ARTICLES
- All
- All Articles
- Borderland Musings
- Close Quarters Battle
- Culture & Society
- Faith & Philosophy
- Mindset & Resilience
- Personal Protection
- Tactics & Training
- Violent Crime Dynamics
My Love Letter to the Suicides
How abuse, death, and suicide all link together in my heart, and my message to all my loved ones that killed themselves.
Sharing Your War Trauma: A Cautionary Tale
A warning about the potential negative implications of dumping your war trauma on a woman.
Will the Mexican Cartel Wars Come North?
The facts and fallacies that many people believe about how active Mexican DTOs intend to be in the US.
Self-Defense, Flip-Flops, & Hypocrisy
A reflection on being consistent about your own standards when living a protection lifestyle.
How Targeting a Drug Cartel Structure can Backfire
How we misunderstand what kind of system a crime organization is, and then use the wrong strategy to fight it.
CQB Syntax: One-Man vs. Team Tactics
How a knowledge of CQB Syntax can prevent errors in transferring to one-man clearing techniques.
CQB Syntax and Adaptive Room Clearing
How building design guides human behavior, and how syntax, or clearing order, changes how we approach clearing rooms in CQB.
Low-Ready Slicing in CQB
A systematic analysis of the benefits of slicing a doorway at low-ready in CQB.
The Crime Triangle & Self-Defense
How to practically use the “Crime Triangle” from criminology to understand the structure of a violent crime, and assess your own self-defense response.
Praise Doesn’t Roll Uphill
How accepting praise from the wrong people feeds your ego but not your coaching development.
Abusing Pre-Assault Cues in Self-Defense Training
Pre-assault cues in self-defense training are great but you might not be doing them right.
The Violent Criminal Actor & Being Too Nice
The powerful effect that social norms can have on our ability to act against danger.
Jihad, Japan, and the Combat Veteran
Wrestling with combat PTSD through the eyes of Jihad and Kintsukuroi art.
CQB and the “Floating Angle”
A discussion of an extremely common phenomenon in CQB training that only comes out in real time.
The Hood is Not Coming to Get You
Myth vs. reality regarding where and how violent crime tends to take place in the city.
How to Read Graffiti: The Street Hotline
The secrets behind reading street graffiti to get a true baseline of the social climate, regardless of country.
The Performance Failure Point and the Ego
Filthy lies we tell ourselves and our training partners to save our own ego, and how to fix it to achieve true mastery.
My Buddy Tito, The Violent Criminal Actor
A personal example about violent criminals and some of the misconceptions we have about them.
“Mindset” Needs a Direction
Every instructor screams “MINDSET.” Let’s tease apart what that actually means.
What is the Perfect Self Defense Art?
Some of the main things I would look for in a martial art I want to use for self-defense.
Rob Brotzman 
Nathan Wagar