It has been a while since I have written a blog, but after attending a great martial art sharing event at the FTMA Annual Gathering in Salinas over the past weekend, I thought it fitting to reflect on how far we have come as an FMA community. During my early years of Eskrima training, early 90s, much of what we did within or small knit of Tenios DeCuerdas practitioners under the late GM Art Gonzalez was kept very secret and within our own house. I can recall many evenings when we would be deep into training and we would get a visitor walk in who was a higher ranking FMA practitioner and we would immediately switch up what we were doing, and at times default to some basic bastardized serrada drills, like outside number one or something similar. I use the term bastardized because we referred to our practice of Serrada as “spaghetti serrada” meaning it is not as crisp and clean as those who have dedicated their lives and honed their skills toward llearning this style. When the visitor would leave, we would go back to our DeCuerdas training. Back then, and as a newcomer to the Filipino martial arts, I found it a bit odd that we couldn’t simply keep doing what we were doing, this practice was never done or observed in my early kung fu classes. I suspect such practices were warranted for a reason and practiced by teachers prior to me delving into this martial art that I now hold near and dear to my heart. I once asked GM Art about this and he said you never know who is simply coming here to visit, some don’t just come to visit they come to take what you have and not give credit where they got it, I guess he experienced something like this in the past, but I didn’t want to push it based on his demeanor from his response so I instead asked about Serrada. From what I was told GM Art said our Serrada influence came from John Eliab and our DeCuerdas came from Tenios DeCuerdas that he learned via his family from the island of Bohol in the Philippines, why it was called Tenios Decuerdas. Both Eliab and Tenio are recognized as being the founders of the system GM Art learned from and his primary teachers. Over the years the mentality of holding things close to your chest has changed as our elders began to be more open to cross sharing and a new generation of FMA practitioners helped drive this movement by wanting to learn other styles as well as their own dedicated system. I often heard that even when Tenio would teach at seminars it was just basic FMA movements and not necessarily from the material he shared internally with his core group. During my over two decades of tutelage of training with GM Art he would sometimes say you can show this and that but keep this stuff internal to your students. But even he began to slowly start sharing much of what he once considered private or told me not to share at our MACE events and other seminars he went to, I believe he finally realized that sooner or later he would have to share if he wanted to be more recognized in the martial arts community. Personally, I have grown accustomed to just sharing everything with a few exceptions, which are things/techniques he told me to keep for myself, and to honor his wishes I have done that, but for the most part, I am an open book willing to share much of what I was taught. Cross training this past weekend at the FTMA Gathering and with the upcoming VEA Martial Arts Cross Share event I am pleased to see that we are heading down a path of continued sharing, if we don’t do this then each of our respected arts will die off. In my opinion I think another major influence of individuals willingness to share what they have come from social media in the form of youtube, blogs, and podcasts, where people are interviewed, and they not only talk about their systems but show some movements and techniques from it. All this sharing just benefits us all as we can become better martial artists by picking up new techniques or nuances that others may have in their system. Anyhow, my point is that I am glad where things are going and I hope to continue providing opportunities for cross sharing not only for my own development but also for our future generation of FMA practitioners.
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For some reason it has been a while since I have written to my blog, perhaps because I have been spread to thin lately, busy with other responsibilities and goals in life, like raising a family, career obligations, and lastly, scrambling like mad to finish my book regarding our martial style art while at the same time deciphering the codes, and keys GM Art Gonzalez left me with. However, I feel the moment is now right to set aside a little time to discuss something that has been on my mind lately. Some of you may know that our family recently lost our family dog and protector, her beloved Princess Fiona, she was 9 years of age and died unexpectedly, we were always told by our family vet that she was the epidemy of good health for a Doberman, so we had expected her to outlive our last Dobi of 13 years who was rattled with every ailment known to not just this breed but to all other dog breeds as well. Her unexpected passing rocked our family to its core and for me, her sudden passing once again made me fear death, a feeling I had not had since I was a youngster. I was struck with the thought, that I am on borrowed time and pondered how much time would I still needed to ensure that my kids could function in life on their own after my passing and if our art and the art of GM Gonzalez could be carried on by my students based on every lesson, I have provided them. While I always recognized that we are all on borrowed time, this is the first time this idea of borrowed time was put right in front of my face to truly see the ugly truth in this statement. The sad reality is that I still have much to teach my kids about life and my students about our art, I have just begun to teach my kids life skills and I have only scratched the surface of our art; yet more than ever I fill the need to pass these lessons on to my students as quickly as possible and I live with the fear that I will run out of time. So, this blog is for my students, when I am hard one you, it is because I love each and everyone of you, it comes from a place of love, I want each of you to be better than me and