Hamstring Injuries in Taekwondo: Injury Patterns and Performance Following Conservative Therapy-A Case Series Involving Four Elite Athlete

Abstract

Taekwondo (TKD) is a traditional martial art that originated in Korea. It is currently practiced in more than 200 countries throughout the world and became an Olympic discipline for the first time at the 2000 Games in Sydney. TKD is a full-contact martial art characterised by its emphasis on dynamic attack and kicking techniques requiring rapid reactions, speed, agility and endurance. TKD is a popular sport in Germany, where the number of active athletes has risen considerably in the last few years. Injuries to the hamstring group of muscles generally occur in the two-articulated sections following sudden over-extension of the muscles with a maximum degree of hip flexion and knee extension [1]. So far, sprint sports such as American football, in which the rapid changeover from muscle contraction to relaxation occurs, were known to be high-risk sports [2]. In TKD such movement patterns during explosive high kicks are especially important, as attacks to the opponent’s head are only permitted with the feet and generally score highly. The frequency of general injuries to the hip is approx. 11 % [3-5] and to the lower extremities 44.5 % [6]. To date there is no explicit data on the frequency and patterns of hamstring injuries in TKD, as information on the occurrence of TKD injuries in the literature is unspecific [3,4]. This retrospective study is based Abstract