ABSTRACT
An overview of the martial arts literature in English related to biomechanics is given. Unlike some popular sports like running, skiing, tennis, the percentage of biomechanics related papers among the literature in martial arts is very low (2 per cent). Most studies are devoted to a single martial art like Aikido, Judo, Karate, Wu Shu/Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do or Tai Chi and are either concerned with injury probability and injury type or are of descriptive nature using cinematography, force plates, and EMG. The producers of descriptive papers try to find those parameters being significantly different between expert-practitioners and novices or they give values which most probably are important for the success of a technique as velocity, force, and muscle activity. We propose a future goal-oriented research with a combination of theoretical work, for example, in the form of computer models, experiments, and innovative analyzing methods.
