European Journal of Sport Science

ISSN: 1746-1391 (Print) 1536-7290 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tejs20

Impact attenuation of protective boxing and

taekwondo headgear

David M. O’Sullivan & Gabriel P. Fife

To cite this article: David M. O’Sullivan & Gabriel P. Fife (2016): Impact attenuation of
protective boxing and taekwondo headgear, European Journal of Sport Science, DOI:
10.1080/17461391.2016.1161073

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2016.1161073

Published online: 21 Mar 2016.

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 European Journal of Sport Science, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2016.1161073

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Impact attenuation of protective boxing and taekwondo headgear

DAVID M. O’SULLIVAN1 & GABRIEL P. FIFE2

1
Division of Sport Science, Pusan National University, Pusan, Republic of Korea & 2Health and Human Performance, Texas
State University, San Marcos, TX, USA
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This study aimed to compare the impact attenuation performance of boxing and taekwondo headgear in terms of peak linear
and rotational acceleration. To measure the impact attenuation of headgear, a standardized (American Society for Testing
and Materials (ASTM) F-2397) martial arts headgear striker was used to impart impacts to a 50th Percentile Male Hybrid
III Crash Test Dummy head and neck complex. Two boxing (Adidas and Greenhill) and two taekwondo (Adidas and
Nike) headgear, approved by the Association Internationale de Boxe Amateur and the World Taekwondo Federation
(WTF), were selected. Each of the selected headgear was fitted to the Hybrid III head and subsequently subjected to five
impacts at the front and side with a maximum impact interim time of 60 seconds by the rotating striker at 8 ± 0.3 m/s.
Linear and rotational acceleration were recorded at 10,000 Hz. There were significant interactions of the impact location
and brand on the rotational acceleration, F(3,40) = 6.7, p < .05. There were significant main effects of both impact
location F(1,40) = 9.07, p < .05 and headgear brand F(3,40) = 9.9, p < .05 on the linear acceleration. Pairwise comparisons
show significant differences between the front and side for both linear and rotational acceleration. The headgear tested
failed the ASTM high impact test requirement to reduce the linear acceleration to below a threshold of 150 g. Further
development of headgear to reduce impact linear and rotational acceleration magnitudes should be called for by the
relevant sport governing bodies and initiated by headgear manufactures.

Keywords: Headgear, biomechanics, boxing, taekwondo, head injury, concussion

1. Introduction
The Center for Head Injury Services reports that the
cost of head injuries in the United States is estimated
at $48 billion each year (The Center for Head Injury
Services, 2015), with 10% occurring during sports
and recreational activities (Bartsch, Benzel, Miele,
& Prakash, 2012). As a main objective in boxing is
to render your opponent unconscious, it is not sur-
prising that 89.8% of all injures in professional
boxing are to the head/neck or face, with 39.8 head
injuries per 1000 fight participations (95% CI =
20.8–58.7) resulting in a concussion (Zazryn,
Finch, & McCrory, 2013). Between 1950 and
2007, 339 deaths were reported in boxing (Baird
et al., 2010) and even with the heightened media
attention caused by these deaths and severe head
injuries, to our knowledge, there are few studies eval-
uating the protective qualities (e.g. impact attenu-
ation) of protective boxing headgear (McIntosh &
Patton, 2015; Pieter, O’Sullivan, & Fife, 2014).
Similarly, taekwondo is a one-on-one full contact
combat sport/martial art continuously growing in
popularity, with 206 member nations (World Taek-
wondo Federation, 2014) and an estimated 80
million practitioners (World Taekwondo Headquar-
ters Kukkiwon, 2008). A recent review of taekwondo
injuries highlighted a concussion incidence of 9.4 per
1000 athlete exposures (AE) (95% CI = 7.1–11.7)
among male taekwondo athletes compared to 4.6
per 1000 AE (95% CI = 2.6–6.5) among females
(Pieter, Fife, & O’Sullivan, 2012). Additionally, the
concussion incidence is approximately four times
higher in taekwondo competition than American
football (Pieter et al., 2012). In 2014, the World
Taekwondo Federation (WTF) implemented rule
changes by allocating four points for head shots com-
pared to one point before (World Taekwondo Fed-
eration, 2013). From a head injury perspective, this
type of rule change is an area of concern especially
as it was observed that competitors adopted strategies
focused more on head kicks than before (Hansson &
O’Sullivan, 2011).
In an effort to improve player safety, protective
taekwondo headgear was first introduced in 1985

