Journal articles on the topic 'Kicking (Football) Physiological aspects'

Perception relates not only to the optical information from the environment but also to the perceiver's performance on a given task. We present evidence that the perceived height and width of an American-football field goal post relates to the perceiver's kicking performance. Participants who made more successful kicks perceived the field goal posts to be farther apart and perceived the crossbar to be closer to the ground compared with participants who made fewer kicks. Interestingly, the current results show perceptual effects related to performance only after kicking the football but not before kicking. We also found that the types of performance errors influenced specific aspects of perception. The more kicks that were missed left or right of the target, the narrower the field goal posts looked. The more kicks that were missed short of the target, the taller the field goal crossbar looked. These results demonstrate that performance is a factor in size perception.

The topic of the research is part of the sphere of interest of the specialists in the field, dealing with one of the most important aspects within the training process of footballers aged 10-12 years. The importance of this study is represented by the use of specially selected software for the purpose of optimizing biomechanics in the game of football. The objectives of the research are aimed at optimizing the biomechanics of kicking the ball at the age of 10-12 years by means of three basic procedures. Within the research were used the method of studying the specialized literature, the method of pedagogical experiment, the method of graphic representation, the statistical method – mathematics. Within the pedagogical experiment method, a series of tests were applied specially designed for the investigation of the components of proprioception, which have a basic role in optimizing the biomechanics of hitting the ball in the game of football. Following the analysis and interpretation of the results, it was found the validity of the research hypothesis through the progress made by the research subjects at the final testing compared to the initial one. The conclusions of the research recommend the validated experimental model within the method of training of children aged 10-12 years for the optimization of the biomechanics of kicking the ball.

This study aimed to analyze the kinematical characteristics values of accurate penalty-kicking for Turkish football players in goalkeeper confrontation. Fifteen male Turkish Regional Amateur League players (Age: 21.08± 1.56 years old) was scanned, by two video cameras synchronous in two-dimensional (2D), placed at optical axes X&Y. the best three tries of penalty kicking performance were analyzed by video analysis Dartfish 9.0 software. Standard statistical methods were used for the calculation of mean±sd, Pearson test for the correlations between all variables. A value of p-value ≤ 0.05 was considered a threshold of statistical significance. The results were shown in the ball contact phase that the distance pivot foot & ball factor has a statistically significant effect in producing accuracy (p-value=.001), and the interaction between two main factors namely the trunk and inclination body angles has a statistically significant effect with a p-value≤.05 in producing accuracy too. In addition, in the followthrough phase, we can see too the statistically significant effect in p-value≤.005 of the trunk angle, and in pvalue≤.05 of the thighs angle in producing accuracy. As a conclusion, it can be conveyed that the distance between the support leg and the ball is very decisive for the kinematic profile formed such as contraction of the abdominal muscles (trunk angle), the amortization process (the pivot leg angle), shot power (angle and length of the shot leg swing trajectory), where these aspects are significantly affected to the shot power, ball velocity and the level of accuracy.

Football is the most important and popular sport in the world, being influenced by several aspects and generating a billion dollar financial income. The constant scientific advancement of the modality allows a rapid evolution of football, being important to constantly review aspects of its dynamics and, consequently, its laws. The aim of this work is to analyze and argue, based on several aspects, e.g., evolution of the modality, physiological aspects, incidence of injuries, relationship with the media and economic aspects, etc., if there is a need to increase substitutions in modern professional football matches. In order to achieve this objective, a wide bibliographic research on the most important aspects of football was used.. As demonstrated throughout the text, according to the constant changes that have occurred in various aspects related to football over the years, there is a need for changes in the regulations to meet the need and provide a greater evolution of the modality. In this way, we believe that the increase in the number of substitutions can be very beneficial for football in general, mainly to make the modality more dynamic and attractive to the spectators.

Context: The nature of Australian rules football (Australian football) predisposes both unique and common injuries compared with those sustained in other football codes. The game involves a combination of tackling, kicking, high-speed running (more than other football codes), and jumping. Two decades of injury surveillance has identified common injuries at the professional level (Australian Football League [AFL]). Objective: To provide an overview of injuries in Australian rules football, including injury rates, patterns, and mechanisms across all levels of play. Study Design: A narrative review of AFL injuries, football injury epidemiology, and biomechanical and physiological attributes of relevant injuries. Results: The overall injury incidence in the 2015 season was 41.7 injuries per club per season, with a prevalence of 156.2 missed games per club per season. Lower limb injuries are most prevalent, with hamstring strains accounting for 19.1 missed games per club per season. Hamstring strains relate to the volume of high-speed running required in addition to at times having to collect the ball while running in a position of hip flexion and knee extension. Anterior cruciate ligament injuries are also prevalent and can result from contact and noncontact incidents. In the upper limb, shoulder sprains and dislocations account for 11.5 missed games per club per season and largely resulted from tackling and contact. Concussion is less common in AFL than other tackling sports but remains an important injury, which has notably become more prevalent in recent years, theorized to be due to a more conservative approach to management. Although there are less injury surveillance data for non-AFL players (women, community-level, children), many of these injuries appear to also be common across all levels of play. Clinical Relevance: An understanding of injury profiles and mechanisms in Australian football is crucial in identifying methods to reduce injury risk and prepare players for the demands of the game.

The goal: comparative analysis of psycho-physiological fitness of football players and differently skilled football referees. Research materials and methods. We studied indicators of psychomotor status, the level of development of speed and volitional qualities, subject-activity and communicative aspects of temperament of 15 football players aged 19-21, with the experience of sport training from 10 to 13 years, and 25 football referees of the first rank aged 25-32, with the experience of refereeing from 5 to 9 years. We compared the outcomes to identify the trend of convergence of the level of studied indicators. Research results and discussion. The study has demonstrated that about 50% of all subjects have a medium-weak type of nervous system, but there are referees with a strong type (16%). We have revealed that football players and referees have no significant difference in the period of implementation of the audio-motor reaction. Visio-motor reaction of football players is 16.44 ± 0.45 msec, which is faster than the reaction of referees by 10.6% (p <0.05). Repeated sprint ability of referees and players was not significantly different, average indicator at 40 m intervals was 5.63 sec. for referees and 5.25 sec. for players. Football referees demonstrate a very high work pace - 10.3 ± 0.32 c.u., life pace, activity, high rhythm of operations. Emotional background of players at work and in social communication was 6.0±0,59 c.u. and of 6.80 c.u. respectively, and it was twice higher than the indicators of referees (p< 0.001). Vitality indicators were the same for both groups. Conclusion. Modern football requires that a referee should obtain a new, higher level of physical and psychological training. Most of the quantitative indicators of the studied parameters of players and referees did not have significant difference, while the moral-volitional and emotional components differed significantly.