have a deeper understand of the art than I do. When I have you drill something repeatedly until nauseum, it’s because I want you to truly understand the technique and commit it to muscle memory. I also want you armed with knowledge and skill to protect yourself and your loved ones from harm. Please understand that I have a deep appreciation and love for our art and only want it to be represented in a way that would make GM Art proud. DeCuerdas Diestro Fighting Systems is an art developed to induce injury and even death, if need be, to your opponent, thus the responsibility to ensure you understand it lies solely on my shoulders. I also feel as if I need to share as much as I can, and as quickly as possible to you and to other practitioners who studied under GM Art but who may have not received the lessons that I received or have forgotten the lessons GM Art once taught us. Fortunately for me and for them, I documented nearly everything I could, this is why whenever a search is done on social media for GM Art much of the content you will find comes from me, this is not to brag it is simply the fact that I am sharing what he left me with the world, I am not sure who else has as much archival information as I do, but I will continue to get my material out there. My expectations of what I expect from my students comes not only from the responsibility I have to ensure our art endures but also from a place where I want my students to not only be good martial artists but great martial artists who can defend themselves in any situation and with or without the use of weapons. Death will one day come calling for all of us and when it comes for me, I want to smile at him and say my work is done here death, please lead me to my ancestors, past friends, and former pets beyond the Golden Arches of heaven. With much love and respect, Maestro Mike Cardenas We train like killers in order to learn how to protect ourselves from killers, this was an old adage that my late martial arts instructor, Grandmaster Art Gonzalez, would ramble off every so often. His view of the world was different than most, people were either prey, predators, or hunters or defenders against the predator/predators. He referred to these predators and street thugs as “The Bad Boy” they are people in our society who lack honor, compassion and or empathy, and take advantage of the kindness of others and of societies kindness. There are no rules of engagement for the bad boy and they don’t have to mentally prepare themselves before inflicting harm upon another human, they have already been mentally conditioned through a life of violence. For many and most law bidding citizens facing such an opponent will put you at an immediate and severe disadvantage unless you have been trained to fight, with physical contact and under extreme duress. There are countless videos of a bully or bullies verbally and then physically assaulting people who don’t appear to have any clue of what to do, in the minds of the assaulted they are most likely still trying to figure out why they are being harassed, as there upbringing consisted of consistent reprimands when it came to verbal assaults, hitting our kicking someone. No hitting, no kicking, no biting, or you will earn a time out or get a spanking. This is the first and primary mental hurdle that many in society will face if and or when you are forced to fight back to defend yourself. I can recall my first physical confrontation in high school, I was punched in the face in the gym locker room and at the time I was not armed with martial knowledge or mentally conditioned for a physical confrontation, I simply resorted to basic survival instincts and held my attacker against the lockers to avoid getting hit again, and I can remember thinking oh man I am going to get into a lot of trouble if I hit him back. My instructor would often tell his me and his other students, hey man I may not be teaching you how to win trophies but rather something more meaningful and that is how to survive in the street, against the bad boy, the bad boy doesn’t give a shit about your martial art rank, or what you do for living there intent is to hurt you and even kill you, so you have to be ready, that’s why we train under duress and why we train like killers in order to learn how to protect ourselves from killers. Over the past few weeks, I cannot stop thinking about these mental lessons my teacher shared with me as I am currently inundated by the never-ending news of the violence occurring across our country. Repeat offenders/criminals/bad boys are being released due to a pandemic and people who have a propensity for violence are now free to act on those feelings with little to no recourse. In such times we must continue to prepare ourselves for a violent encounter, not just the physical aspect of our techniques but the mental training that goes along with it, it is the symbiotic relationship of these two aspects that is the key to our survival. For our training, GM Art would say you have to be able to turn off and on your switch Mikie, when your switch is turned one way you are the gentlemen, the nice guy people know you to be, but when you turn the switch the other way you “Key up” become a hunter who will turn the table on your attacker and make the predator fear you, but hopefully you will be skilled enough that you will not have to be forced to kill your attacker out of fear. So when in doubt train, when you are scared train, when you are worried train, when you are tired train and hopefully after all your training you too will learn to survive and protect yourself and your loved ones from the Bad Boy. To the hunt! I recently had a great conversation with a fellow brother of DeCuerdas in which we reminisced, shared ideas and thoughts of the art that was taught and passed on to us by the late GM Art Gonzalez. What stuck with me from our conversation was how each of his students may have learned something new or different depending on when you were in class. Sr. Master Jorge once said that when we obtain a level of proficiency, black belt or Guro status that if we opened up a book describing what DeCuerdas is, and after turning open the cover, the first thing we would see would be a mirror, signifying that we are all distinct individuals, and that one’s DeCuerdas might be slightly