ANALYSIS OF THE KICKING LEG IN TAEKWONDO

Abstract

The kinetic analysis using engineering dynamic equations have been used to enhance the understanding of segmental movements. The resultant muscular torque, the results of the kinetic analysis has provided insight on the interplay between muscular action and movements of the body segment (Dillman, 1970; Miller and Nelson, 1976). Elftman(1940) studied a sprinter to determine the rate of muscular work while Plagenhoef (1968) investigated the patterns of muscular torque for the leg during distance running. Plagenhoef (1968) also compared the muscular torque patterns of the leg during a subject ran with and without ankle weights in the study and reported that an entirely different pattern of muscular torque was observed when running with ankle weights. Dillman (1970) developed the techniques for performing kinetic analysis and showed the way of obtaining various types of information that may be obtained from such an analysis. He reported resultant muscular torque patterns, sequence of dominant muscular group activity and pattern of the types of muscular contraction of the recovery leg during sprint running using six male subject in the study. R.F. Zernick and E.M. Roberts (1976) analyzed the relative contribution of selected kicking limb segments to systematic increments in resultant limb velocity using the dynamic equations based on a total of 45 soccer toe kicks. Phillips, Roberts and Huang(1978) calculated the non-muscular interaction of the thigh and shank in the soccer kick. Phillips ond Robert (1980) also modeled and calculated the nonmuscular interaction of the thigh and shank in the swing limb of runners. Although the kinetic analysis of the segmental movements provides important informations, the reported research has been limitted to running and soccer kick, In order to increase our understanding about th segmental movements many segmental movements involved in other sports skill must be analyzed. The Taekwondo, Korean traditional martial art, has been developed as an world wide sport and involved various kind of kicking techniques. However very little of the reported research has been devoted to their investigations.