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From Basic To Advanced, Taekwondo Is All About The Kicks

Taekwondo is famous for its kicks. Unlike other martial arts that center their moves more on hand movements, Taekwondo puts more emphasis on the feet and legs. Taekwondo kicks range from the basic front kick to the more elaborate and difficult spinning axe kick.

When learning the different Taekwondo kicks, you will spend time learning them in both Poomse and Sparring. Poomse is where you practice your moves in a pattern almost like a choreographed dance. It is very structured and must be done with precise accuracy. When performing your kicks in Poomse, you must maintain balance, use proper form, exercise control and deliver power. All these aspects must me taken into consideration when performing the kicks. This takes many hours of practice to achieve the best result. When performing your kicks while sparring, you will still be expected to execute with precision and accuracy but they tend to be more exciting and fun to watch.

Some of the basic kicks you will learn in Taekwondo are the front kick, back kick and side kick. These are pretty self explanatory in that you do basically what the name implies.

Some more advanced kicks found in Taekwondo are:

Axe Kick
In this kick the person raises their knee, extends their leg and then pulls down with their heel pointed down.

Hook Kick
Here you raise your knee as you would in a side kick, then extend your foot in an arc with your heel striking the victim.

Roundhouse Kick
For this kick you would start by raising your knee then turning while pulling your toes back and then extending the kick horizontally across the target at about a forty five degree angle.

Crescent Kick
This Kick can be performed as either an outer or inner crescent. To do the outer, you raise your leg as high as you can, keeping it across your body a bit, you then sweep to the side in a circular movement.

There are also some more advanced spinning and jumping kicks that can be learned as you move forward in your training. These include the flying side kick, the spinning hook kick, the jump roundhouse and more. While these are more difficult to master, they are also very impressive to watch!

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