Correspondence: Gabriel P. Fife, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA. E-mail: gabefife@txstate.edu

© 2016 European College of Sport Science

 2 D. M. O’Sullivan & G. P. Fife
and officially used at the 1987 WTF World Cham-
pionships in Barcelona, Spain (Koh & Watkinson,
2002). The main function of headgear is to reduce
the resulting head acceleration caused by either a
kick or a player falling and hitting their head on the
ground (Moffitt & Lieu, 1995). In 1995, Moffitt
and Lieu (1995) evaluated the attenuation properties
of martial arts headgear after which their work lead to
the development of recommendations by the Ameri-
can Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Inter-
national for testing protective headgear used in
martial arts (F-2397) (American Standards for
Testing Materials, 2004). ASTM standards stipulate
that headgear tested at minimum impact levels (56 J)
are to yield test dummy head accelerations below 50 g
and maximum impact levels (144 J) to be below 150
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g. Since the development of this standard in 2004,
only one study evaluated martial arts headgear
according to ASTM’s recommendations (O’Sullivan,
Fife, Pieter, & Shin, 2013). From this study, five
commonly used taekwondo headgear failed to pass
both minimum (56 J) and maximum (144 J) impact
magnitudes.
Although it is understood that shear strains to the
brain, as a result of rapid rotational forces, are a cau-
sative factor for severe brain injury (Lowenhielm,
1975) current headgear/helmet certifying associ-
ations, such as Snell, National Operating Committee
on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE)
and ASTM, are yet to include an evaluation criterion
for rotational acceleration. Believed to be more realis-
tic than the standard drop test (i.e. testing only linear
head acceleration), researchers have developed
helmet-testing methods (Aare & Halldin, 2003; Kis
et al., 2013) to include oblique impacts, with injury
potential measures including effects of both linear
and rotational acceleration. Consequently, as
helmet geometry, padding type and thickness have
been shown to influence rotational head acceleration
(Aare, Kleiven, & Halldin, 2004), it was hypothesized
that headgear type (boxing or taekwondo) may elicit
differences in linear and rotational accelerations of
an instrumented head form. Therefore, the objective
of this study was to compare the impact attenuation
performance of boxing and taekwondo headgear in
terms of linear and rotational acceleration.
2. Methods
2.1. Testing equipment
To measure the impact attenuation of the headgear, a
standardized (ASTM F-2397) martial arts headgear
striker (Figure 1) was used to impart impacts to a
50th Percentile Male Hybrid III Crash Test
Dummy (Hybrid III) head and neck complex. The
striker (mass = 4.5 kg) consisted of an aluminium
tube (length = 500 mm, diameter = 80 mm)
mounted to a ball bearing pivot point rotating about
a solid aluminium pipe. The peak velocity of the
striker was controlled by a three-wheeled weighted
(mass = 100 kg) pulley system. The striker complex
was securely mounted to a three-dimensional T-
shaped steel beam structure (approx. 200 kg).
Offset from the centre of the supportive structure,
hanging upside down, on four separate lines of
linked chains was a steel pendulum-like structure of
the same inertial properties (25 kg) of the upper
body of a Hybrid III Dummy. The Hybrid III head
and neck were mounted to the body structure and
set at a variable position to undergo impacts (144 J)
to the front and side of the head from the rotating
striker.
2.2. Testing procedure
To simulate head impact in taekwondo, the target
consisted of a Hybrid III head and a total of four com-
mercially available headgear; two taekwondo head-
gear (Adidas and Nike) approved by the WTF and
two boxing headgear (Adidas and Greenhills)
approved by the International Boxing Association
were selected for impact testing. Each of the selected
headgear (large size) was fitted to the Hybrid III head
and the chinstrap securely fastened, that is, it was not
physically difficult to put the headgear on the head
form (ASTM F-2397). One limitation of our study
is that as only one head form was available for
testing and we were unable to test multiple headgear
sizes. Each headgear was impacted five times at the
front and side and struck with a maximum impact
interim time of 60 seconds by the rotating impactor
at 8 ± 0.3 m/s in accordance with ASTM F-2397
recommendations.
2.3. Data acquisition and processing
Mounted at the head’s centre of gravity was one 500-
g tri-axial sensor (PCB-355A66, PCB Piezotronics,
USA) and a rotational rate sensor (DTS ARS 12 K,
Diversified Technical Systems, USA) that were
used to obtain resultant linear acceleration and
rotational accelerations of the head. A customized
data processing programme (LABVIEW 2013,
National Instruments, USA) was used to record,
filter and process the accelerometer, rotational rate
sensors and photoelectric sensor data. Terminal
striking velocity was verified for each trial by using
the time the striker took to pass the photoelectric
sensor field (sensor field distance 70 mm) (BX700-
DDT, Autonics, USA). Acceleration data were

