The Titan Games’ Blake Broadhurst is a modern-day hero

The Titan Games star Blake Broadhurst discusses his path to the NBC show.

On NBC‘s reality-competition series The Titan Games, Blake Broadhurst is matching his brains and brawn against incredible athletes. But that’s only one part of his exciting story.

Precinct TV spoke to Blake about how his career in law enforcement prepared him for the series, as well as how he never intended to end up there—in fact, he wanted to be a reporter! But instead he’s changing lives and inspiring TV viewers.

Get to know Blake Broadhurst in our interview and keep your eye out for him as The Titan Games season 2 continues every Monday at 8:00 p.m. on NBC.

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Precinct TV: How did you originally become involved in law enforcement? As your story is a bit longer than most.

Blake Broadhurst: I come actually from a long line of law enforcement and military. My father is a police officer. But growing up, I really never had an interest in law enforcement or in being a police officer at all.

The funny thing is, I think it was kind of ingrained in me. I got a degree in sports journalism and I was going to be a sports reporter [but] I tried it out and didn’t like it. It just wasn’t my thing. Went back to my hometown,  started teaching, I did a little bit of arena football. I felt like there was just so much more I could give physically and mentally [to] help out people besides just standing in a classroom and helping teach.

One day I was talking to my dad, like, I feel like I’m missing out on something. I feel like I’ve got more to give. And then he goes well, son, please check this law enforcement thing out. It’s a lot of fun—you can move around, you can learn, you can use your talents. And I tried it out and I fell in love with it.

And once I fell in love with it, and I started to understand how law enforcement works, I looked back and remembered when I grew up. I saw so many people being bullied, mistreated, affected by crime, and I always wanted to be that person that could stand up to them. That’s really hard as a kid, and even as just a regular civilian. There’s just so many laws and rules and regulations, and you don’t have the training. So being in law enforcement, I got that opportunity to be that person I always wanted to be.

PTV: Your career is impressive in that you’ve served in two very specialized divisions, as a SWAT officer and then as a K9 officer. What motivated you to not only serve, but to choose those specializations?

BB: I’ve always been very meticulous in learning and very meticulous in developing my skills. As an athlete, I could always do that. When I went into law enforcement, I didn’t want to be regular. I wanted to be elite. I wanted to be amazing. I wanted to really sharpen my skills and help people. I started watching the specialized units, the guys on these SWAT teams and the training that they’re doing, the thinking they had to put themselves through, the book work, the experience work. It was just exciting to me.

But I ended up leaving the team after about six years, because I have kids and I wanted to be a great dad, and I wanted to try different things in life. I saw an opening for a K9 spot, and the best thing about K9 is I get to work with somebody who comes to work energetic, comes to work completely focused, and has one goal in mind—to work as hard as he possibly can and to do the best that he can. There’s no negativity in that car. And it’s amazing, it’s beautiful.

My job is basically to find bad people that hurt our community, that hurt our citizens, that are depriving them of their freedom of being able to walk out of their house without fear, without worry of being a victim of crime. And being able to be part of those two units, it means a lot to me. It’s been a lot of experience.

PTV: Both of those roles require a lot of training and a high level of physical fitness. How much did that work experience translate to The Titan Games?

BB: In the tactical world, we have a thing called tactical debriefs. Basically what you do is you go through something, and then you stop and you look at it and go okay, here’s the mistakes I made. Here’s how I can correct them. Here are the good things I did. Here’s how I can amplify those. And then you continue to build your skill and build your experience and your worth as an operator.

What I ended up doing is—my wife thinks I’m super silly for doing this—I turned that over to The Titan Games. I took all the videos from season one and I broke down the events. Then I watched the competitors and I saw what works, saw what didn’t work. And then I went out there and I actually recreated them. And I would watch the video with the headphones in while I’m doing the workouts to get the full effect of everything.

PTV: Some of your fellow competitors have said being on TV took some getting used to. How would you describe your The Titan Games season 2 experience? Was it more or less stressful than your career?

BB: Going to compete at The Titan Games was actually a break for me. Going to work, you always have to be at a high level of thinking, high level athletics. You’ve always got to be paying attention to the small details. And that can be stressful because it’s so long—it’s 12 hour days. But at The Titan Games, I had fun. I got to share my family with the world, I shared who I was. and just going to compete was fun because at the end of the day, it’s a competition. It’s a game.

I actually have a saying that I always keep with me. It says “Until you train as if the cost of a loss may be a life, you can’t say that you prepare to be elite.” That’s the thing that I always think about is when I go to work, if I lose a life, it might be mine or somebody else’s. In The Titan Games, when there’s a draw, I get to come out. It’s a great experience. And I come out a better person.

PTV: Is there anything you’d want viewers of The Titan Games to understand about law enforcement?

BB: I think it’s kind of a gray area sometimes. Even watching TV doesn’t give you a full effect of what these men and women are doing in our communities. What I would say I’m just one of many hard working, skilled, eager to learn, police officers out there that want to serve and protect their community.

The whole reason I got into this when I look back on it was not to just help people, but it was to give my life—not physically, I’m talking about to give all that I have. All that I’ve learned  all that I’ve trained, all that I’ve put together as me as a person. And I would like to tell our communities that we’re out here to support you. We’re out here to help you, we’re out here to hold true to the freedoms that we all enjoy in this country.

The biggest thing is, is we need to change as police. We need to get better training. We need to get better at recognizing how to better ourselves. And for the public, give us some grace. I think grace is huge because we are people. We have families. We make mistakes, we have bad days, we have great days. What we try to do is limit the amount of mistakes we make. And I’d just like for our community to realize we love them. We’re out here for them. That’s why we do our jobs.

The Titan Games airs Mondays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.