Nitsan: What’s the biggest problem you come across when you train people?
TJ Cuenca: The biggest problem is when people have unrealistic expectations of what they can and cannot do. Some people think all of a sudden they’re going to be able to fight that bully that’s been picking on them within a matter of weeks; when in reality, it’s about constant practice and changing your mentality on a steady basis. Because it has to be mastery, and mastery takes time. And also, there’s disappointment we have when somebody sells themselves short, when they think that they can’t do something. It’s just that mental block that they’ve placed on themselves. So, it’s trying to defeat the two: a person who becomes over-confident and a person who doesn’t get confident enough. The latter is kind of easy to defeat because once a person starts to understand that, “Wow, I can actually do this many sit-ups. I never thought I could do this many sit-ups or this many pull-ups, or I can jump over these obstacles,” or, “I can spin knives and blades and guns,” and all of the things that we do…When they see things that they’ve only seen in the movies being done by normal, ordinary people, it’s easy to defeat that not-enough-confidence kind of feeling. But a person who’s overconfident, that’s actually the more difficult one because it’s trying to, like Bruce Lee would say, “In order for me to teach what I need to teach you, you need to empty your glass.” Some people, their glass is already full of old things, old mistakes, old habits, and they don’t want to learn anything new. That’s why we actually, we prefer children, anywhere from the age of 4 to the age of 18, because their minds are still pliable, and they’re more likely to accept new information. But yeah, we have exceptions. We have some older people who are more than willing to learn new tricks.
Nitsan: You’re teaching them a system of martial arts.
TJ Cuenca: Filipino and Western martial arts, because we teach pretty much every weapon art there is. The reason we use weapon arts is because there’s a bit more respect for what works, what’s more practical. Filipino Martial Arts because Filipinos are by nature shorter, smaller, lighter, as opposed to their counterparts. When you take a regular-sized Filipino and put them in an MMA cage, they’re less likely to be able to defeat their opponent because they’re usually bigger, stronger, etc., because of cultural differences. The reason we want them to learn weapons, specifically Filipino Martial Arts, is because it’s meant to give an advantage to the smaller, lighter, less physically imposing person. Western martial arts we’ve included there, my wife, because of what she does, because it also gives an advantage to people because of the use of weapons. We don’t use punching or striking techniques, because for a 9-year-old to be told that they can defeat somebody whose 50 pounds heavier than them and 10 years older just by punches or kicks, that’s a pipe dream. That’s never going to happen, unless the kid has a skill level and has been doing it for 10 years. But for a child to gain their confidence quickly and to tell them that, “Okay, here’s a stick. You can generate 35 miles an hour, (swinging) the stick 35 miles an hour, that impact on a human shinbone is going to be enough to deter your opponent.” That’s what we’re looking for, and the way that we teach martial arts is also quite different because we don’t aim for anything that would cause permanent damage. The style is in Filipino Martial Arts; it’s called “Defanging The Snake.” So, we work mostly with limb destructions; so destroying the hand, the elbow, the shoulder, the kneecap, the shin. The idea is to stop the attack; therefore, it’s pure self-defense. Because if I teach somebody to strike the head, to go for a kill, or to strike for the belly, the body, it’s very difficult to prove in a court of law that I was doing it for self-defense, but even if I was using a knife and a man was attacking me and I cut his arm so he can no longer use that arm, at least for the time being, that’s pure self-defense because all I’ve done is stopped the attack. I wasn’t trying to kill the guy. So, we kind of put that kind of mentality. Like you said, through physical training, we teach the psychology of being defensive, which a superhero should be defensive, not offensive; the idea of physicality and health; and being able to generate that kind of force. We cover a lot of concepts in physics, like FMA, Filipino Martial Arts, also stands for Force equals Mass times Acceleration. So, that’s how we, we kind of say FMA is F = MA, Force equals Mass and Acceleration. So, we use these terms in physical movement and the way that we train in order to create a person who does things practically, not just theoretically.
Nitsan: What is tribal leadership?
TJ Cuenca: Tribal leadership! We also noticed that when somebody says that they’re going to be a hero, we have a tendency to become very individualistic. They want to do things on their own. When in truth, you really need a tribe. You need a group. Superheroes in the movies, they have superpowers. They have super vision. They have super speed. No human being has that. In order for you to have that kind of ability, you need a team. You need backup. You need somebody who can think for you, because let’s say in the comic books, like Batman or Green Arrow, etc., or even Kato from the Green Hornet, they didn’t have those super powers. They had skills that they learned. They all needed a team. So, that’s why we say tribal leadership. You need to be able to understand that no man is an island, and they have to think about the group. So if we were to do an event, like a social, we’re not crime fighters. We’re not crime preventers. We’re more of social activists, as far as what the superhero mentality we have. But we change is the way people think; therefore, they can do social change. So when we say somebody should go and train to become a superhero, it’s more of focusing their skills to inspire others.
