The FavUke Grappling Dummy

Today, I’m going to be reviewing the Alpha FavUke Grappling Dummy. So today we’re going to review my newest dummy, the favUke. This is the alpha model. Let’s go over the kind of chief features of this model.

FavUke “Alpha“ Model

1. High build quality
   • Durable
   • Easy to clean
   • Heavy duty zippers
2. Flexible & Versatile
   • Flexible joints
   • Lots of workable positions
3. Customizable weight
   • Fill with whatever materials you want
4. Kid-friendly
   • Lightweight
   • Smooth feel
   • Flexible Material
5. Ships without Fill
   • Save on shipping
   • Doesn’t come “complete”
6. Not intended/suitable for throwing drills

Alpha FavUke Grappling Dummy Chief Features

So the first thing that you want to understand before you buy this is that it comes unfilled, okay.?And so there are pros and cons to that.

Some of the pros of it not being filled are; first off you’re not paying for the cost of the fill, and u’re also not paying for the shipping. So if there’s a fill for a dummy this size which might be 30, 40, or 50 pounds, you’re gonna pay the shipping on that additional weight. So when it comes to you in the mail, this is like a little ball and that’s because it’s empty. And you have to unwrap it.

The downside of that is that you’ve got to fill it, and there are kind of two aspects of that you should be aware of. The first aspect is that you should have a good sense of what you’re going to fill it with. They don’t have it on their website, or at least I couldn’t find any recommendations for specific types of fill for this dummy.

During the Alpha Grappling Dummy’s filling process, you must be creative.

Choosing Your Fill

• Type to choose
• How much is the fill
• Cost of the fill
• Weight of the fill

They just kind of say, “Hey you do whatever you want”. You can put rags in here, you can put T-shirts, or you could even put cut-up sweatshirts. You can’t fit really big bulky items in it because the openings fulfilled are very small. They’re not tiny but they’re pretty small.

You might not have a good sense of what the weight is going to be. What filled this FavUke Grappling Dummy with was two climbing ropes. The ropes come down to the leg right to the feet. Then I put the rest of the rope up in the stomach and chest area.

So that kind of gave it a little extra form or substance in the middle because it’s like a thick climbing rope. Then I took polyfill, which you could get at any kind of arts and crafts store like Michaels or any kind of hobby store.

I’ve also seen memory foam, like shredded memory foam which you can get, or bean bag stuff like beanbag filler. The drawback of those is that they’re pretty light so if you’re looking for a more substantial or stiffer dummy, that’s not going to do it for you. It’s going to be kind of light and kind of sloppy, but that comes with advantages as well.

Advantage of the unfilled Alpha FavUke Grappling Dummy:

• Save on shipping costs
• Save on fill costs
• It is customizable

I guess my biggest gripe with FavUke is that they don’t give you any suggestions as to what you might fill the grappling dummy with. They just kind of say, “Hey! You save a lot of money because you don’t pay for the extra shipping for that extra weight of the fill, you get to decide and customize it for yourself”, but they do not really at least as far as I could see, there are no options or they do not demonstrate on the website how you would fill it. You know, what would be a great upgrade.?If anybody there at the company reading this, you need to consider putting something on your website that says, “Look, here are the options that the available to you; shredded fabric, shredded memory foam, polyfill, sand, or rubber mulch”.

They don’t give you ideas like that. What would also be awesome is to say, “Listen, if you’re gonna fill this up with this much polyfill, you need 20 pounds of polyfill to fill this capacity. This is how much it’s going to cost you and then this is how much it’s going to weigh”.

So obviously 20 pounds of polyfill is gonna be 20 extra pounds. So what’s the total weight? I mean, I guess you could figure that out but it would be nice if they kind of did that for you, so you could say okay I want a 440-pound dummy, or I want a 330-pound dummy, or whatever, and kind of what that would look like. That would be helpful.