It is a very common phenomenon to have ankle injuries during sports. Therefore, the detection of ankle injuries has become a concern theme of scholars. It is of great significance to realize the ankle apparent strain measurement quickly in colleges and universities. In this paper, a data mining algorithm-based approach to measuring the apparent strain of the ankle joint in football sports is proposed. This paper first analyzes and integrates the research results of scholars and then expounds from the two aspects of data mining and ankle apparent strain measurement. The method is introduced in detail, and the principle of apparent strain measurement is explained by the formula. The feasibility and robustness of the research scheme are then demonstrated through specific experimental data. The data showed that there was a difference between the boy group and the girl group in the time of jumping, kicking, and reaching the ground (significant level P = 0.026 ).

Marma is very important topic of Ayurveda, it is also related with trauma and its effect on body. As mentioned in Sushrut Samhita, excruciating pain is produced when there is any injury at the site of Rujakar Marma. In routine any type of pain affects daily activities which is mostly found in sports. Trauma is important aspect of sport medicine as it could hamper whole carrier of sport person. Ayurveda being a complete science of health care can contribute in this field also. Principles, treatment modalities, diet & drugs of Ayurveda can play very useful & im- portant role in this field. In Football game, very rigorous activities are involved which causes direct effect on joints, ligaments, muscles of their extremities. Physical interaction between players can cause contusion, severe pain etc. which affect the player’s game. So, it is necessary to study the Marma sharir through aspects of sports medicine. Also, there is need to protect the Marma sites from trauma to avoid future problems. In present study we are trying to establish relation between science of Marma especially the RujakarMarma & sports medicine. For this we se- lected football game. In this game, chances of injury on Rujakar Marma are more prone. So, the detailed knowledge of Rujakar Marma is useful in prevention of injury in football players. Study shows the commonest site of injury to be ankle joint with inflammation followed by sprain due to kicking. Also, the highly affected marma is Ru- jakar Marma specially Gulpha Marma along with vedana, shopha, stabhdapadata. Keywords: Marma, Rujakar Marma, football, Gulpha Marma, sprain

ABSTRACT All aspects of development are very important in a person's life where the development of cognition, affection and psychomotor is well developed in accordance with its development, these three aspects can be said to be good and successful if the three aspects develop well. Like wise with the psychomotor aspect where between gross motor and fine motor are also balanced. Motoric is the development of coordinated body movement control between nerves, brain, and spinal cord (spinal cord or spinal cord). Child's gross motorization can be optimized by improving his motor movement coordination skills through physical activity in the form of coordination of body movements. Like throwing, catching, kicking, running, melopat, and maintaining balance. The condition of a Down Syndrome child who experiences weakness in the ability to think will affect in all aspects of his life. Down syndrome children have problems in cognitive abilities, effective and self-care abilities. This results in them needing special education. Basically, the educational goals that children with Down Syndrome want to achieve are not different from those of education in general. Because Down Syndrome children themselves are born in the midst of society. Keywords: football sports, gross motoric, down syndrome

Abstract Introduction: Sport for people with disabilities has interested scientists for a long time. However, there is a scarcity of research on the subject of amputee football – football adapted to individuals after amputations. The aim of the study was to describe this sport and to review research carried out in this field so far. When looking for investigations on amputee football, the available computer databases (Academic Search Complete, SPORTdiscus, MEDLINE, Health Source, Master-FILE Premier) were searched comprehensively. The following key words were used to identify proper articles: amputee football, football + amputations, crutch football. Also, the following article inclusion criteria were applied: (A) original scientific paper, (B) available full text of paper, (C) paper published in a peer-reviewed journal, (D) paper published in the English language. Eleven articles that met the criteria were selected for the analysis. Description of amputee football: The description of amputee football included the history of the sport in the world and in Poland, rules of the game and players’ classification. Amputee football in research: The articles selected for the review were divided into three categories: 1) psychological and social aspects, 2) anthropomotorics and nutrition, 3) endurance, physical capacity and speed abilities. . Summary: The majority of studies carried out so far have focused on general characteristics of amputee football players and the effects of this sport on the functioning of individuals after amputations. Future studies ought to involve injury-related aspects as well as training effectiveness on the basis of physiological parameters.

Authentic assessment at school has generally been carried out, but has not been supported by a tested assessment instrument. The purpose of this study was to produce a valid, reliable, and practical assessment instrument in learning soccer kicking material. The research method used is research and development involving 3 expert assessments, namely, Information Technology Experts, and Sport and health physical education teachers. The expert validation instrument has 4 categories, namely invalid, less valid, valid, very valid. For data analysis, the validity level used the Aiken's V formula, while knowing the reliability level of the instrument used the Cronbach alpha formula assisted by SPSS 16.0. The results of the content validation analysis of all items were valued above 0.3, which means that all aspects assessed by the expert were valid. The reliability test of the assessment instrument using Cronbach's alpha was obtained a value of 0.747. The practicality test of the assessment instrument in the form of a website has a value of 85%. It can be concluded that the instrument application has a very high level of practicality. This study serves to increase the reference data of researchers and of course it can be used by teachers in conducting assessments.

The article analyzes the features of the training process of football students during sports improvement. The content of training of young football players in the preparatory period, which includes more effective training methods, based on the results of testing the level of physical and technical and tactical fitness. It is determined that the management of the training process of football players is a complex process, because the object of management - a person with its many physiological, morphological and psychological-pedagogical features and their unique manifestations. Therefore, effective management of football players' training is the ability to properly plan and regularly monitor it on the basis of systematic information. Among such non-traditional means, in our opinion, there are exercises of adaptive-strengthening character which allow to strengthen the musculoskeletal system of the lower extremities, thereby expanding opportunities of increase of special physical training of football players and decrease in sports injuries. Of course, they should be used in combination with traditional physical and technical-tactical exercises and used as additional factors that contribute to the expansion of the functional boundaries of the musculoskeletal system. Improving the management of the training process based on the generalization and analysis of the structure of competitive activities of football players and the general laws of sportsmanship is one of the promising research areas in the field of methods of sports training in football. In particular, they point to the need to plan training loads, which can lead to improved aspects of football training.

