Oh no, the tele-tubbies are coming! Padded attackers are often used in self defense training and in our opinion, have limited value. Sure, they can allow you to kick and punch without risk of harming the “attacker”, but at the same time they also depersonalize the attack scenario. If you are ever in a situation where you’ll have to use these techniques, guess what? It’s unlikely your attacker will be wearing a tele-tubby helmut. He’ll have a face, and eyes- and this makes things that much more personal and that much more frightening.

The other problem we have with these padded attacker scenarios is that they often play the ”willing victim”, falling down dramatically at the slightest of hits and stopping the attack when in a reality, a real assailant wouldn’t. This builds a false and therefore dangerous sense of security that isn’t serving anyone.

More on this to come…