Techniques and forms

Taekwondo is mainly a striking art. Kicks delivered from a mobile stance are its best-known feature, and hand techniques, blocks and stances are taught from the first lessons. Each organization and school defines its own syllabus.

Technique groups #

• Kicks: front, roundhouse, side, back, axe and hook kicks, and jumping and turning variations.
• Hand techniques: straight punches, knife-hand, ridge-hand, back-fist and palm-heel strikes.
• Blocks: low, middle and high blocks, inward and outward blocks, and other deflections.
• Stances: walking, front, back, sitting and sparring stances.

Patterns #

A pattern is a fixed sequence of techniques performed alone. The terms hyeong, pumse (poomsae) and teul (tul) all mean "form" or "pattern". Hyeong is used mainly in earlier traditional Taekwondo, poomsae in the Kukkiwon and World Taekwondo tradition, and tul in the ITF tradition.^[1]

Each Taegeuk form corresponds to one trigram of the I Ching. The Taegeuk forms replaced the earlier Palgwe forms, which also followed the eight trigrams, in 1971.^[1] Sources differ on how many ITF patterns exist at a given time: Go-Dang was removed from the ITF syllabus in the early 1980s and replaced by Juche, so lists of ITF patterns vary in count.^[1]

Sparring #

Sparring, called kyorugi or matsogi, is part of training in most schools. Rules differ between World Taekwondo, ITF groups and independent schools. See Sparring and protective equipment.