Ph.D., Associate Professor O.B. Malkov
Applicant M.Yu. Kalashnikov
Russian State University of Physical Culture, Sport, Youth and Tourism (GTsOLIFK), Moscow

Keywords: response time in combat interactions, start-up move, readiness to start in any direction, alternative actions from the same position, combat response time test, taekwondo

Introduction

In modern competitive taekwondo, sport excellence systems are mostly designed to increase the speed of strikes and kicks, with notably less attention being paid to the timing factors of the responsive mental-and-motor actions in a wide variety of combat interactions. However, as seen from analysis of the practical competitive experience, delays in situations favorable for attacks are often too long.

Starting movements in martial arts and sport games play the top priority role in the tough time-limited combat situations; and the strike/kick start-up efficiency is largely dependent on the athlete’s response time and may differ depending on whether the response is triggered by standard conditionality or time-driven that means that the response is selective or requires attention being switched. This problem was addressed back in 1599 by fencing instructor George Silver who was once asked “Is it an attack or defense that gives advantage to the fighter?” and responded that the Science of Defense in unlikely perfect in any of its components, hence the beliefs in perfection are wrong for the reason that neither attacker nor defender has some advantage in any fight. The only way to get advantage is to make the attacking range (distance) at the right stride, interval and pace, regardless of whether you attack or defend.

Modern sport terminology offers the following three factors decisive for success at the moment of combat collision: range (distance) that may be broken down into attacking (kicking) and pre-attacking distance; maneuvering that is designed to solve the tactical problems in making the attacking range; and the response time meaning the timing of the fast-response readiness process, including the interval- and pace-specific time factors. The response time may be interpreted as the speed of mental processes in the latent response phase plus the action efficiency of the active (motor) component of the response.

Our concept of martial art tactics describes this situation as the optimal stride into the attacking range with the athlete being ready to start responding to the complex combat situation in the triggered-response mode that means that the athlete is fully ready to perform a fast attacking or defensive action. The opponent, if he/she has failed to do the same, will have to perform additional actions to adjust the stance, position, hold of the weapon, restart the movement etc., plus make mental realignment at the moment when it may be too late and, therefore, the late action may result in a waste of time and even defeat.

George Silver was fully aware of the above problem and that is why he set forth the solution (in the additional statements about the right behavior in the collision startup situation) in one of the so-called four fight control rules – that is the “dual thinking” pattern in the active combat phase. It basically implies that in your intention to attack you shall be prepared to jump back if required in response to the opponent’s counteraction. This dual thinking rule, therefore, is focused on the action start-up readiness moment when the athlete is ready to move in either direction from the same position to attack or defend.

When the fast kicking techniques are mastered by the athlete, due attention should be given to the fact that certain time is needed for preliminary mental tuning for the action, and this time will notably slow down the athlete’s response both in favorable (attacking) and dangerous (defensive) situations. The stronger is the strike or kick the athlete is going to make, the more time is required for the athlete to pre-tune his body and mind for the offensive action. It should be noted that pace-driven scoring strikes generally claim less pre-tuning time than the power strikes.

The strike pre-tuning problem is due to the fact that favorable situation may be fully used only when the athlete is in the ready-to-start position to be able to perform the attack or defense as fast as possible. It is for this reason that an athlete needs to develop and perfect the ready-to-start positioning skills when he/she is at the pre-striking distance, otherwise there is no way to correct the delays in the attacking/ defensive response.

The strike/ kick performance technique in practical combat situations is subject to special strict requirements. In contrast to the widely recognized importance of the ready-to-start timing skills, the role of the attack finishing and attack follow-up skills is normally recognized by the coaches only in the sport excellence stage when the athlete comes to defeats due to the drawbacks in his/her strike performance tactics.

The striking skill mastering process shall give due priority to the technique of going back to the fighting stance upon completion of the strike with the attack finishing or follow-up action. In view of the fact that the striking skills may be performed in a wide variety of tactical and technical patterns, the relevant fast performance and finishing skills will be developed with due consideration for the relevant combat interactions with the opponents.

The purpose of the study was to substantiate the ready-to-start-attack positioning and the attack finishing procedures classified into the starting, attacking (striking) and defensive actions in bouts.

Materials and methods

Our experiments were designed to rate the taekwondo kicking speeds in the alternative situations offering a free choice between offensive/ defensive actions when mastering a base attacking skill, namely the defense-advancing attack by roundhouse “dollyo chagi” kick (side kick by the leg) with the attack finishing jump-back action.

Offensive/ defensive kick speed was tested by the same exercise being performed seven times. The preliminary and final tests were designed as follows. The tested athlete will take the fighting stance at far distance from the boxing bag. As soon as the yellow light switches on, the athlete will jump into the kicking distance; then, with the green light signal, he will kick the boxing bag with his rear leg as fast as possible and finish the attack; or perform jump-back defensive action with the red light signal. The test performance sequence was fixed by a high-speed video camera, with the video captures rated at 240 frames per second after being processed by the computer tools. The video data gives the means to mark times of the individual actions with an accuracy of up to 4.13 ms.

The defense-advancing attacking kicks were performed seven times for the purposes of speed rating by the tests. Of these seven attempts, the best performance sequence (with the best time track) was chosen for the analysis.

Study results and discussion

Given in the following table are the consolidated outcomes of the preliminary and final tests to rate speeds of the defense-advancing roundhouse “dollyo chagi” kick (side kick with the leg) with the attack finishing jump-back action.

The response action time in the alternative action choice situation will depend on the athlete's ready-to-start positioning time. Our technical data analysis shows that the offensive/ defensive action startup in the alternative action choice situation differs from the predictable start triggered by the agreed signal.