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Figure 1. ASTM striker.
sampled according to channel frequency class 1000
(SAE, 1995) via a USB connected Compact DAQ
chassis (cDAQ-9174, National Instruments), fitted
with two modules. Module one (NI 9269, National
Instruments) recorded analog signals from the photo-
electric sensor (NI 9222) and module two acquired
acceleration data (NI 9234, 24-Bit, National
Instruments).
2.4. Statistical analysis
A multifactorial MANOVA was used to identify the
differences in Impact Location and Headgear Brand
on linear and rotational acceleration. The level of sig-
nificance was set to an effect size of 0.20 (Batterham
& Hopkins, 2005). All statistical analyses were done
using SPSS version 21 (IBM SPSS) and effect sizes
calculated in Microsoft Excel 2010.
3. Results
According to Pillai’s Trace, there were significant
interactions of the impact location and brand, F
(3,40) = 4.6, p < .001, η 2 = 0.3). There were signifi-
cant main effects of both impact location F(1,40) =
24.2, p < .001, η 2 = 0.61 and headgear brand F
(3,40) = 4.3, p = .001, η 2 = 0.29 on the linear
Martial arts headgear impact attenuation 3
acceleration. Descriptives are provided in Table I.
Pairwise comparisons adjusted according to the Bon-
ferroni correction show significant differences
between the front and side for both linear and
rotational acceleration. Additional pairwise compari-
sons are shown in Tables II and III.
4. Discussion
To our knowledge, few studies (McIntosh & Patton,
2015; O’Sullivan, Fife, & Pieter, 2014; Pieter et al.,
2014) have investigated impact attenuation proper-
ties of boxing headgear. As it is understood that
head linear and rotational acceleration may create
injurious stress to brain tissue (Zhang, Yang, &
King, 2004) and may be a good predictor for sport-
related concussion (Rowson & Duma, 2013), we
set out to gain more information concerning the
role of protective headgear used in boxing and taek-
wondo to decrease these forces. In 1969, the
NOCSAE was initiated to formulate a plan to
reduce the high number of catastrophic head and
spinal injuries in American football, with 38 injuries
in 1969 alone (Bartsch et al., 2012). NOCSAE intro-
duced mandatory athletic helmet standards, using the
Gadd Severity Index, which, in part, is calculated
based on linear acceleration. Helmet safety stan-
dards, by the Snell Memorial Foundation and the
 4 D. M. O’Sullivan & G. P. Fife
Table I. Descriptive statistics for the linear and rotational acceleration according to the brand and impact location

Resulting linear acceleration (g) (mean (95% Rotational acceleration (rad/s2) (mean (95% confidence
confidence interval) ± Std. Dev.) interval) ± Std. Dev.)
Headgear
Front Side Front Side

Adidas-boxing 217 (211–233) ± 22 320 (302–338) ± 70 5197 (5157–5240) ± 1600 7997 (7854–8140) ± 552
Greenhills-boxing 293 (284–302) ± 36 268 (252–284) ± 60 14,065 (11,855–16,275) ± 8502 4427 (4274–4580) ± 590
Adidas-taekwondo 281 (279–283) ± 8 294 (290–298) ± 15 14,010 (12,705–15,315) ± 5021 3554 (3432–3676) ± 468
Nike-taekwondo 327 (317–337) ± 38 386 (380–392) ± 25 20,519 (19,210–21,828) ± 5037 8703 (7849–9557) ± 3287

