Taekwondo Techniques

Great for building stamina and great for maintaining overall health. Oh and yes how can you forget self defense? Know what I am talking about? The mind-blowing martial arts! Thanks to the Orient, the world has got such a wide variety of martial arts to practice and benefit from. One of them is the Korean martial art Taekwondo. Taekwondo basically involves striking with your feet accompanied by your fists. Akin to other martial arts, this art, one of the most popularly in the world, combines self defense, fighting technique, exercise, philosophy and meditation. In fact, this is the beauty of learning martial arts. In this article, however, there will be a description of the basic techniques of taekwondo.

Taekwondo Techniques and Tactics

Stances
Before the techniques and moves, something called a "stance" is taught to a taekwondo practitioner. There are a few stances which are adopted to get into kicking and punching positions. Stances are primary techniques for beginners. The types of stances are -

Normal Stance
Here the legs are positioned shoulder width apart and the hands are in front, at chest level, and palms made into fists.

Horseback Stance
This is a position in which the fists are placed at the waist level, with legs a bit more wide than shoulder width.

Back Stance
In this stance, the person steps ahead with one foot and keeps the other one back. It is somewhat a side stance.

Hard or Linear Techniques
These techniques comprise the attacking arsenal of a taekwondo practitioner. Kicks, punches, headbutts and other methods used for striking are included in this.

Hand Techniques
There are closed hand strikes and open hand techniques involved in taekwondo hand techniques. Punches can be executed in several positions, from jumping, spinning, to standing or a forward rushing movement. Some of the hand strikes are-

• Forefist - where a hand is thrust out to strike with knuckles.
• Backfist - here a clenched hand is swung backwards into the opponent's face.
• Knife hand is a technique where an open hand is hammered down with all power impacting with the underside.
• Palm heel is amongst the classic defense strikes where the base of the palm is engaged in a thrusting strike upwards.

These were the most popular, deadly and basic hand techniques in taekwondo. There are a few more martial arts techniques related to taekwondo which as a person gets to know as he learns the art in depth.

Kicks
Having practiced taekwondo a bit myself, kicks is what I like the most. Although they are extremely tiring when you practice, but they are the crux of this art. Kicks are the base of an offensive against the opponent. Some of the fundamental kicks are -

• Front kick - In this kick, the practitioner raises his knee till his/her waist, followed by pulling back of toes and immediately extending foot in the direction of the target.
• Roundhouse Kick is a kick where the practitioner lifts his knee, hips turned, gets support on the other foot and then snaps the kick in a horizontal manner at the target between 80 and 90 degree angle.
• Outer Crescent Kick is a kick where an extended leg is raised as high as possible, a bit across the centerline of the body. Then it is swept outward to the side in a circular movement.
• Inner Crescent is the same as outer crescent just that this time the kick originates outside the body and comes in.
• Ax kick is a kick where the leg is raised in front of your body and it is pulled down with force with heel pointed down. The leg is kept as straight as possible, when it is being raised.

There are many more techniques when it comes to kicks, like hook kick, side kick, reverse side kick, spin kicks, jump kicks and many more advanced kicks. These are taught as you go to advanced levels of practicing taekwondo.

Soft or Circular Techniques
These techniques focus more on manipulating the attacks from the opponent in your defense. These emphasize on manipulation instead of a display of strength. These mainly include throws, pressure point applications, joint locks and freeing techniques (to free yourselves from the opponent's grip). There are a number of throws and grappling techniques which are taught at an advanced level. For achieving an expertise in this, taekwondo sparring techniques are used by the practitioners.

In addition to this, there is a something called breaking, an important ­aspect of taekwondo. It refers to breaking of boards, bricks and stuff like that, mostly done in competitions. Power breaking, is one type in which the power of a technique, used by a person, is measured by breaking of single or multiple stacked boards. The other, speed breaking involves monitoring how fast the person reacts. The board (to be broken) which is held or tossed in the air has to be kicked with correct speed and in correct area to be broken.

Well, that was about taekwondo techniques. I hope you found this interesting. Cheers!