different than another DeCuerdas practitioner, it is our interpretation of what was taught combined with our own influences, body mechanics and other nuances that drive how we interpret and perform what was learned. What we each learned depended heavily on when you trained closest to and with our former GM and each of us black belts/Guro’s under him took various pieces of knowledge from him during those time frames in which we were closest to him, various pieces that make up the larger Tenio’s DeCuerdas puzzle, a puzzle that is said to consist of 19 different systems. This is perhaps why to the outside observer you may see slight differences in each DeCuerdas student’s interpretation of the art and most of us tend to gravitate to those systems and or techniques that either we have a personal fondness for or are just naturally better at doing. Also, there is so much to learn in the our DeCuerdas art that it wasn’t uncommon to learn something and not see it again for another 5 or 10 years. GM Art once told me that my body type and strength for my smaller frame was built for speed, so he wanted to work more on knife and empty hands with me as well as additional body mechanics for delivering optimum power. This was another gift he had, like a master mechanic he knew what each of his students was missing and worked to tweak and modify your physical and mental modalities to make you better in the body that God had given you. He was also an innovator who was always looking to improve the system. He told me that we should be like busy little beavers constantly examining the DeCuerdas damn we built and search for holes that may penetrate it. I like to pride myself in knowing that I was around with him during his early years when he first came out to teach the general public, I first meet him at Stribley Park in Stockton CA, being introduced to him by my friend and at the time teacher Jorge Magana. Back then I truly believe that he was only teaching for the purpose of using this opportunity to continue to hone his craft and this provided a chance to have fresh meat to beat on and exercise existing knowledge and push the envelope toward further progression. Hell, for my first year or so he never even called me by name, nor did he want to know my name, he would just say in Spanish when he needed me, tú, ven aquí (you come over here), but I did care how he addressed me, I needed him to give me the self-preservation knowledge that I was seeking. For me, I spent nearly two decades with him and didn’t earn my Guro/Black Belt status until after eight years of study with him and my Master Certification only after putting in an additional nine years. During that time I took a short hiatusis to go back to school and earn my engineering degree, and then another hiatus when our group kinda fell off the radar and stopped regular practice, after the closure of our Fremont school, my move from Stockton to Manteca, GM Daniels move to Texas, and during GM Arts time teaching more regularly in Mexico, which all occurred during the same time frame. Now that our GM is gone, I feel I have a responsibility to pass on everything he taught me including some of the fundamentals of our art as well as new material he was teaching me the few years before his passing. Under the banner of the Black Wolf DeCuerdas Eskrima Club I will pass this knowledge to my students, friends and affiliate pack member schools. With the premision granted from GM Daniel, we will also in honor and homage of my former teacher wear a few of his older logo designs representing him and the roots of what we do. There is much work to be done and I have a few more holes I need to fill in my DeCuerdas schematic and training, but I truly feel that my teacher left me with ample clues and knowledge to fill those gaps and to continue to better myself for many years to come. Lastly, I am hopeful that his successor GM Daniel will continue to spread what he has learned through his organization so that our teacher’s legacy continues to propagate for years to come. Signing off in the words of my beloved teacher “To the hunt”! On October 3rd, 2019 the world lost an incredible martial artist who had much more of his knowledge and martial wisdom to share with the world. He was a martial artist from the old guard, a different breed of martial artist who made the development and propagation of his craft the focal point of his existence. Everything he did in life was connected to the arts, even how he walked into a room provided an opportunity to train and develop his skills, scanning the area for possible threats and assessing others in the room to determine if they were right or left handed, looking to see if they guarded one area of their body more than another, indicating a possible concealed carry. These are lessons passed on in conversation that would be shared with me over a meal or coffee and either at Denny’s or McDonalds, his two primary preferences for such conversations. Having spent nearly two decades with this man I never truly understood this level of commitment and dedication to the art, while I myself am passionate about the arts and practice daily, he committed nearly every minute and hour to his. In his world being a member of a martial arts pack or second best wouldn’t suffice, he thrived to be the very best and pushed his small circle of students to think and be the same. He would tell me in between low growls and when he wasn’t happy with my performance that he wasn’t looking to make mediocre martial artists, his goal was to create thinkers and exceptional martial artists. Mikie, don’t do it like that, why are you moving your foot like that, get out of the way if you don’t want to get hit, stop overthinking it, just do it; this is how he would push me to do more and improve. While I hated been lambasted this way and not pleasing him or not performing to his standard I would bask in the glory when in those rare moments he would say, yes Mikie like that, did you guys just see what Mikie just did, ah the sweet inoculation of his approval, something I still seek today even after his passing. Like a caring father he only wanted what was best for his students and he tried feverishly to pass on his years of knowledge before his time would come to join the ranks of the other warrior eagles of yesteryear.
