For a long time I was opposed to using padded weapons in training. My personal opinion was that they were detrimental to training for real confrontations based on the fact that as soon as people got a padded weapon in their hands, they 1) started hitting each other carelessly as if this was about getting some points and 2) they started doing things like leaning down to hit someone on the leg. If the latter was in a real situation, they would have gotten clocked on their head, but because the sticks were padded that type of caution didn't seem necessary. It seemed to me that students seemed to immediately unlearn months of training as soon as they got a padded weapon.
However, as I've been maturing as an instructor, I've come to realize that I can't avoid using padded weapons, because there is a benefit to them. But that benefit, in my opinion, is from structured drills. When I give my students padded stick, I give them specific instructions. For example, one student performs a single strike with power and the other student had to try to use one of the disarming or abanico techniques to penetrate. They can still move around freely and strike randomly, but without letting it get to a state where they revert back to items 1 and 2 above.
I know the argument in opposition to this will be that "on the street, people will not use weapons in a predictable manner". I know that, but I think this is the first step... to have students get used to working with weapons that are coming at a decent speed and understand how they can defend against it. Like with everything else, once they acclimate to this, then perhaps, allowing for a more free flowing padded weapon exchange.