This paper seeks to review the literature and address ethical implications of organized contact sports, such as American football and boxing, with significant child or adolescent participation. Child and adolescent sport participation act not only as a leisure activity, but also improves physical health and enhances psychological and social health outcomes. However, playing sports may also have negative physiological effects, such as sports-related concussions (SRCs) - a form of traumatic brain injury (TBI) - which are an emerging public health concern. This paper review and explores ethical implications of contact sports in the scientific literature and demonstrates challenged faced on philosophical deliberation on the ethical implications of SRCs and RHIs due to complexities of these conditions and their identification and treatment involving a wide variety of practical situations, which formal sports rules may not adequately address. Since scholarly literature has yet to arrive at a consensus concerning causal link(s) between contact sports participation and significant concussion-related brain damage, the paper argues in favor of strengthening concussion preventive measures, identification protocols and management procedures in contact sports. This article rejects ethical paternalism on the basis of inconclusive empirical evidence concerning associations between contact sports participation and heightened SRC risk. It also rejects Mill’s argumentation against consensualism and suggests prevention is a better solution over inadequately founded philosophical ethical proposals favoring drastically reforming contact sports.

Abstract Theoretically, this paper offers a complementary, applied scientific research, regarding the development of juniors specific speed, one of the more important aspects to be considered in current soccer game conditions. In soccer, speed directly affects the player’s ability to move his body in the shortest amount of time and for the optimal distance. Thus, the player’s speed has the same physiological and biochemical mechanics and the same underlying particularities as every other manifestation of speed. Still, there are aspects that concern the soccer player’s speed in particular, as we have previously shown, there are specifics that separate this type of speed from that of the athlete or of the volleyball player. From a proffessional point of view we can clearly state that speed has different qualities depending on the type of sport in which it is used. In consequence it is a subject of high interest for all branches of the sport world, and has a decisive impact when trying to achieve performance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the means of improving the game speed of junior soccer players between 16 and 18 years of age, who are already in an advanced state of training, through a set of given tasks. The reason for choosing this subject is based on the need of finding and testing a model of developing speed in juniors of that age so that better results in their training can be obtained.

The aim of this contribution is to summarize the state of the functional characteristics of soccer players. Th e key points addressed in the study are motion model structures player in the game and physiological parameters that can aff ect a player‘s performance in the match. Physiological parameters and model physical structures in football are addressed in a number of studies and constantly stress the need for sophisticated scientifi c approach to the player‘s performance in the game. In the survey study, we proceed from the results and conclusions of studies published in foreign scientifi c journals or presented at important posts of scientifi c conferences. Player positions are characterized by distinct physical demands in the model motion structure and bioenergetic expenditure and planning training process should respect the following aspects. Players must match within a short period of time to react to changes in direction or manage football in the intensity of locomotion. During the match aerobic and anaerobic overlap metabolism in terms of intensity loads. Th e player must repeatedly perform in a match of high intensity activity with rapid recovery of energy resources and delaying the maximum fatigue emerging. Th e diff erence between elite players and lower level is the amount of physical activities performed at high intensities. Due to fatigue at the end of the game players appear less smooth coordination and implementation of technical skills. Based on surveillance studies diff erent views and determinants of the functional readiness of the player were identifi ed. Th e dominant role is played by the following criteria: player´s level (professional, amateur, etc.), competition (international, national, etc.), post player, tasks player´s stage game and game system.

Abstract Aim: Physical conditioning of youth has always been a controversial topic as it raises ethical, physiological, and medical issues. Current recommendations and guidelines suggest that strength training is a relatively safe and worthwhile method in conditioning youth. This, however, requires well-informed coaches who follow age-appropriate strength training recommendations and guidelines, compiles well-designed strength training programs, and provides qualified supervision and instructions. The purpose of this study was to investigate coaches’ awareness of current recommendations and guidelines regarding strength training for youth. Method: A total of 39 football (US: soccer) coaches (34 males and 5 females) training boys in age groups 8–12 years were included in this study. Data were collected using an attitude statement questionnaire, and the assertions were based upon current recommendations and guidelines. Results: The results revealed significant differences among coaches in terms of knowledge of important aspects of strength training for youth. Conclusions: The results suggested that coaches in the present study were not aware of the latest recommendations and guidelines regarding strength training for youth.

Studying fatigue is challenging because it is influenced by physiological, psychological, and sociological states. Fatigue can be assessed objectively or subjectively, but the literature has difficulty understanding how an analytical test relates to a response via a questionnaire. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationships between objective fatigue variables (Squat Jump (SJ) and Countermovement Jump (CMJ)) measured on day-2 to the game and subjective fatigue (Rating Perceived Exertion (RPE) measured on day-3 to the game and Hooper Index (HI) measured on day-2). The sample comprised 32 professional football players from the First Portuguese League aged 25.86 ± 3.15 years. The Spearman correlations and regression analyses were used to study the relationships between the variables. The results showed statistically significant (p < 0.05) but small correlations (0.113–0.172) between several objective metrics and the subjective metrics evaluated. In addition, we found two weak models with statistical significance (p < 0.05) between the dependent objective variables (contact time, height, and elasticity index) and the HI (R2 = 3.7%) and RPE (R2 = 1.6%). Also, nine statistically significant (p < 0.05) but weak models were observed between the subjective dependent variables (HI and RPE) and contact time (R2 = 1.8–2.7%), flight time (R2 = 1.1–1.9%), height (R2 = 1.2–2.3%), power (R2 = 1.4%), pace (R2 = 1.2–2.1%), and elasticity index (R2 = 1.6%). In conclusion, objective and subjective fatigue-monitoring tests in professional soccer do not measure identical but rather complementary aspects of fatigue, and therefore, both need to be considered to gain a holistic perspective.