National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration,
also use a similar evaluation criterion based on linear
acceleration. Helmet manufacturers have been
encouraged to follow these standards, which have
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associated with a 90% nominal risk of concussion
(Rowson & Duma, 2013). Similarly, in a comprehen-
sive study (Duhaime et al., 2012) using the Head
Impact Telemetry System® in American football

led to a substantially reduced number of catastrophic
head and neck injuries. However, the efficacy of
current soft-shelled helmets (similar to martial art
headgear) to prevent concussion in rugby union and
Australian football is reported to have minimal pro-
tective capability to reduce concussion rates (McIn-
tosh, McCrory, & Finch, 2004). Therefore, as our
previous study (O’Sullivan et al., 2013) found poor
performance of taekwondo headgear (similar in
design to boxing models) to mitigate linear forces,
we hypothesized that current martial arts headgear
would not respond favourably to linear as well as
rotational acceleration forces.
The main findings of this study show significant
interactions for linear and rotational acceleration of
the Hybrid III Dummy head between impact location
and headgear brands. As previously reported (O’Sul-
livan et al., 2013), the headgear in this study also
failed the ASTM F2397 recommendation, that is,
to reduce linear acceleration below 150 g for high-
energy (144 J or 8.0 m/s) impacts. There were signifi-
cant differences between rotational acceleration
according to brand and impact location, with the
front of the headgear tending to produce the highest
rotational accelerations. It was previously reported
that rotational acceleration above 7483 rad/s2 was
and ice-hockey during four seasons (486,594
recorded impacts), the mean linear and rotational
accelerations from concussions of 44 athletes were
86.1 ± 42.6 g (range 16.5–177.9 g) and 3620 ±
2166 rad/s2 (range 183–7589 rad/s2), respectively.
With the published degree of variability in rotational
acceleration data, from in vivo head impact monitor-
ing (Beckwith et al., 2013) and our laboratory work
(Fife, O’Sullivan, Pieter, Cook, & Kaminski, 2012),
it is too premature to hone in on rotational accelera-
tion alone as a predictor of concussion in martial arts.
The results in our current study agree with Moffitt
and Lieu’s (1995) paper showing that headgear of
varying thickness may mitigate forces differently
and thicker headgear may not always provide the
best attenuative properties, and vice versa. This is
an interesting point from a design perspective as
thinner headgear, as demonstrated from our results,
which would be more attractive for an athlete, may
provide acceptable protection from high magnitude
impacts. Additional factors, that are reported to
affect the design and response of a headgear/helmet
to impact testing under varied conditions, are the
use of auxetic materials (Sanami, Ravirala, Alderson,
& Alderson, 2014), densities (Kulkarni, Gao,
Horner, Zheng, & David, 2013), external slip

Table II. Pairwise comparisons between the brands for the resulting linear acceleration (g) and rotational acceleration (rad/s2) for front
impacts

Adidas-boxing Adidas-taekwondo Greenhills-boxing

Adidas-boxing
Adidas-taekwondo r = 3.87 (1.52–5.46);
r′ = −2.37 (0.58–3.69)
a
Greenhills-boxing r = 2.55 (0.70–3.90)
Nike-taekwondo r = −3.54 (−5.07–1.33); r = −1.68 (−2.92–0.11) a

r′ = −4.1 (−5.74–1.66)

Notes: r values are used to indicate the effect sizes for the resulting linear acceleration. r′ values are used to indicate the effect sizes for the
rotational acceleration.
a
Indicates an unclear effect size.

