Taekwondo - Marc Tedeschi

Offering Taekwondo in its totality, this text documents the traditions, philosophy and techniques of the world's most widely practised martial art. In more than 7600 photographs, spanning 896 pages, masters and elite competitors demonstrate over 700 Taekwondo techniques, including stances, footwork, punches, hand strikes, standing kicks, jump kicks, ground kicks, avoiding and blocking skills, step and self-defence sparring, Olympic-style sparring, breaking techniques and solo forms and patterns. Techniques are named in both English and Korean throughout.;Introductory chapters provide an authoritative overview of Taekwondo's history, philosophy, current structure and contemporary issues, and thoroughly review breathing and meditation, warm-ups and flexibility exercises and vital targets. To address the highly specialized and constantly evolving needs of sport competitors, in-depth chapters on Olympic-style sparring cover basic concepts, current trends, core techniques, tactics and strategies, terminology, competition rules, referee signals, and more than 90 core attacking and counter-attacking techniques used by world-class competitors. For form enthusiasts 200-plus pages provide a comprehensive overview of 49 forms and patterns embraced by major federations, such as the WTF and ITF. Inclusive of virtually all Taekwondo styles, this work integrates traditional and modern approaches, sport and self-defence in one text.