Cliff Byerly

cliffCliff Byerly

Core Material Coach

Cliff Byerly has been a Marine for over 20 years (with 12 years of active duty), with the majority of his military career spent serving as a reconnaissance team leader. His several deployments included Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990 & 1991, and to Somalia in 1992, and he finished his active duty service in San Diego as a drill instructor.

In 1996 Cliff left the military and joined the Los Angeles PD, where he worked patrol and with gangs and narcotics. In 2003, he took a break from police work to deploy to Iraq yet again for OIF I as a team leader with 4th Force Reconnaissance.

Cliff has instructor certifications in LAPD Arrest and Control, S.P.E.A.R. System™ and S.P.E.A.R. Tactical Ground Combatives, Combat Focus Shooting, Red Zone Weapons Defense level 2, Red Zone Adaptive Striking, Krav Maga Force Training Division Police, Military Combat & Marksmanship, Range Safety Officer, and level 2 Crossfit Trainer. Mr. Byerly was the Lead Instructor with the Police & Military Division for BTS, and is currently the founder of his new company Hill Country Combatives.

Cliff believes in realistic, progressive, injury-free training, but his years in the Corps combined with his non-ironic addiction to “Kill Cliff” energy drinks fuel a poorly-concealed disdain for hippies, people that fail to stay in shape, and general weakness. Cliff is probably not the best person to train with if you don’t want to be called a “special snowflake” or some combination of swear word plus “tard” when you make a mistake. However, for the rest of us, Cliff’s priceless real world experience, humor, and colorful language with SoCal surfer-boy delivery, make every course he conducts a tactical treat. These truths, combined with the fact that he may actually be Nathan’s spirit animal, make him a treasured member of the Borderland Training team, and his ability to make you tactically proficient is matched only by his genuine concern for our men that put themselves in harm’s way.

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  • Rob BrotzmanRob Brotzman 

    Dept. Head of East Coast Operations

    Rob considers himself a “student of the gun.” He’s always seeking out more training, techniques, equipment, and information to give him an edge, whether it be in competition or in a self-defense situation. Introduced to firearms for both sport and protection at a very young age, he is an avid hunter and outdoorsman, who excels at tracking wildlife as well as the occasional human.

    He makes his daytime living as a video engineer and a two-time Emmy-winning videographer, and is also a member of and the firearms trainer for Wolfpack Missing Persons Search and Recovery. His eye for the camera lens and knowledge of firearms and tactics make him a natural fit as the department head of East Coast operations.

    In his down time he enjoys competitive shooting, tactical training, hunting, fishing, and general outdoor badassery. He also enjoys taking long walks on the beach with his beard, and making his partner Nathan’s life utterly miserable at odd hours of the evening.

  • Nathan WagarNathan Wagar

    Executive Director; Core Material Coach

    Nathan joined the Army at 17 to escape a lifestyle in California gangland, and deployed twice to northern Iraq with 101st Airborne. He was selected along with other individuals from the infantry recon sections in the battalion as part of a special task force charged with kill or capture missions of high value targets. His experiences with violence have been tempered by his academic pursuits and interest in fields such as complexity science, and this eccentric background is probably what has led his friends to dub him the “Irish Cholo.”

    He is the owner of Black Mesa TFAC and has received professional trainer licensing and instructor certifications in CMD boxing, the CMD combat intelligent athlete program, EMP mental game performance coaching, and Red Zone Knife Defense, and was given permission to teach Brazilian Jiu Jitsu by his coach and friend Gustavo De Alencar.

    He was the creator of the official threat assessment method used by CMD Intl. formerly known as TARMAC, and the gun disarm method used by Red Zone Threat Management Systems. He has developed custom courses for both civilian active shooter response, and active threat room entry techniques as an adjunct SME at Shockwave Defense, and teaches protection methods to members of the New Mexico Secret Service assigned to the Albuquerque field office. He is in the process of undergoing an additional certification in Risk Terrain Modeling, the latest environmental threat assessment program developed by criminologists for LEO and security departments.

    Nathan’s outlook and focus is best described as mastering one’s environment, and this theme forms the thrust of his vision at Borderland Training. The seriousness with which he approaches his material is matched only by his astoundingly effeminate taste in coffee, and penchant for wearing Star Wars shirts and flip flops while teaching. When not coaching or working on a new project, he trains, hunts, and spends an obscene amount of time getting really, really pissed off at his hetero-lifemate Rob.