It may be on the website, or maybe I just didn’t see it but I wanted to point it out to everybody who’s looking to buy this dummy, that you have to go buy the fill, figure out what it is, what it’s going to be, and then stuff it into the dummy.

Having said all that, let’s just talk about what I filled this with. As I said before, I put a climbing rope in the legs. I put one end in one leg and the other end of the other rope in the other leg, and then I put the rest of the rope in its torso.

Then I put polyfill, which is the stuff that you use to stuff teddy bears and pillows into the legs, to fill out all the rest. The arms are separate, so you fill them separately too.

For the arms, both openings are pretty small, so I just put T-shirts in there. It’s the same for the head, I put t-shirts in the head and then I bust stuffed as much polyfill as I could. I got about a two or five-pound box of polyfill and stuffed it in the grappling dummy.

The Alpha Grappling Dummy is still plenty light, I mean I can just lift him pretty easily. Having said all that, I’ve seen some pretty creative ideas on YouTube. People are taking PVC pipes, and cutting them into size. You know, giving the grappling dummy a skeletal structure that they could work with.

You know, that takes a lot of being handy and if you kind of want to engage in or embark on that kind of home project, you can check out those videos.

The one thing you want to make sure of is if you’re thinking about t-shirts or bulkier things, you’re gonna have to cut those up. So there’s Velcro in the back of the Alpha dummy you can open up. It’s about, I’d say eight or nine inches. When you’re trying to stuff a sweatshirt in there or jeans, or something bulky, you could get it into the body cavity but you’re not gonna be able to get it down into the legs because the hole is really kind of narrow. It’s also kind of hard to navigate, so just be aware of that.

If you’re gonna fill it with clothes like bulky jeans, sweatshirts, jackets, or other stuff like that, you’re going to have to cut them up first.

I like the fact that there’s a Velcro tab put there and that it does not come out. Now while it’s open, you can see that the arm is separate and that there’s a zipper that you’ll fill. Now it’s pretty small, so again, if you’re going to fill it with something bulky like a sweatshirt or whatever, you’ll never get an adult-sized sweatshirt in the hole. So you’re gonna have to cut it up. You can put T-shirts in there. I just put on t-shirts rolled them up and put them into the arms.

FavUke Grappling Dummy for Training

Now I want to talk about the shoulder connection. I thought that was kind of dicey at first, but I think ac is a great idea because a real person’s shoulder is pretty flexible. So the FavUke Grappling Dummy’s shoulder actually kind of mimics that by just being onto this tap.

So putting your grappling dummy’s arms back in intoGi is made ready to put on and take off.

The FavUke Grappling Dummy has flexible & mobile shoulders, making the dummy much easier to drill with.

Now the head is part of the body, so you stuff the stuffing up or whatever you’re filling up into the head through the same body cavity as you do the legs.

The hands have separate zippers. I haven’t filled them yet, I probably will later but I didn’t need to. You don’t need to. I think they’re fine but the arms have these little zippers, so it’s going to be tight. It’s going to be hard to get fabric in there, so hopefully the polyfill will work.

FavUke Grappling Dummy Great Key Features

Let’s just discuss quickly some of the great features that I think set this Alpha dummy kind of apart and also make it kind of unique. As I stated before, his shoulders are a little floppy but that comes in pretty handy. The grappling dummy also has these elbow joints that work so naturally, they’re gonna fold like a proper elbow would.

So the grappling dummy is not going straighten his arm for you but you can always straighten, it’s not going to break since it’s pretty flexible. The shoulders are super flexible as well. The head is super flexible. So these are more realistic kinds of features, the weight is not but the mobility of the joints is.

You’ll see that his knees are kind of naturally molded to be bent. Again, the feet have to be separately filled, I haven’t filled them yet so that’s why you might see that they’re a little squishy if you haven’t filled your Alpha dummy’s feet either.

The overall mobility of the dummy is real in the sense that the grappling dummy’s legs kind of go back and forth. You can straighten them so you can do knee bars.