We consider the human body as an adaptable, complex, and dynamic system capable of organizing itself, though there is none, the only one, factor inside the system capable of doing this job. Making use of the computerized ECG analysis system “Kaunas-load” with parallel registration of ECG carrying out body motor characteristics, ABP, or other processes characterizing hemodynamics enable one to reveal and evaluate the synergistic aspects of essential systems of the human body what particularly extends the possibilities of functional diagnostics. The aim of the study was to determine the features of alterations in the functional condition of basketball and football players and nonathletes during the bicycle ergometry test by applying the model of evaluation of the functional condition of the human body. Material and methods. The study population consisted of 266 healthy athletes and nonathletes. Groups of male basketball players, male football players, male nonathletes, female basketball players, and female nonathletes were studied. A computerized ECG analysis system “Kaunas-load” that is capable of both registering and analyzing the power developed by the subject and 12-lead ECG synchronically were used for evaluating the functional condition of the CVS. The subject did a computer-based bicycle ergometry test. The following ECG parameters at rest and throughout the load – HR, JT interval, and the deduced JT/RR ratio index that reflects the condition between regulatory and supplying systems – were evaluated. After measuring ABP, the pulse amplitude (S–D) was evaluated. The pulse blood pressure ratio amplitude (S–D)/S that depicts the connection between the periphery and regulatory systems was also evaluated. Speeds of changes in physiological parameters during physical load were evaluated too. Results. Heart rate and JT/RR ratio of athletes at the rest and during load were lower, and JT interval of rest was longer and became shorter more slowly during load, compared to that of healthy nonathletes. The pulse arterial blood pressure amplitude of men at rest and during load was higher than that of women. The pulse ABP amplitude of athletes was higher than that of nonathletes. The relative pulse ABP amplitude in the state of rest in the groups of men was higher than in groups of women. The relative pulse amplitude of female basketball players at rest and during load was higher than that of female nonathletes. Significant differences in the dynamics of speed of changes in HR, the pulse ABP amplitude, and the relative pulse ABP amplitude of male and female basketball players, male football players, as well as male and female nonathletes were observed. Conclusions. The newly deduced parameters, namely, speeds of changes in the parameters with changes in the phase of the load reflect very well peculiarities of functional condition of the human body during bicycle ergometry test. The sum total of those newly deduced parameters and customary parameters reveals new functional peculiarities of the human body.

It can be said that there are thousands of specific stress sources; football players reflected both in important events (a penalty kick) as in everyday situations (pass the ball to a teammate, the wrong move resulted in a goal) the game causes stress and affects athlete's emotional state. Physiological aspects such as tachycardia, tachypnea, sweating and nervous gestures impact on optimizing the execution of the movement and thus its performance. In this review, we explained the level of anxiety of football association players and its management with Biofeedback techniques.

This study examined the relationship between pre-season body composition, in-season match performance, and match availability in female players competing in the Australian Football League Women's (AFLW) competition. With the outlawing of body composition assessments as part of pre-draft player evaluations in the AFLW, this study seeks to examine whether this is justified. Twenty-two (n = 22) players had body composition assessed with dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry at the beginning of the 2021 AFLW pre-season (whole-body and regional fat mass and lean soft-tissue mass [LSTM]). In-season match availability and match performance data (Coaches Score [CS], Champion Data Player Rank, average disposals, disposal and kicking efficiency) were collected throughout the 2021 competition. Pearson correlations were performed to assess if associations existed between body composition and in-season match performance and availability. A median split was performed to divide players into higher and lower performing groups for match performance variables. Two-sample independent t-tests were then used to assess differences between groups. No body composition characteristics could differentiate between in-season match availability groups (100% availability vs. &lt;100% availability) or higher and lower performing groups for all match performance variables. Total leg LSTM asymmetry shared a moderate negative association with CS. Body composition may not be important for determining in-season match availability and performance in female AFLW players. Thus, the repercussions following the removal of pre-draft body composition assessments across the league may not be as significant as is currently perceived. Other physiological, biomechanical, or performance qualities are more variable and may mask the effect of body composition in these players. AFLW practitioners should prioritize the development of other important attributes, such as aerobic fitness, muscular strength and power, and technical skill.

A soccer player should possess a reasonable level of different skills and abilities, so the playing position, level of training, style of play, physical and physiological demands can influence his performance. The objective was to identify the intervention programs that have been applied in search of generating positive effects on explosive strength and speed in young soccer players, as well as to identify the percentage of improvement among soccer players. A bibliographic study of systematic review was carried out. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) statement, bibliographic searches were performed in the PubMed database. The following descriptors were used: Explosive Strength, soccer players, jump performance, CMJ, SJ, VJ, Plyometrics, power, speed, sprint, kicking speed, change of direction speed, soccer player, football and training, intervention. Articles were included only if they were original articles, studied populations of young soccer players and showed an intervention program related to explosive strength and speed. Six studies were identified that applied intervention programs to look for changes in speed and explosive strength in young soccer players. In the 5m speed tests, significant changes were observed, improving from (0.26 to 0.53m/s), 10m speed (0.07 to 0.27m/s), 20m speed (0.08 to 1.92m/s) and 40m speed (0.25 to 0.62m/s). In explosive strength, performance in the test squat jump SJ (4.1 to 8.6cm), countermovement jump CMJ (1.0 to 8.8cm), horizontal jump HJ (12.17 to 24.4cm) and vertical jump VJ (5.0 to 11.0cm). Speed and explosive strength are relevant components of athletic performance and can be improved through training programs that include 20 to 40min sessions, training two to five times per week over a period of approximately 6 to 9 weeks.

Abstract Background Many sports are associated with an increased risk of traumatic brain injury (TBI), often in a form of repeated minor trauma. While the pathophysiological changes of the brain after TBI have been relatively well studied, data on cognitive aspects are relatively scarce. The main objective of this study was to measure the cognitive consequences of repeated heading in a controlled set of training exercises in 21 years old football players. Methods The study design is quasi-experiment. Participants consisted of male football players (N = 27) and were tested under 3 conditions: before the sports activity, after the sports activity not involving heading, after the sport activity focused on heading. To monitor the cognitive changes we used neuropsychological methods: the Trail Making Test (TMT), the Verbal reproduction test. Blood samples were taken to analyse the presence of biomarkers (glucose). Linear regression and repeated-measures ANOVA were used for statistical analysis. Results The data showed significant relationships between the glucose level (before and 1-hour after the heading) and the TMT (part B) score /(F(1,22)=6.03; p=.001; R-square=.223/. Based on TMT (part B) scores, the cognitive flexibility and glucose lowered after the sessions. For both parts of TMT we found significantly worse scores after both training sessions compared to baseline testing (Part A: F(2,46)=189.354; p&lt;.001; Eta2=.892; Part B: F(2,46)=10.191; p&lt;.001; Eta2=.307). Post-hoc tests revealed slightly worse results in the TMT (part A) after non-heading than after the heading training which means, that the focused attention was affected. In the TMT (part B) no difference was found between the results after non-heading and heading training. Conclusions This study has a unique potential to highlight the relations between biomarkers and psychological abilities and their possible changes caused by heading, which may have beneficial as well as damaging impact on the body and cognitive functioning. Key messages • The findings of this study suggest a potential relationship between repeated minor head trauma and cognitive performance in young adults. • Besides physiological changes, cognitive impact on cognitive performance may be a consequence of repeated minor head trauma; further study is required to elucidate these associations.

