The Bubba II Grappling Dummy qualifies as a submission grappling dummy, moreso than a throwing & striking dummy. After reading this review, be sure to watch the demo video of the product below carefully to see the strengths and weakness described here.

The strength of the Bubba dummy is that you can do many submissions on it. However, as discussed below, your form will be sacrificed while doing them. It also has an elbow joint that feels like it pops when you armbar it, if that’s important to you.

The weakness is that it cannot hold any position. It is too loose to be able to kneel inside your inside your guard, or hold any other position, other than laying flat.

The Bubba  dummy has little structure to it, so it collapses easily to the ground. You may be able to position it temporarily in a position, but it will fall flat after each grappling move you do, so you have to set it back up in position each time you want to do a move.

In addition, the arms and legs lay flat, meaning you will need to pick up the limb and move or hold it in place in order to practice a submission on it. This will encourage wrong form since you do not do that on a live opponent.

The Bubba dummy can be used for practicing some throws. However, you must lift and hold it up in order to practice a throw on it, making it pretty difficult to work with. It’s recommended that you train throwing on a dummy designed for throwing, as seen elsewhere in these reviews.

The video below will clearly demonstrate what’s been discussed here. You will notice a lack of guard position demonstrating, due to it’s inability to kneel inside the users guard, as well as the lack of guard passing, due the dummy’s legs falling flat.

Also, the majority of the individual techniques done in the video start with the dummy or it’s limbs already lifted and held in position, making the product appear easier to use than it actually it. Examples are the dummy being held up by the user before the throw (intro), the dummy laying flat inside the users guard (0:25).