Research on the Relation between Hand Preference and Success in Karate and Taekwondo Sports with Regards to Gender

This study is conducted with the aim of determining whether there is a difference between hand preference and success of adult Karate and Taekwondo athletes with regards to their gender. 255 athletes in total (144 male and 111 female) who participated in Turkey inter-university karate and taekwondo championships are included in the research. The “Oldfield Survey (1971)” that was developed to determine the hand preferences and some bio-motor characteristics of the athletes was implemented. In order to evaluate the success status, the correlation difference between the data obtained by following the results of the competition evaluation, hand preference and success was evaluated in the SPSS program. Dominant hand preference, athletic success and medal winning status of the athletes in both branches were compared. According to the findings, female karate and taekwondo athletes’ dominant hand preference and medal winning status have a weak and negative relation (p < 0.05). There was no significant relation between dominant hand preference and the branches (p > 0.05). There was also no significant relation between dominant hand preference, medal winning status and branches of male karate and taekwondo athletes (p > 0.05). In conclusion, a weak relation was found out between dominant hand preference of left-handed female karate and taekwondo athletes in their favor with regards to winning medals. However, no relation was found regarding male athletes.


Introduction
Interest towards Karate and Taekwondo is increasing every other day because combat sports like these contribute to both physical performance and personality development. Fighting sports include high-intensity, short-acting and anaerobic alactic type of applications. The success of the athlete in these sports depends on conditioning features as well as coordinative features such as joint mobility, balance, coordination and stimulus response (reaction). For this reason, it is also clear that different scientific studies are needed in the sports branches mentioned. One of the issues that is thought to be untouched in this area is whether there is any relation between hand preference and athletic success in the mentioned sports branches.

Hand Preference
Hand preference is use of right or left hand dominantly. The hand preference idea is that the preferred hand is used more effectively and skillfully in daily activities. In other words, while the right-handed people use their right hand more successfully than left-handed ones in daily activities, and the left-handed people use their left hand more effectively and efficiently than right-handed ones. The motor fields that control the hands are in the left hemisphere in 95% of the people. This is why people most commonly use their right hands (Leong, 1980). It has been found that the left-handed people use their right brain and right-handed people use their left brain more dominantly, because of their right and left brain hemispheres. Motor spaces are more dominantly located in the left hemisphere, which allow approximately 95% of the humans to control their hands. For this reason, the majority of people use their right hand (Turan, 2010).
Many people use their right hand to hold knives or forks, throw stones and open box covers. These people are "right-handed". And some others do these tasks with their left hand, for which they are called "left-handed". However, some people use their both hands equally. If they do not have any dominant preferences, they are defined as "ambidextrous" or mixed-handed or two-handed.

Karate
Karate, contrary to the common belief, is not an attack sport but a defense sport.
The first movements of the "Kata", which hold an important place in the karate sport, are blocks and that is a clear proof of this statement (Doğan, 2003). It has an important role in personality development as well as physically improving the body composition of a person. Dojo is a salutation stance extended towards the field of competition (tatamiye), opponent and trainers which is an indicator of previous statement (Türkeri, 2007).
Karate is a martial art aiming the development of character through education. All techniques and behaviors that could harm human beings are prohi-  (Soykan, 2003).
The most important feature distinguishing karate sport from other sports is the "Do" philosophy. This thinking system which can be found in the vast majority of Far East fighting sports, indicates ripening over time (Doğan, 2003).

Taekwondo
Taekwondo, besides being a defense art and sport, aims to improve physical fitness, resistance and ability. Its main characteristic is that it contains defensive techniques against the opponent with bare hands and feet. Respect, love, humbleness and patience are among the other attributes of Taekwondo (Chun, 1975 (Kim, 1995). The choices are "always with the right hand" (+10 points), "usually with the right hand" (+5 points), "with both hands" (0 point), "usually with the left hand"
There is a weak and negative relationship between the dominant hands of female athletes and their medal winning status (p < 0.05). There is no relationship between the branches of female athletes and their medal winning status (p > 0.05) ( Table 7).
Female athletes are dominantly right-handed in general as it can be seen in the Table 8.
There is a relation between the dominant hands of female athletes and their medal winning status (p < 0.05). As R 2 is 062, it can be said that there is a direct relationship between the medal winning and the dominant hands of female athletes. In other words, it can be said that the dominant hand preference has a 6% effect on medal winning status of female athletes. B (beta) is the value of the partial correlation coefficient, and the criterion for the relation between the dependent variable and the independent variable. The correlation between the dominant hands of female athletes and their medal status is 0.134 (Tables 9-11).
As a result of Pearson correlation analysis; no relationship between the dominant hands of male athletes and medal winning situations was found (p >

