The relationship between skill level in Taekwondo and selected measures of agility and balance in college students

The purpose of this study was to determine whether skill in Taekwondo is associated with agility and/or balance ability. The subjects were volunteer males and females in three Taekwondo clubs. The subjects were organized into four groups based on their Taekwondo skill level. Subjects were tested on their agility, dynamic and static balance. One-way MANOVA was used to compare agility and balance performance across the skill levels. Performance on the agility, static balance, and dynamic balance measures was not significantly different between the skill groups. However, subjects who had experience in other martial arts or in single and dual competitive sports involving a lot of agility and balance showed better scores than subjects with previous experience in team sports or other individual sports such as archery and weight lifting. Pearson Product-Moment correlation coefficients were computed to measure relationships between the two agility tests, static balance and dynamic balance, and agility and dynamic balance. Results revealed that there were positive correlations between the two agility tests (r =.55), static and dynamic balance (r =.40), and agility and dynamic balance (r =.34, r =.32).