A biomechanical analysis of the Taekwondo front thrust kick

The purpose of this study was to analyze the Taekwondo front thrust kick, through the instruments of high speed cinematography and impulse recording. Biomechanical differences in the Taekwondo front thrust kick between expert and novice groups, and differences from those of the soccer place kick and football punt kick were also included to analyze the main factors involved in the Taekwondo front thrust kick.;Five expert and five novice subjects were filmed with five landmarks. The target, on which the impulse measuring device of Kynar Piezo film was attached, was kicked with subject's ball of the foot. The relative impulse output was recorded and converted to real impulse units, after following dynamic calibration of the impulse measuring device. Analysis of variance with repeated measures for all variables were calculated between levels of experience, and correlation coefficients between the impulse and the kinematic variables were also calculated.;The results showed that none of the variables were significantly different between the different levels of experience at the 0.05 level, except for the maximum vertical linear acceleration of the hip marker. Total impulse was slightly correlated to height and weight. The maximum resultant velocity of the metatarso-phalangeal (MP) marker was highly correlated to the maximum vertical component. The maximum resultant velocity of MP had a fairly high relationship to the maximum segmental angular velocity of the shank and slight relationship to the maximum intersegmental angular velocity of the knee joint. The negative segmental angular acceleration of the thigh segment started 76 ms (33%) later than the zero crossing point of the angular velocity of the shank segment. The kinematics of Taekwondo front kick showed overall lower magnitudes and different timing as well as different pattern than those of soccer place and football punt kicks.;It was concluded that there was no significant difference for total impulse at impact and related kinematics between expert and novice subjects in this experiment. Therefore, all the hypotheses were rejected. The patterns of kinematics and overall values of the Taekwondo front thrust kick were different from those of the football punt and soccer place kicks.