Relationship between attack and pause in world taekwondo championship contests: effects of gender and weight category

Background: the aim of this study was to compare between weight and gender categories the attack and pause times during the 2007 Taekwondo World Championship.Methods: a total of 88 rounds (47 male and 41 female contests) were analyzed.Results: there was no difference in attack/balancing times ratio between genders (0.13 0.06 vs 0.13 0.06, P > 0.05).The attack number was significantly higher in round 3 than in round 1 for all categories and genders.The balancing time was lower during the round 3 than round 1 for low-weight male and high-weight female categories.The delta of change from round 1 to 3 (round 3 -round 1) for attack time and attack/balancing times ratio were lower in male than female.Conclusions: female seems to intensify more the combat in the last round than male, and this seems be related to the weight division.