I could have titled this: “Not everyone is a bodyguard just because they look like one.”

Most of you might remember the video of the “Terminator” being kicked from behind at an event, which went viral, so there’s no need to retell what happened. And you don’t need deep expertise to recognize that something went wrong when an attack like this could happen to a celebrity surrounded by security, especially when the footage suggests there were at least two security personnel close by.

I’ve written a couple of articles on this blog about what makes a good security professional and why even famous martial artists or action movie stars need protection. This incident makes the “why” painfully clear.

The reasons a well-known person might be attacked are endless: a drunk who isn’t even fully aware of what they’re doing, an unstable fan acting on impulse, someone seeking “15 seconds of fame,” or an attacker with a more deliberate plan. Whatever the motive, one thing is constant:

The primary purpose of close protection is to identify risks and prevent threatening situations before they happen.

Only as a last step does it become about stopping the attacker, detaining them, handing them over to authorities, providing first aid if needed, and extracting the protected person from the danger zone.

If an attack happens, it means a failure has already entered the system, because the first goal of personal protection is that it shouldn’t happen at all. And the security professional must be prepared to manage the situation when something does go wrong.

Of course, when real life writes the script, mistakes can happen. You can’t prepare for every single scenario or prevent every incident. To be fair, history shows that even the most protected people have been attacked, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

Take Yitzhak Rabin, the former Prime Minister of Israel, who was assassinated in 1995 despite intensive security measures and a protective detail. One of the bullets intended for him struck his bodyguard, who survived, but Rabin did not. You can’t claim those professionals were untrained, yet the unacceptable still happened.

I once had the chance to work with one of the security officers who was part of that security details at the time. Many years later, his comment was simply:

“Yes… that didn’t go very well. But we learned from it.”

Another well-known example is the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. As the President of the United States, he also had a highly trained protective team, yet the fatal attack still occurred.

But back to Schwarzenegger. He isn’t a sitting prime minister - though he once had political ambitions - but he’s famous enough to require well-trained security professionals, especially when making public appearances, which he does often as part of his work.

From the footage, while Arnie is filming the rope-skipping girl, the security personnel with him appear to be watching what the “main character” is doing, rather than monitoring the immediate environment around the protected person. As a result, they fail to notice an attacker running toward him at full speed and then delivering a jumping, two-footed kick to his back. Only after the attacker lands does the closest “muscle mountain” react, restrain him, and lead him away.

There are many places you could look for mistakes, and from a short video clip you can’t know whether the attacker could have been identified at entry, or earlier while moving across the venue. But one thing can be stated with full confidence:

The two close protection personnel were not doing their job when they stared at the protected person like spectators instead of jointly scanning the surroundings in 360 degrees.

This also shows that - contrary to popular belief - size is not everything in this profession. It doesn’t matter how much steroids someone takes, how much they bench press, or how hard they can hit a fairground boxing machine.

Close protection is teamwork built on planning, organization, and prevention - a profession where the bodyguard is paid for what’s above the neck.

So what’s the lesson? Mistakes are useful for one thing: they force analysis. When professionals evaluate what happened and why, they can take the right steps to reduce the likelihood of similar incidents. This is part of the work and the foundation of improvement.

The real question is: who is willing to admit mistakes, analyze causes, and use that analysis to improve?

And one more thing: if you need personal protection services, don’t automatically choose the cheapest provider, and don’t choose the one who can line up the most intimidating-looking people. It matters who you allow into your private life, who will be exposed to confidential information about your family and business, and ultimately, who you may be trusting with your life if the situation demands it.