You can do different things with this Alpha Grappling Dummy. You can come in and you can practice doing some pretty realistic passing exercises. You can come in and the FavUke Dummy is stiff enough that you know he’s going to move more or less like an actual person. The hips and the knees are going to move like a real person because these legs are flexible, they’re bent, and they’re more or less light.

So if you want to practice different kinds of entries into leg locks heel hooks, or 5050-50rills, you can do that. You can demonstrate this dummy.

It is more realistic. I could never get this on a dummy that doesn’t have bent knees or knees that can bend with flexible hips You know you could even do it, I mean. I’ve seen this before, where you can have the guy up a little bit and you can come in and you can practice doing your bearing bows. Is it perfect? No, right. No, it’s not perfect but it’s pretty good.

Another great thing about this is the Alpha FavUke has got a chin. If you look at your dummy, you can see that it almost looks like a chin. The Alpha FavUke’s face kind of comes out a little bit and you can practice doing chokes with this dummy and it feels like a real choke.

If you want to do thumb entries underneath the chin or the jaw, this is perfect for it. It feels just like somebody’s chin, not just like it but a pretty good approximation.

You know when you’re practicing on the FavUke Dummy, you could even come in and practice your bow and arrow. This dummy is super flexible.

The Alpha Dummy is a little floppy but I think that’s a pretty good thing. No dummy is going to be perfect. You can’t throw this dummy very effectively. The dummy would not be good practice for throwing.

I think doing long-step passing may be a little bit tough, but you could probably do it. I think overall, once this FavUke Grappling Dummy is filled, he’s a pretty good dummy. I would recommend this Alpha dummy for anybody who wants to kind of do more of a flow roll with their dummy.

I haven’t seen another one that is as good at that as this one is. So it’s all about your intended purpose.

FavUke Grappling Dummy Build Quality

Let me just say a few words about build quality. This is the alpha model as stated already. I think the dummy has some kind sort of leather material, maybe synthetic leather. I’m not sure if it’s real leather or not. The Alpha FavUke feels pretty solid. The zippers are pretty high quality and they’re heavy-duty. The material doesn’t feel like it’s gonna fall apart or rip.

The Alpha FavUke Grappling Dummy has excellent build quality, it has durable materials.

The grappling dummy is pretty smooth, so this isn’t gonna scratch you. I put on an adult-size Gi on the dummy and it fits it pretty well.

I have to say, they put a lot of thought into this.

I think it’s pretty great other than the fact that you have to fill it, you have to find the fill, you have to put it together, put the fill into the dummy, and that you’re not going to know what the grappling dummy feels like until you do that.

Unless you have a friend who has one of these already and has it all filled out, and you already know how it feels and like the way that feels.

So other than that kind of leg work that you have to do, I have to say for the money, I’m pretty happy with this. Just be sure before you buy this, that the only caution I’ll give you is to be sure before you buy it to have in mind what kind of fill you want to put in it. Also m, make sure you have enough of it because you can put 50 t-shirts in this thing and you have to roll them up so much that it’s not going to fill it.

You know, just for the full disclosure. I’m not sponsored or affiliated in any way with FavUke. I’m a customer. I just bought this. I thought it would be helpful to share with the guys at Teach to Fight so that anybody who’s looking to purchase a dummy, a grappling dummy specifically, and maybe don’t know as much about the dummy’s features, purposes, and uses.

Although, Teach to Fight is affiliated with FavUke, and because of this review, they’ve decided to endorse the Alpha FavUke Grappling Dummy.

Like I said, I think a kid could use this. It would not be a problem. Some of the other dummies are so heavy but this grappling dummy is something I think a kid would love.

I’m pretty happy with this overall other than the fact that I bought it unaware through my fault that I’d have to fill it myself, but overall, I think it’s pretty good. And I would recommend it.

All right, if you guys have any questions, feel free to put them in the comments and I’ll try my best to answer them. Thanks a lot, guys for reading our article on the Alpha FavUke Grappling Dummy.

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