Blitz Barricade Curved Strike Shield Review

Blitz Barricade Curved Strike Shield Review

Brand

Blitz Sport is one of the UK’s leading suppliers of premium and approved martial arts equipment, offering everything from boxing gloves to Aikido Bokken to Ninja suits. While they also stock a range of other brands on their website they also have a very broad range of equipment made under their own label, for all kinds of martial art.

About the strike shield

The Barricade Curved Strike Shield is exactly what the name implies – a strike shield with a gently curved shape that’s designed to be used to train any number of different strikes. The shield comes in small, medium and large sizes and is only available in black.

Blitz send us one of the Barricade strike shields to test out and give out opinions on.

Visuals

The best way to describe the visuals of the Barricade is understated. As we said, you can have any colour you like, as long as it’s black. The only decoration is ‘BLITZ’ printed in grey down the striking surface of the pad, and a smaller version on the strap side.

Simple and understated, the pad has a spartan aesthetic – it’s built for function.

Materials/Craftsmanship

The pad is made from Nama hide leather, which is Blitz’s synthetic leather variant. Traditionally synthetic leather is less durable that real animal hide long term, but from our use of the pad we haven’t seen any indication of wear and tear. The inner padding is a high density foam core built to absorb the impact of whatever strikes you’re training, from uppercuts to a low kicks.

The pad also seems to have been built to a high standard, with neat joints reinforced in high stress areas. Our experience is that handmade products are typically better quality than their machine made counterparts, but even though Blitz don’t hand make their products we don’t have any concerns about the barricade strike shield.

Comfort/use

When you’re hitting it the Barricade shield feels great. The curved design feels like it ‘catches’ your strikes, so you can throw with power and not worry about missing the target. The high density foam gives fantastic feedback on strikes, and again means you can fire off strikes with full power and not worry that you’re going to hurt yourself. It’s definitely satisfying really digging a low kick in and feeling the impact.

On the flip side holding the pad is also comfortable, with multiple handles and straps to let you hold for different strikes. The straps and handles are padded to make them easy to hold for a long session, and the thick padding absorbs impacts – keeping you from getting beaten up.

Cost

Available from the Blitz website for £55.99 we think that the Barricade strike shield is a good choice for a strike shield, though a busy gym that use strike shields a lot might want to look for a real leather product to make sure it stands up to the stress. The quality is good, its comfortable as both the holder and the striker and its good value for money.