There is, in our sense of place, little cognisance of what lies underground. Yet our sense of place, instinctive, unconscious, primeval, has its own underground: the secret spaces which mirror our insides; the world beneath the skin. Our roots lie beneath the ground, with the minerals and the dead. (Hughes 83) The-Home-and-Away-Game Imagine the earth-grounded, “diagrammatological” trajectory of a footballer who as one member of a team is psyching himself up before the start of a game. The siren blasts its trumpet call. The footballer bursts out of the pavilion (where this psyching up has taken place) to engage in the opening bounce or kick of the game. And then: running, leaping, limping after injury, marking, sliding, kicking, and possibly even passing out from concussion. Finally, the elation accompanying the final siren, after which hugs, handshakes and raised fists conclude the actual match on the football oval. This exit from the pavilion, the course the player takes during the game itself, and return to the pavilion, forms a combination of stasis and movement, and a return to exhausted stasis again, that every player engages with regardless of the game code. Examined from a “diagrammatological” perspective, a perspective Rowan Wilken (following in the path of Gilles Deleuze and W. J. T. Mitchell) understands as “a generative process: a ‘metaphor’ or way of thinking — diagrammatic, diagrammatological thinking — which in turn, is linked to poetic thinking” (48), this footballer’s scenario arises out of an aerial perspective that depicts the actual spatial trajectory the player takes during the course of a game. It is a diagram that is digitally encoded via a sensor on the footballer’s body, and being an electronically encoded diagram it can also make available multiple sets of data such as speed, heartbeat, blood pressure, maybe even brain-wave patterns. From this limited point of view there is only one footballer’s playing trajectory to consider; various groupings within the team, the whole team itself, and the diagrammatological depiction of its games with various other teams might also be possible. This singular imagining though is itself an actuality: as a diagram it is encoded as a graphic image by a satellite hovering around the earth with a Global Positioning System (GPS) reading the sensor attached to the footballer which then digitally encodes this diagrammatological trajectory for appraisal later by the player, coach, team and management. In one respect, this practice is another example of a willing self-surveillance critical to explaining the reflexive subject and its attribute of continuous self-improvement. According to Docker, Official Magazine of the Fremantle Football Club, this is a technique the club uses as a part of game/play assessment, a system that can provide a “running map” for each player equipped with such a tracking device during a game. As the Fremantle Club’s Strength and Conditioning Coach Ben Tarbox says of this tactic, “We’re getting a physiological profile that has started to build a really good picture of how individual players react during a game” (21). With a little extra effort (and some sizeable computer processing grunt) this two dimensional linear graphic diagram of a footballer working the football ground could also form the raw material for a three-dimensional animation, maybe a virtual reality game, even a hologram. It could also be used to sideline a non-performing player. Now try another related but different imagining: what if this diagrammatological trajectory could be enlarged a little to include the possibility that this same player’s movements could be mapped out by the idea of home-and-away games; say over the course of a season, maybe even a whole career, for instance? No doubt, a wide range of differing diagrammatological perspectives might suggest themselves. My own particular refinement of this movement/stasis on the footballer’s part suggests my own distinctive comings and goings to and from my own specific piece of home country. And in this incessantly domestic/real world reciprocity, in this diurnally repetitive leaving and coming back to home country, might it be plausible to think of “Home as Capital of the Region”? If, as Walter Benjamin suggests in the prelude to his monumental Arcades Project, “Paris — the Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” could it be that both in and through my comings and goings to and from this selfsame home country, my own burgeoning sense of regionality is constituted in every minute-by-minutiae of lived experience? Could it be that this feeling about home is manifested in my every day-to-night manoeuvre of home-and-away-and-away-and-home-making, of every singular instance of exit, play/engage, and the return home? “Home, Capital of the Region” then examines the idea that my home is that part of the country which is the still-point of eternal return, the bedrock to which I retreat after the daily grind, and the point from which I start out and do it all again the next day. It employs, firstly, this ‘diagrammatological’ perspective to illustrate the point that this stasis/movement across country can make an electronic record of my own psychic self-surveillance and actualisation in-situ. And secondly, the architectural plan of the domestic home (examined through the perspective of critical regionalism) is used as a conduit to illustrate how I am physically embedded in country. Lastly, intermingling these digressive threads is chora, Plato’s notion of embodied place and itself an ancient regional rendering of this eternal return to the beginning, the place where the essential diversity of country decisively enters the soul. Chora: Core of Regionality Kevin Lynch writes that, “Our senses are local, while our experience is regional” (10), a combination that suggests this regional emphasis on home-and-away-making might be a useful frame of reference (simultaneously spatiotemporal, both a visceral and encoded communication) for me to include as a crucial vector in my own life-long learning package. Regionality (as, variously, a sub-generic categorisation and an extension/concentration of nationality, as well as a recently re-emerged friend/antagonist to a global understanding) infuses my world of home with a grounded footing in country, one that is a site of an Eternal Return to the Beginning in the micro-world of the everyday. This is a point John Sallis discusses at length in his analysis of Plato’s Timaeus and its founding notion of regionality: chora. More extended absences away from home-base are of course possible but one’s return to home on most days and for most nights is a given of post/modern, maybe even of ancient everyday experience. Even for the continually shifting nomad, nightfall in some part of the country brings the rest and recreation necessary for the next day’s wanderings. This fundamental question of an Eternal Return to the Beginning arises as a crucial element of the method in Plato’s Timaeus, a seemingly “unstructured” mythic/scientific dialogue about the origins and structure of both the psychically and the physically implaced world. In the Timaeus, “incoherence is especially obvious in the way the natural sequence in which a narrative would usually unfold is interrupted by regressions, corrections, repetitions, and abrupt new beginnings” (Gadamer 160). Right in the middle of the Timaeus, in between its sections on the “Work of Reason” and the “Work of Necessity”, sits chora, both an actual spatial and bodily site where my being intersects with my becoming, and where my lived life criss-crosses the various arts necessary to articulating a recorded version of that life. Every home is a grounded chora-logical timespace harness guiding its occupant’s thoughts, feelings and actions. My own regionally implaced chora (an example of which is the diagrammatological trajectory already outlined above as my various everyday comings and goings, of me acting in and projecting myself into context) could in part be understood as a graphical realisation of the extent of my movements and stationary rests in my own particular timespace trajectory. The shorthand for this process is ‘embedded’. Gregory Ulmer writes of chora that, “While chorography as a term is close to choreography, it duplicates a term that already exists in the discipline of geography, thus establishing a valuable resonance for a rhetoric of invention concerned