Discussion
The scientific researches conducted on the taekwondo branch, in which we have accomplished significant achievements in the name of our country in international sports events recent years and contradictive Olympics branch, karate, in which we have won several medals in Olympics games the popularity of which increases day by day, are estimated to contribute a lot to these fields.
Since is why the vast majority of people use their right hand (Leong, 1980;Tan, 1988).
However, many researchers have reported that the proportion of dominant left-handed athletes among high-level athletes in baseball, tennis, fencing, cricket fight sports boxing and wrestling is high. It is obvious that the importance of left hand depends on the feature of the sport (Akça et al., 2015). Lanzoni et al. (2013) found out in a study on the world's top 100 male racket players of branches like tennis, table tennis, squash, badminton that the proportion of left-handed athletes was higher compared to the general world population. Loffing et al. (2014) have found out in a study in which 903 athletes from various branches such as fencing, bowling, boxing have participated that the ratio of male athletes who dominantly use their left hand is (10.05%) while the ratio of left hand using female athletes is (7.88%) and determined that these ratios are higher compared to society. Left-handed athletes constitute 12.4% of total athletes in our study. In this respect, the ratio of left-handed athletes in our research supports the work done on the hand preference of individual sports.
Fisekcioglu (2011)  the aim of the study because of the significant difference in the female athletes' hand preference and medal winning status. However, no a significant difference in hand preference and medal winning status considering male taekwondo athletes was found. Raymond et al. (1996); ; Grouios (2004) argues that dominant left-handed athletes in sport branches such as table tennis and Eksim influenced their opponent due to their racket and fencing pattern, and that left-wing athletes were much more successful in these sports branches. In Baseball (McLean & Ciurczak, 1982), in Tennis (Azemar et al., 1983), in Eskrim Bisiacchi et al. (1985) found that dominant left-handed athletes were more successful (Hagemann, 2009). In a study of video analysis of 54 left-handed and 54 right-handed male tennis athletes in 3 groups, dominant left-handed athletes succeeded in predicting the strike direction of right-handed athletes. In support of this hypothesis, it is suggested that left-handed athletes are more successful because of their influence on the detection of frequencies.
The analysis results of the study of Del Corral & Prieto-Rodriguez (2010) on Grand Slam tennis tournaments between 2005 and 2008 have shown, when the quality differences between the players are checked, it is found that the right-handed players have about 5.9% have a lower likelihood of success compared to left-handed opponents.  conducted a video analysis of 18 volleyball players, predicting that the dominant left-handed ones were better than the right-handed ones in anticipating the direction of the shots from close and far distances, revealing that the visual perceptions of left-handed athletes were better. Similarly,  found out that the left-dominated tennis players were more successful in another study they have conducted on professional and amateur tennis players. This suggests that the impressive successes of former left-handed players such as Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe or Martina Navratilova could become a role model for future dominant professional tennis players in the years to come. Awamleh et al. (2013) found that the visual response time of left handed handball players was better compared to right-handed athletes in a study participated by 12 female handball players, 9 right-handed and 3 left-handed. Porac & Coren (1981) found out that left-handed athletes are in an advantageous situation in a study on hand, eye and foot preferences of boxers. Again, in the same study, basketball, gymnastics and bowling athletes who prefer left eye were found to be more advantageous than those who prefer right eye.
The study we conducted supports the studies in the various sports branches above, indicating that the dominant left-handed female karate and taekwondo athletes have a weak negative relationship between hand preference and medal winning status, thus indicating that the left dominant athletes are more successful.
In another study on boxers by Gürsoy (2009) In studies on ice hockey athletes, Puterman et al. (2010) have found out that right-handed ones have a better chance of recovering shots than left-handed ones. Watson & Kimura (1989) concluded that although there is no performance difference between the left hand and the right hand, the left hand received less hits than the right hand. Akça et al. (2015) reported that the right hand was better than the left hand in terms of shot accuracy, depending on hand dominance.
In addition, out study does not support the studies conducted in favor of the right-handers, since there is no significant difference in favor of the right-handers both in male and female karate and taekwondo athletes.

Conclusion
A weak, negative relation between dominant hand preference of female karate and taekwondo athletes and medal winning was found (p < 0.05). No significant relationship was found between dominant hand preference and branches (p > 0.05). No meaningful relationship among dominant hand preferences and medal status and branches of male karate and taekwondo athletes was found (p > 0.05).
It has been determined that dominant left-handed female karate and taekwondo athletes are very slightly more successful than the dominant right-handed ones. However, there was no difference between dominant hand preference and medal winning status of male athletes in the karate and taekwondo branches.
Although findings of our study show great parallelism with the findings of many similar previous studies, they also contradict with the findings of some studies.

Suggestions
1) For the reason that there is no precedent to our study in the literature on karate branch regarding the hand preference, more studies should be conducted in this regard. In Taekwondo branch, there are a quite limited number of scientific studies, which also require more scientific studies to be done.
2) It can be said that dominant left-handed female athletes are slightly more successful than dominant right-handed athletes in these sports branches, therefore it can be said that such athletes (left-handed) should be encouraged and supported.
3) Although dominant left-handed male athletes are less successful than female athletes, more studies on male athletes should be done.