Thoughts on Triangles

The following is from Retha's keyboard and also features on eSAITF as message #348:

Seminars with master Kim are always an experience. Since this seminar comes as a new deal between him, our kwan and a sister/brother kwan (is a kwan male or female?), he has started revising the very basics of Taekwon-Do with us.

He spent some time, showing us the angles in our triangles :-) I knew this before, but I never knew it like this. In any technique a triangle can be formed in multiple ways. The interesting thing is that in some guards and hand techniques the three points are represented by your body. In a stance, for good balance the third point is outside of your body; your body forming the base of the triangle. If you want to topple your opponent, you would attack him from the direction of the empty point. And interestingly enough, at some point he also demonstrated that in some cases (specifically sparring) the third point becomes your opponent. I think he showed the base points in your body, but when I think about it in sparring there is an empty point. You and your opponent would form the base of the triangle, while the third point represents the direction you could move in: moving towards the empty point gives you the most chance of successful flight, moving from the best chance of successful attack. It seems that there are triangles everywhere.

These two pictures are from the ITF Encyclopaedia depicting the triangle in the parallel stance and L-stance punches.