The effects of back-step footwork on taekwondo roundhouse kick for the counterattack

The roundhouse kick is the most often used kick in Taekwondo sparring matches. In order to execute the effective kicks, footwork is critical. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to biomechanically examine the effects of backstep-footwork on the Taekwondo roundhouse kick for the counterattack. Ten male university Taekwondo athletes executed roundhouse kicks with five counterattack footwork conditions. The duration of the phases of the kick, the center of mass displacement, trunk, right hip, right knee angles, and kicking thigh, shin, foot, and toe velocities were obtained through a three-dimensional video motion analysis. These variables were compared to the conditions using repeated measure analysis of variance, and changed significantly in response to different footwork conditions. It was concluded that as the footwork distance increased, the center of the body became lower, the trunk angle reduced, the kick-leg increased foot speed. Therefore, it would be necessary to make efforts to compensate for the strengths and weaknesses of the various types of kicks that are used to invalidate the opponent's attack and to increase the contribution of each body segment.