What is a Tae Kwon Do 540 Kick?

Series Summary

Martial arts training is an excellent way to workout your cardiovascular system and increase agility. Among the martial arts forms, Taekwondo is very acrobatic and requires excellent agility. Taekwondo incorporates kicking, punching, blocking, as well as numerous weapons. Taekwondo is also a good way to build strength, learn how to focus, and learn how to protect yourself.

In this free video series, our expert martial arts instructor will focus on Tae Kwon Do kicks, specifically the 540 kick. This difficult kick has many parts and requires a lot of concentration and practice. Our expert will show you how to warm up and stretch for the Tae Kwon Do 540 kick, as well as the basic components of the kick. You will learn how to do a round kick and a crescent kick in preparation for the 540 kick. You will also get tips for practicing jumping and stance and then finally learn how to do a full 540 kick for Tae Kwon Do.

Video Transcript

"Hi. My name is Caleb Labarda. I'm a third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I'm here with Expert Village and today I'm going to be teaching you how to do a five-forty. Now, what is a five-forty you might ask? It is a spinning tornado kick in the air. You're going to jump off the same leg that you kick with and you're going to land on that leg also. So, you're going to jump off one leg and kick with that leg and land on that leg. Say, so for instance I jump off with my right leg. I'm going to kick with it, spin all the way around, land on it and come back down. That's what's called a five-forty. It's really just the spin; it's one and a half times around. That's a five-forty. But, in martial arts in Tae Kwon Do we turn into a kick. So, a Tae Kwon Do fighter invented a five-forty. It's made for knockout kicks. Then, it was move to competition where they use it for fancy kicks where they do it real flashy for performance wise. You'll see on T.V. a lot of times. You start to see it on a lot of commercials nowadays, that you'll see martial artists will doing five-forties. And, then you can also combo it. You can do five-forty hook kicks, aerials, and a bunch of different neat things like that. So, a five-forty is a really cool kick to learn how to do. But, it's very difficult."