool thing is we went over weight distribution, but you also get to understand, you know, how to control weight and create nice layers at the same time. And we got time, so I'm going to cut the front. Then we're going to get the salon set up for the day. So what we're going to do is real simple. I want to condense this a little bit. We're working on the sides. The great thing about understanding how the head moves and how the head shape works is that if I want to cut a face frame inside of this haircut, it's easy because all of this is basically at the same curve. So there's no change in angle on the side of the head. So if I take a little piece from what I just cut, I elevate all of this hair. Make sure I comb everything. The only thing about condense cutting is that you want to make sure you have all that hair consistently combed up into your hand. And then what I'm going to do is just go straight above the head, find my guide, and that's where I'm going to cut. I'm going to cut a nice line. What this will do is create a really light face frame in front of the head. And I think one of the challenges that we have most is guests having that heaviness around the temple area on their head. So this will create a nice light kind of movement within the haircut here. It's still going to have kind of a round feel, a little bit balanced as well because as I pull it up from the head, it is slightly over directing in this corner. So it's going to push a little bit of weight forward but not much. So it's going to have a nice feel to it for your guests. And I'm going to do the same thing on the other side. I want to stay on the same side of the head because what I want to do is cut from the guide across. So comb this up. Make sure all those little hairs are nice and consistent and then once I have that, I'm going to go through and just draw my line straight across the head. And that's simple and condensed cutting is, you know, obviously everyone's favorite because it doesn't take long. And as long as you're working on the same panel and you've sectioned out the head, condensed cutting is not a bad thing. Now what I'm going to do I'm going to comb the top forward and we're going to layer the top. Basically this is a fun part to ask each panel but let's understand this first then we'll work our way through it. So I hope you guys enjoyed the video. My name is Matt Beck from gratitudeeducation.com and please follow us on Facebook Gratitude Salon Education and check out our website. We're always updating it. We're up every night changing it and adding new content to it. Hope you guys enjoyed this haircut. Thank you.