with the history of ‘place’ in relation to memory” (Heuretics 39, original italics). Chorography is the geographic discipline for the systematic study and analysis of regions. Chora, home, country and regionality thus form an important multi-dimensional zone of interplay in memorialising the game of everyday life. In light of these observations I might even go so far as to suggest that this diagrammatological trajectory (being both digital and GPS originated) is part of the increasingly electrate condition that guides the production of knowledge in any global/regional context. This last point is a contextual connection usefully examined in Alan J. Scott’s Regions and the World Economy: The Coming Shape of Global Production, Competition, and Political Order and Michael Storper’s The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. Their analyses explicitly suggest that the symbiosis between globalisation and regionalisation has been gathering pace since at least the end of World War Two and the Bretton Woods agreement. Our emerging understanding of electracy also happens to be Gregory Ulmer’s part-remedy for shifting the ground under the intense debates surrounding il/literacy in the current era (see, in particular, Internet Invention). And, for Tony Bennett, Michael Emmison and John Frow’s analysis of “Australian Everyday Cultures” (“Media Culture and the Home” 57–86), it is within the home that our un.conscious understanding of electronic media is at its most intense, a pattern that emerges in the longer term through receiving telegrams, compiling photo albums, listening to the radio, home- and video-movies, watching the evening news on television, and logging onto the computer in the home-office, media-room or home-studio. These various generalisations (along with this diagrammatological view of my comings and goings to and from the built space of home), all point indiscriminately to a productive confusion surrounding the sedentary and nomadic opposition/conjunction. If natural spaces are constituted in nouns like oceans, forests, plains, grasslands, steppes, deserts, rivers, tidal interstices, farmland etc. (and each categorisation here relies on the others for its existence and demarcation) then built space is often seen as constituting its human sedentary equivalent. For Deleuze and Guatteri (in A Thousand Plateaus, “1227: Treatise on Nomadology — The War Machine”) these natural spaces help instigate a nomadic movement across localities and regions. From a nomadology perspective, these smooth spaces unsettle a scientific, numerical calculation, sometimes even aesthetic demarcation and order. If they are marked at all, it is by heterogenous and differential forces, energised through constantly oscillating intensities. A Thousand Plateaus is careful though not to elevate these smooth nomadic spaces over the more sedentary spaces of culture and power (372–373). Nonetheless, as Edward S. Casey warns, “In their insistence on becoming and movement, however, the authors of A Thousand Plateaus overlook the placial potential of settled dwelling — of […] ‘built places’” (309, original italics). Sedentary, settled dwelling centred on home country may have a crust of easy legibility and order about it but it also formats a locally/regionally specific nomadic quality, a point underscored above in the diagrammatological perspective. The sedentary tendency also emerges once again in relation to home in the architectural drafting of the domestic domicile. The Real Estate Revolution When Captain Cook planted the British flag in the sand at Botany Bay in 1770 and declared the country it spiked as Crown Land and henceforth will come under the ownership of an English sovereign, it was also the moment when white Australia’s current fascination with real estate was conceived. In the wake of this spiking came the intense anxiety over Native Title that surfaced in late twentieth century Australia when claims of Indigenous land grabs would repossess suburban homes. While easily dismissed as hyperbole, a rhetorical gesture intended to arouse this very anxiety, its emergence is nonetheless an indication of the potential for political and psychic unsettling at the heart of the ownership and control of built place, or ‘settled dwelling’ in the Australian context. And here it would be wise to include not just the gridded, architectural quality of home-building and home-making, but also the home as the site of the family romance, another source of unsettling as much as a peaceful calming. Spreading out from the boundaries of the home are the built spaces of fences, bridges, roads, railways, airport terminals (along with their interconnecting pathways), which of course brings us back to the communications infrastructure which have so often followed alongside the development of transport infrastructure. These and other elements represent this conglomerate of built space, possibly the most significant transformation of natural space that humanity has brought about. For the purposes of this meditation though it is the more personal aspect of built space — my home and regional embeddedness, along with their connections into the global electrosphere — that constitutes the primary concern here. For a sedentary, striated space to settle into an unchallenged existence though requires a repression of the highest order, primarily because of the home’s proximity to everyday life, of the latter’s now fading ability to sometimes leave its presuppositions well enough alone. In settled, regionally experienced space, repressions are more difficult to abstract away, they are lived with on a daily basis, which also helps to explain the extra intensity brought to their sometimes-unsettling quality. Inversely, and encased in this globalised electro-spherical ambience, home cannot merely be a place where one dwells within avoiding those presuppositions, I take them with me when I travel and they come back with me from afar. This is a point obliquely reflected in Pico Iyer’s comment that “Australians have so flexible a sense of home, perhaps, that they can make themselves at home anywhere” (185). While our sense of home may well be, according to J. Douglas Porteous, “the territorial core” of our being, when other arrangements of space and knowledge shift it must inevitably do so as well. In these shifts of spatial affiliation (aided and abetted by regionalisation, globalisation and electronic knowledge), the built place of home can no longer be considered exclusively under the illusion of an autonomous sanctuary wholly guaranteed by capitalist property relations, one of the key factors in its attraction. These shifts in the cultural, economic and psychic relation of home to country are important to a sense of local and regional implacement. The “feeling” of autonomy and security involved in home occupation and/or ownership designates a component of this implacement, a point leading to Eric Leed’s comment that, “By the sixteenth century, literacy had become one of the definitive signs — along with the possession of property and a permanent residence — of an independent social status” (53). Globalising and regionalising forces make this feeling of autonomy and security dynamic, shifting the ground of home, work-place practices and citizenship allegiances in the process. Gathering these wide-ranging forces impacting on psychic and built space together is the emergence of critical regionalism as a branch of architectonics, considered here as a theory of domestic architecture. Critical Regionality Critical regionalism emerged out of the collective thinking of Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis (Tropical Architecture; Critical Regionalism), and as these authors themselves acknowledge, was itself deeply influenced by the work of Lewis Mumford during the first part of the twentieth century when he was arguing against the authority of the international style in architecture, a style epitomised by the Bauhaus movement. It is Kenneth Frampton’s essay, “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance” that deliberately takes this question of critical regionalism and makes it a part of a domestic architectonic project. In many ways the ideas critical regionalism espouses can themselves be a microcosm of this concomitantly emerging global/regional polis. With public examples of built-form the power of the centre is on display by virtue of a building’s enormous size