The Lesson of the Triangle

In other eskrima styles, they talk about the male or female triangle, drawing it on the ground or on the floor or using sticks to outline it and employing the footwork in drills and other modes of training.

For me, however, there was no one to teach me that way and I probably wouldn’t have wanted to be taught so, given my bias for traditional modes of instruction.  The triangle stepping I have been practicing is not distinguished as to male or female and is mastered by making a triangle of three halves of coconut husks or shells and playing eskrima upon it, or just stepping around without looking at your feet for possibly hours on end.

The husks would be placed on equidistant points, spaced at a pace apart.  Years before I met my teacher, I would do this for several hours at any one session that I did decide to practice, which was not often.  I did this because this was what elders told me was one of the ways of traditional eskrima.  And because I wanted to learn through the old ways.

I had not yet met my teacher then, but I had already learned some eskrima and I would say at that time that I was better than some practitioners and thought myself adequately skilled.  An opinion of myself which I now no longer hold.

What did I learn from working on the triangle?  I learned about balance and my own proportions.  But what I consider the most important lesson from triangle stepping is that there is always a third point.

The lesson of the triangle is that the feet are two points and the third point is that one step forward, backward, or sideward which I take to regain balance, to gain leverage, to evade or redirect an attack, or to close distance.  Whatever the position, that third point is always there and one should never think that he is out of options.

How is this of use to the eskrimador?  Let’s state it this way: Footwork should be second nature to an eskrimador.  It should be something that moves by itself, not something that one has to think actively about while engaged in a fight.  It should not be a reaction through perception, but a reaction through sensation, in much the same way that doing chi sao teaches speed and sensitivity in wing chun.

In eskrima, triangle stepping is the way to mastering footwork.