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Unilateral Performance Comparison for Taekwondo Kicks between Dominant Leg and Non-Dominant Leg

2010; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5103/kjsb.2010.20.2.183

2093-9752

Young-Kwan Kim, Yoon-Hyuk Kim,

Winter Sports Injuries and Performance

The balanced performance of dominant and non-dominant leg is very important to Taekwondo sparring. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether elite Taekwondo athletes would have balanced biomechanical performance and intra-limb coordination in executing different types of Taekwondo kicks. Twelve athletes(more than 10 year practice experience) participated in this study and performed six basic kicks(i.e., the front, roundhouse, side, back, thrashing, and turning-back kick). Results indicated no statistical difference on response time, peak kicking velocity, single limb vertical jump height, and angle-angle plot between dominant leg and non-dominant leg(p>.05). In conclusion, elite Taekwondo athletes had equivalent ability between dominant leg and non-dominant leg in performing Taekwondo kicks. This might be an advantage to elite athletes for Taekwondo sparring because they could use both leg without any restriction.