and frequently high-cultural aesthetic power. This is a fact restated again and again from the ancient world’s agora to Australia’s own political bunker — its Houses of Parliament in Canberra. While Frampton discusses a range of aspects dealing with the universal/implaced axis across his discussion, it is points five and six that deserve attention from a domestically implaced perspective. Under the sub-heading, “Culture Versus Nature: Topography, Context, Climate, Light and Tectonic Form” is where he writes that, Here again, one touches in concrete terms this fundamental opposition between universal civilization and autochthonous culture. The bulldozing of an irregular topography into a flat site is clearly a technocratic gesture which aspires to a condition of absolute placelessness, whereas the terracing of the same site to receive the stepped form of a building is an engagement in the act of “cultivating” the site. (26, original italics) The “totally flat datum” that the universalising tendency sometimes presupposes is, within the critical regionalist perspective, an erroneous assumption. The “cultivation” of a site for the design of a building illustrates the point that built space emerges out of an interaction between parallel phenomena as they contrast and/or converge in a particular set of timespace co-ordinates. These are phenomena that could include (but are not limited to) geomorphic data like soil and rock formations, seismic activity, inclination and declension; climatic considerations in the form of wind patterns, temperature variations, rainfall patterns, available light and dark, humidity and the like; the building context in relation to the cardinal points of north, south, east, and west, along with their intermediary positions. There are also architectural considerations in the form of available building materials and personnel to consider. The social, psychological and cultural requirements of the building’s prospective in-dwellers are intermingled with all these phenomena. This is not so much a question of where to place the air conditioning system but the actuality of the way the building itself is placed on its site, or indeed if that site should be built on at all. A critical regionalist building practice, then, is autochthonous to the degree that a full consideration of this wide range of in-situ interactions is taken into consideration in the development of its design plan. And given this autochthonous quality of the critical regionalist project, it also suggests that the architectural design plan itself (especially when it utilised in conjunction with CAD and virtual reality simulations), might be the better model for designing electrate-centred projects rather than writing or even the script. The proliferation of ‘McMansions’ across many Australian suburbs during the 1990s (generally, oversized domestic buildings designed in the abstract with little or no thought to the above mentioned elements, on bulldozed sites, with powerful air-conditioning systems, and no verandas or roof eves to speak of) demonstrates the continuing influence of a universal, centralising dogma in the realm of built place. As summer temperatures start to climb into the 40°C range all these air-conditioners start to hum in unison, which in turn raises the susceptibility of the supporting infrastructure to collapse under the weight of an overbearing electrical load. The McMansion is a clear example of a built form that is envisioned more so in a drafting room, a space where the architect is remote-sensing the locational specificities. In this envisioning (driven more by a direct line-of-sight idiom dominant in “flat datum” and economic considerations rather than architectural or experiential ones), the tactile is subordinated, which is the subject of Frampton’s sixth point: It is symptomatic of the priority given to sight that we find it necessary to remind ourselves that the tactile is an important dimension in the perception of built form. One has in mind a whole range of complementary sensory perceptions which are registered by the labile body: the intensity of light, darkness, heat and cold; the feeling of humidity; the aroma of material; the almost palpable presence of masonry as the body senses it own confinement; the momentum of an induced gait and the relative inertia of the body as it traverses the floor; the echoing resonance of our own footfall. (28) The point here is clear: in its wider recognition of, and the foregrounding of my body’s full range of sensate capacities in relation to both natural and built space, the critical regionalist approach to built form spreads its meaning-making capacities across a broader range of knowledge modalities. This tactility is further elaborated in more thoroughly personal ways by Margaret Morse in her illuminating essay, “Home: Smell, Taste, Posture, Gleam”. Paradoxically, this synaesthetic, syncretic approach to bodily meaning-making in a built place, regional milieu intensely concentrates the site-centred locus of everyday life, while simultaneously, the electronic knowledge that increasingly underpins it expands both my body’s and its region’s knowledge-making possibilities into a global gestalt, sometimes even a cosmological one. It is a paradoxical transformation that makes us look anew at social, cultural and political givens, even objective and empirical understandings, especially as they are articulated through national frames of reference. Domestic built space then is a kind of micro-version of the multi-function polis where work, pleasure, family, rest, public display and privacy intermingle. So in both this reduction and expansion in the constitution of domestic home life, one that increasingly represents the location of the production of knowledge, built place represents a concentration of energy that forces us to re-imagine border-making, order, and the dynamic interplay of nomadic movement and sedentary return, a point that echoes Nicolas Rothwell’s comment that “every exile has in it a homecoming” (80). Albeit, this is a knowledge-making milieu with an expanded range of modalities incorporated and expressed through a wide range of bodily intensities not simply cognitive ones. Much of the ambiguous discontent manifested in McMansion style domiciles across many Western countries might be traced to the fact that their occupants have had little or no say in the way those domiciles have been designed and/or constructed. In Heidegger’s terms, they have not thought deeply enough about “dwelling” in that building, although with the advent of the media room the question of whether a “building” securely borders both “dwelling” and “thinking” is now open to question. As anxieties over border-making at all scales intensifies, the complexities and un/sureties of natural and built space take ever greater hold of the psyche, sometimes through the advance of a “high level of critical self-consciousness”, a process Frampton describes as a “double mediation” of world culture and local conditions (21). Nearly all commentators warn of a nostalgic, romantic or a sentimental regionalism, the sum total of which is aimed at privileging the local/regional and is sometimes utilised as a means of excluding the global or universal, sometimes even the national (Berry 67). Critical regionalism is itself a mediating factor between these dispositions, working its methods and practices through my own psyche into the local, the regional, the national and the global, rejecting and/or accepting elements of these domains, as my own specific context, in its multiplicity, demands it. If the politico-economic and cultural dimensions of this global/regional world have tended to undermine the process of border-making across a range of scales, we can see in domestic forms of built place the intense residue of both their continuing importance and an increased dependency on this electro-mediated world. This is especially apparent in those domiciles whose media rooms (with their satellite dishes, telephone lines, computers, television sets, games consuls, and music stereos) are connecting them to it in virtuality if not in reality. Indeed, the thought emerges (once again keeping in mind Eric Leed’s remark on the literate-configured sense of autonomy that is further enhanced by a separate physical address and residence) that the intense importance attached to domestically orientated built place by globally/regionally orientated