At first glance, one might think that Taekwondo, being a full-contact fighting sport, would be a lot like Kickboxing. This is exactly why most people find Taekwondo a disappointment to watch, because it's not like Kickboxing at all.

While both Kickboxing, Taekwondo, and various other full-contact fighting sports, including amateur (olympic) Boxing, are all comprised of the same elements -- those being strategy, tactics, speed, force, attacks, counter-attacks, combinations, offence, defence, dodging, etc and so forth -- each sport emphasize these elements to varying degrees.

Most full-contact fighting sports emphasize the violence and the force, resulting in knock-outs being quite common in those sports. This is exactly what makes Olympic Taekwondo a bit different; although it too is a full-contact sport, knock-outs are quite rare. This is the consequence of especially one important and defining rule: you may not hit your opponent's face or head with your fist.

You may, however, hit your opponent's head with your foot (wrist, or lower-leg). Although protective head gear is required in amateur boxing, the emphasized use of legs in Olympic Taekwondo is probably the prominent reason why a lot more protective gear is required. That gear being forearm and shin guards, headgear, trunk (body) protector, and a groin guard. Teeth protection is also allowed, and many contestants use them.

Now, with all that gear, one might wonder if this "full-contact" sport even qualifies as such. Well, as I practice Taekwondo myself, let me assure you that it indeed does. The gear does dull the edge -- the sharpness -- of the blows, which of course is the idea, but it does not significantly reduce the weight of them. The trunk isn't made of kevlar or anything, it's actually quite soft.

It never seizes to amaze me how much punch a kick actually packs. You don't have to be a black belt to be able to deliver a devastating lot of power with your legs. My quite unscientific estimation would be that most anyone is able to kick at least twice or three times as hard as they are able to punch, some even more; although it's difficult to compare as legs and arms are very different tools. Let's just say that if you ever really needed to, you'd kick in a door, not punch it in.

Another defining aspect of Olympic Taekwondo that many people find, well, boring, is that it's a very defensive sport. There's a lot of dodging, jumping, fleeing, and less jabbing and confident attacking. Why? Because defence is the easy part. Blocking an opponent's attacks to the upper body or head is quite easy using your arms, as long as you don't do anything but defend yourself. When you attack, that's when you become vulnerable to attacks.

Since both contestants would rather counter-attack than initiate the first attack, the match becomes quite defensive compared to other full-contact sports, in which attacks with fists to the head are allowed, and the contestants are more willing to initiate an attack.

While leg attacks are allowed in many other full-contact fighting sports as well, in those they are mostly seen as complimentary and follow-up tools of attack, and are primarily used following an attack to the head with fists. In order to land a kick to an opponent's head, and thereby earn two points, you need to get close and preferably disturb the opponents view and attention -- fist attacks to the head do a wonderful job of doing just that.

But, since fist attacks to the face aren't allowed in Olympic Taekwondo, you have to use a jabbing kick instead. It should be obvious that delivering your primary attack with one of your legs is quite a bit more difficult when your other leg is not on the ground.

In order to score in Olympic Taekwondo, it is also not enough to just hit the opponent; it is required to do so with significant force. In practice, to score with a punch to the opponent's trunk, you basically have got to throw him or her several feet back -- another reason why contestants emphasize the use of their legs.

Because a kick to the side of the trunk results in a one-point score, a contestant has to hold his or her arms down the sides of his/her body; it's the only way they are able to block the fast kicks their opponent throws at them. A spectator uninitiated to the rules of Olympic Taekwondo will invariably think that the contestants aren't using a guard at all, with their arms hanging down the sides of their body like that, when in reality they are, of course, using the most effective guard, depending on the rules of the game. Kicks to the head are possible to block with such a "low" (a.k.a. "non-existing") guard, but most of the time contestants will rather just dodge it.

Some people mistakenly think that once you score in Taekwondo, you have to retreat from your opponent. You don't. But, again, defence is the easy part and you are the most vulnerable immediately after having attacked, so it's not unusual for contestants to, directly after scoring, either go close into a clinch, or retreat from the opponent.

To enjoy watching Taekwondo during these Olympics (beginning this Thursday), do not think of it so much as a violent sport about withstanding repetitive trauma to the frontal lobe, but rather a strategic one similar to, well, Fencing. Of course, Taekwondo, unlike Fencing, is a full-contact sport, and contestants are very much allowed to deliver violent trauma to their opponent's head, but the rules of the game limit their ability to do so, given that defence is the easy part, attacking is not.

So, instead of thinking of Taekwondo as a less action filled version of Kickboxing, try to think of it as a more physical form of Fencing; it's not about bludgeoning, it's about tactics, and can often offer quite spectacular techniques and combinations. It's certainly not everybody's cup of tea, but what would be the point of making Taekwondo a clone of Kickboxing, or any of the other virtually indistinguishable fighting sports? What I like about Taekwondo (when watching it, that is) is the fact that it's different.

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