Trainer Talk

In Law Enforcement, fundamentals matter—and the most basic fundamental of all is dialogue. Verbal direction plays a role throughout the use of force continuum, from cooperative subjects to lethal scenarios. It is always used. Verbal direction can take the form of: • Advice/requests (“Please step out...

The very foundation of defensive tactics is knowing what constitutes an attack in the first place. There are three elements that contribute to an attack—intent, weapon, and delivery system—and all three need to be present for an assault to succeed. If you remove one of these elements, an attack can ...

Understanding why something is done a certain way helps straighten the learning curve, and handcuffing is one area where a little bit of learning goes a long way. That’s because bad things happen when handcuffing is done improperly. Of course, handcuffing is taught in all of our local departments an...

In part one of this series, we covered five pieces of basic advice for officers who want to add martial arts to their training regimen: Find a school you like Train consistently Don’t make training inconvenient Be well rounded Be safe Now we’ll dig a little deeper into some things to consider when...

What does it mean to be a law enforcement defensive tactics instructor? Do we learn advanced techniques that the patrol officer does not learn? Is it an opportunity to show off our skills to a class of recruits? Do we stop being thoughtful and dedicated practitioners and just become voices for train...