I'll just address the mind manipulation argument, since I can't say for sure how Max's shadow powers work and whether or not the force would break his arms.

Firstly, a strong will does not equal absence of doubt. It just means that a person is capable of resisting things like temptation, torture, and coercion to a very high degree. Confidence would be what makes a person more susceptible to the kind of manipulation you're talking about, but a strong will is not synonymous with confidence. Confidence can be a means by which a strong will is obtained, but so can many other things like family, love, an ideal, or a goal. A strong will is indicative of an ability to ignore or suppress influences that might interfere with whatever goal a person has set themselves at that point in time, so someone whose goal is to kill everyone in a given area would be less likely to ignore one of those people due to a mental suggestion than someone with the same level of willpower whose goal is to kill a specific person in that area who isn't the one they're being manipulated to ignore (if their sole goal is to kill the person trying to be ignored, that person would probably be screwed).

Secondly, the better a person knows themselves, the easier it would be for them to recognize thoughts that aren't their own. If I wrote a character that was extremely single-minded and who was very aware of his strengths and weaknesses, he'd instantly recognize and dismiss it as an outside influence if he suddenly had a thought that directed him away from his current goal. If, on the other hand, I wrote a character who was very capricious and whimsical, he wouldn't even realize anything was amiss until there was only him and the telepath left on the battlefield. And probably not even then.

In the end, it depends very heavily on the character the telepathy is being used on, as well as how the telepath uses their power. Without actually taking time to look into an opponent's mind to see how they think, the telepath could just as easily be blaring alarm bells as sneaking in surreptitiously. Like breaking into a bank with no prior planning versus getting all the alarm codes, floor plans, and camera locations first.