peoples will figure as possibly the most viable means via which this sense of autonomy will transfer to electronic forms of knowledge. If, however, this here domestic habitué turns his gaze away from the screen that transports me into this global/regional milieu and I focus my attention on the physicality of the building in which I dwell, I once again stand in the presence of another beginning. This other beginning is framed diagrammatologically by the building’s architectural plans (usually conceived in either an in-situ, autochthonous, or a universal manner), and is a graphical conception that anchors my body in country long after the architects and builders have packed up their tools and left. This is so regardless of whether a home is built, bought, rented or squatted in. Ihab Hassan writes that, “Home is not where one is pushed into the light, but where one gathers it into oneself to become light” (417), an aphorism that might be rephrased as follows: “Home is not where one is pushed into the country, but where one gathers it into oneself to become country.” For the in-and-out-and-around-and-about domestic dweller of the twenty-first century, then, home is where both regional and global forms of country decisively enter the soul via the conduits of the virtuality of digital flows and the reality of architectural footings. Acknowledgements I’m indebted to both David Fosdick and Phil Roe for alerting me to the importance to the Fremantle Dockers Football Club. The research and an original draft of this essay were carried out under the auspices of a PhD scholarship from Central Queensland University, and from whom I would also like to thank Denis Cryle and Geoff Danaher for their advice. References Benjamin, Walter. “Paris — the Capital of the Nineteenth Century.” Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Trans. Quintin Hoare. London: New Left Books, 1973. 155–176. Bennett, Tony, Michael Emmison and John Frow. Accounting for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Berry, Wendell. “The Regional Motive.” A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural. San Diego: Harcourt Brace. 63–70. Casey, Edward S. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: U of California P, 1997. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minneapolis P, 1987. Deleuze, Gilles. “The Diagram.” The Deleuze Reader. Ed. Constantin Boundas. Trans. Constantin Boundas and Jacqueline Code. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. 193–200. Frampton, Kenneth. “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.” The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Post-Modern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983. 16–30. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “Idea and Reality in Plato’s Timaeus.” Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato. Trans. P. Christopher Smith. New Haven: Yale UP, 1980. 156–193. Hassan, Ihab. “How Australian Is It?” The Best Australian Essays. Ed. Peter Craven. Melbourne: Black Inc., 2000. 405–417. Heidegger, Martin. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. 145–161. Hughes, John. The Idea of Home: Autobiographical Essays. 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Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 1976. Mitchell, W. J. T. “Diagrammatology.” Critical Inquiry 7.3 (1981): 622–633. Morse, Margaret. “Home: Smell, Taste, Posture, Gleam.” Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place. Ed. Hamid Naficy. New York and London: Routledge, 1999. 63–74. Plato. Timaeus and Critias. Trans. Desmond Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1973. Porteous, J. Douglas. “Home: The Territorial Core.” Geographical Review LXVI (1976): 383-390. Rothwell, Nicolas. Wings of the Kite-Hawk: A Journey into the Heart of Australia. Sydney: Pidador, 2003. Sallis, John. Chorology: On Beginning in Plato’s Timaeus. Bloomington: Indianapolis UP, 1999. Scott, Allen J. Regions and the World Economy: The Coming Shape of Global Production, Competition, and Political Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Storper, Michael. The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. New York: The Guildford Press, 1997. Ulmer, Gregory L. 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<p>Taekwondo is an old martial art with a Korean origin that is performed with hands and feet, where several combined techniques are used together, and nerve-muscle use levels are high (Mark, 1984; Kim et al., 2011). The history of taekwondo may be traced back to centuries ago. Initially, this branch used to be taught for the person to defend themselves. Afterwards, throughout the centuries, it has been spread around the world as an artistic form. In addition to having an artistic form, the branch of taekwondo also requires high competitive strength. Taekwondo is a competitive sport that requires the displacement of the body parts of the opponent. As words, ‘tae’ means foot strike, ‘kwon’ means hand strike, and ‘do’ means philosophy (Kazemi et al., 2006). Taekwondo competitions are divided into two categories as sparring and poomsae. Sparring is performed against an opponent, while poomsae (imaginary sparring) is a branch where a single person performs. Taekwondo that is known as a demonstration sport showed itself for the first time in the 1988 Seoul and 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Its inclusion in official competitions occurred in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games (Kazemi et al., 2004; Gupta, 2011). Taekwondo as an Olympic sport is a branch performed by 75-120 million individuals in more than 140 countries (Razi, 2016). Innovations made in equipment in time, changes in rules, safety measures, organization of competitions, and its prominent media- and education-related aspects have increasingly raised the interest in this branch and helped it gain its popularity today. With the increase in the popularity of the branch and the prominence it has gained in the Olympics, World Taekwondo has recently made some changes in the rules. Some changes may be listed as changes in the scoring system (increase in the point score of techniques applied on the head region), smaller game dimensions, enaction of the 10-sec rule and changes in penalty points (Moenig, 2015). Competitions are held in the form of 3 rounds of 1.5 minutes each for the Juniors and Teens categories and 3 rounds of 2 minutes each for the Youths and Adults categories, with 1 minute of rest between the rounds (Birrer, 1996; Toskovic et al. 2004; Heller ve ark., 1998). Competitions consist of various techniques applied on the head and torso regions. These techniques may be applied in the form of attack, counterattack and combined techniques. Athletes are scored based on the region on which they apply the techniques and the degree of difficulty. For athletes to receive points, they need to have multiple physical qualities. For competitive performance, taekwondo requires various factors including physical (Heller ve ark., 1998; Gao, 2001; Melhim, 2001; Ball et al.,2011; Estevan et al., 2011), psychological (de Prado, 2012), technical (Bridge et al., 2011; Cular et al., 2011) and tactical (Falcó et al., 2009; González et al., 2011) factors. This is why taekwondo training has been structured in a way to target these specific performance mediators (Heller et al., 1998; Gao, 2001). From this perspective, the purpose of taekwondo training is to prepare athletes in terms of both their physical activities and meeting of the physiological demands of competition (Marković et al., 2005; Pieter, 1991; Casoline et al., 2012). As strikes are important in taekwondo, athletes need to have explosive leg strength, aerobic resilience, balance and flexibility (Heller et al., 1998; Marković et al., 2005). Taekwondo athletes must have the capacity to rapidly produce muscle strength through kicks, because 80% of taekwondo skills are related to kicking (Shirley, 1992). Although these characteristics are not the only determinants of performance, they are among helpful pieces of information for trainers. There are studies in the literature on the physical and physiological characteristics of athletes. Nevertheless, it is important to increase the number of these studies and select the suitable training method for this group of athletes.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0985/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>