It is unfortunate that martial arts and the training of the arts can bring about a negative perception of the practitioner by the general public; some may see us as knuckle dragging barbarians that only train for the goal of having the ability to inflict damage upon another human being. While this definition may hold true for a tiny majority of martial art practitioners, there are many who don’t just train for the purpose of self-defense or offense. Many of us who train in the arts may have a variety of reasons as to why we decided to train in the first place, I believe that those of us who stick it out year after year find that the journey has led them to a better understanding of themselves and how they see the world; a sort of transcendence to a very different way of looking at life and our role and purpose for living in it. For me, I began my training only as a means of self-protection, I was, by definition, a coward, fearful of nearly anything that walked, crawled and or slithered. I didn’t care about the history, artistry or the philosophical or psychological lessons that could be gleamed from the lessons and journey. Over time I quickly learned more about myself and my peers, as our training continued, bonds began to develop between myself and my classmates, this bond developed over shared suffering and adversity. When things got tough, we didn’t quit, there were times the only reason I stuck it out was because of my martial art brethren, it was easier to let myself down than to let members of my tribe down. During this journey I also began to see how others processed information, each having varying degrees of learning modalities, if a lesson was shared by my instructor and not easily understood by someone then it was up to the tribe to teach it from a slightly different perspective or explain it differently so that we could help them become better and so that we all could continue to progress together. Now as a teacher of the arts I try my best to make sure I understand the reason why my students train with me and I am constantly trying to find the best approach to passing on a lesson based on each individual learning modality. Some students train for the fitness aspect, some train for self-protection, and some train just because the activity is totally outside of anything they have ever done, and it challenges them physically and mentally. Regardless of the reason, if they stick it out and continue to face and overcome the challenges presented within the safety of the Dojo they soon find that the study of the arts opens doors to their soul and before long they also realize that they are part of a family or Ohana, where their peers and teacher will be there to help them through any adversity they may face both in and out of the Dojo. This is the path I have chosen to travel and a path I hope to serve as a guide for others willing to venture down this road that leads to fulfillment and transcendence, a road of twists and turns where there is no end, but rather a steady climb toward personal progress. -Black Wolf DeCuerdas Eskrima Club. As an instructor and lifetime student of the martial arts I have failed more times than I would care to admit. However, with each failure lies the birth of valuable experience and newly found wisdom, both critical pieces that can be used to build and decipher our own martial art puzzle. What is the martial art puzzle? It is our understanding of the art or arts we practice, the piecing together of all our martial art techniques, concepts and principles and the re-evaluation of our perception and approach to our martial understanding. The truth is that the puzzle is infinite because there is always room for improvement, refinement and obtainment of new skill. As an instructor, my responsibility to my students is to share all my failures, success and new insights and view of my martial puzzle, to give them an upper hand so that they may benefit from my own experiences. I tell my students that my job is to make them better than me, that is what I strive to do through my instruction. GM Art Gonzalez used the following analogy to explain the idea of working to make our student better than ourselves, “my job is to reach down and pull you up and thrust you above me and you in turn do the same with your students”. GM Art shared stories of how SGM Gilbert Tenio, would share keys of our DeCuerdas art with him and how his mind would be flooded with new information to the point in which he would become overwhelmed by the realization that his understand just rose to a new level. For me, I too have had these moments of epiphanies after GM Art spends a few minutes or a couple of hours with me, refining my martial art knowledge. These epiphanies usually happen when I try and lie my head down to sleep and while I am thinking about a martial art lesson I just had, or a lesson I have seen. A couple of days ago I had a similar experience/revelation, while referencing some of my notebooks and many loose slips of papers containing martial art notes and scribbles. However this time it (new pieces to my puzzle) was more than I had ever experienced in the past. The only way I can describe this epiphany is like that moment when you are looking at an “autostereogram”, which in laymen’s term, is a specially designed picture that has a picture hidden within it which is only revealed after you stare at it for some time. After looking at all my notes laid out before me the end result was a cascade of information that changed the entire way I viewed our system which will now change my method of instruction. I know that I cannot be the only martial artist that has experienced something similar, the bewitching feeling of a new insight, that Archimedes moment of “Eureka”, a new revealed idea that send a shiver you’re your spine and one that immediately adds a dozen more pieces to our never-ending puzzle! I suppose the point of my verbose rambling is to say that if we are not constantly sharing, reviewing and re-evaluating our thoughts and ideas about the arts we practice we miss out on this eureka moments. The more I share with my students I have found that they too are teaching me and contributing to my puzzle, I have said on more than one occasion to a student while observing “what the hell did you just do” and then follow up with “wow you came up with that, that’s a good technique and it’s a keeper”. So as we approach the end of 2018, perhaps it is a good time to re-evaluate our martial art principles, concepts and basics movements, hidden within them you may find a significant revelation, a hidden jewel that will further add to the development of your own puzzle.
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AuthorHello I am Mike Cardenas, Head Eskrima Instructor at the VEA Martial Arts Academy in Manteca CA. Thanks for visiting my blog page. Archives
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