Pool noodles condition your neurological network in a complete safe and damageless way. You will get used to stuff hitting you in the face. Sometimes it will hit you in the eye and you’ll have to focus through one eye for a second. Sometimes you get blasted on the nose and you get that feeling where your eyes are kind of watery for a moment and you will learn how to recover.

Your training partner has to try to hit you with that noodle in uncomfortable areas on your face, your role will be to try to survive and slip the next one because a good training partner is damn well gonna try to fire another one in there even if you seem uncomfortable. He’s not going to stop just because he hit you in the face. The same way in a street fight, your adversary is not going to sit there and celebrate his one successful punch, he’s going to hit you once and he’s going to try to hit you again. So you’ll get used to taking punches and recovering so you can respond with the correct neurological action.