Table III. Pairwise comparisons between the brands for the resulting linear acceleration (g) and rotational acceleration (rad/s2) for side
impacts
Adidas-boxing
Adidas-boxing
Adidas-taekwondo r′ = −3.25 (−4.72−1.15)
Greenhills-boxing r′ = −6.25 (−8.41–2.88)
Nike-taekwondo a
Notes: r values are used to indicate the effect sizes for the resulting linear acceleration. r′ values are used to indicate the effect sizes for the
rotational acceleration.
a
Indicates an unclear effect size.
surfaces (Robinson, Syousland, Baqui, Karami, &
Ziejewski, 2011) and material honeycomb structures
(Caserta, Iannucci, & Galvanetto, 2011), which have
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been examined for hard-shelled helmets, however,
how these materials may be used for soft-shelled
combat sports headgear is yet to be extensively
examined.
The use of wireless technology (Broglio et al.,
2009), to measure biomechanical head impact
characteristics during practice and games, is yet to
be well reported among martial arts head injury
research. Data from these types of study will be
important when considering future headgear
designs to ensure realistic measures are tested based
on real injury locations and impact levels. Although
our data from high-energy impacts in the controlled
laboratory environment yield high dummy head
accelerations, the application of these laboratory-
based findings are limited, yet warrant further inves-
tigation, especially during competition to confirm
actual headgear performance and whether or not ath-
letes are exposed to impacts of this nature during
competition. Head injury mechanics and frequency
of impact location in boxing are available for sparring
sessions from one study (Stojsih, Boitano, Wilhelm,
& Bir, 2010), however, not yet available for compe-
tition. By using accelerometer instrumented head-
gear during sparring sessions, Stojsih et al. (2010)
identified high peak translational and rotational
accelerations of 191 g and 17,156 rad/s2, respect-
ively. They also report that the majority of impacts
were to the front of the head (56%), with the remain-
ing impacts being to the left (17%), right (14%), back
(11%) and top (2%) of the head. With a high fre-
quency of impacts to the front of the head in
boxing, it may be useful to improve impact attenu-
ation at the front of headgear by improving the
material properties. Although frontal and side
impacts were not compared statistically due to the
effect of inherent geometrical differences (McIntosh
et al., 2004) on head mechanics, no headgear
model provided ample protection (i.e. less than
150 g head accelerations) supporting the proposition
Martial arts headgear impact attenuation 5
Adidas-taekwondo Greenhills-boxing
r′ = −3.58 (−5.12–1.35)
r = −4.46 (−6.17–1.87) r = −2.57 (−0.92–0.71)
that headgear protection may need to be improved at
the front of the head. To date, there are no such
studies utilizing accelerometer instrumented head-
gear to study in vivo head impacts in taekwondo
during sparring or competition. However, as the
most common technique involved in diagnosed con-
cussion is the turning kick (Koh & Watkinson, 2002),
which tends to impact the side of the head, it may be
useful to introduce designs to further mitigate impact
levels at the side section of the headgear.
All headgear tested in this study have manufacturer
assurance decals indicating adherence to a European
safety standard (EN 13227-4) (European Committee
for Standardization, 2001). The use of the European
standard for testing both boxing and taekwondo
headgear is conservative when compared with long-
standing biomechanical analyses of boxing and taek-
wondo techniques. The impact energy for kicks of a
“swing-oriented” movement pattern in taekwondo
has been estimated to create approximately 200 J
impacts (Lieu, 2011), whereas the European safety
standard employs 3 J impacts to headgear sample sec-
tions. Furthermore, estimated resultant impact forces
from laboratory studies for the taekwondo turning
kick and boxing straight punch are 5419 ± 659 N
(O’Sullivan et al., 2009) and 4800 ± 227 N, respect-
ively, while the European standard indicates that 3 J
impacts should result in attenuated forces less than
2000 N. Additionally, a recent study of boxing head-
gear performance estimated impacts in boxing to be
near 20 J (McIntosh & Patton, 2015). These afore-
mentioned testing condition differences highlight
the importance of utilizing realistic testing method-
ology that holds face validity. Another area of
concern, which appears to have only recently been
assessed in a pilot study (Pieter et al., 2014), is the
ability of headgear to sustain several low-energy (56
J) impacts, rather than one high-energy (144 J)
impact. This may be especially important considering
the total number of punches to the head per minute
for boxing (19.52 per minute) (Ashker, 2011) being
approximately 16 times more frequent than taek-
wondo kicks (1.22 per minute) (Hansson &
 6 D. M. O’Sullivan & G. P. Fife
O’Sullivan, 2011). We recommend headgear manu-
facturers and/or sport governing bodies, which
approve the use of these protective taekwondo or
boxing headgear, to work together in developing rec-
ommendations concerning multiple impact sustain-
ability and overall lifespan (not yet addressed) to
ensure athlete safety.
5. Conclusion
This is the first study to test the impact attenuation of
boxing and taekwondo headgear in terms of linear
and rotational acceleration using the ASTM standard
(F-2397) for martial arts headgear. None of the head-
gear tested passed the ASTM criterion to reduce
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head acceleration below the criterion cut-off of 150
g. Our study’s rotational accelerations exceed the
levels that are reported to be possible concussion
thresholds of approximately 6000 rad/s (Zhang
et al., 2004). Our results display that increases in
the thickness of headgear padding did not always cor-
respond with a reduction in head acceleration. This
suggests that future studies should focus on a combi-
nation of material properties that may increase head-
gear’s impact attenuation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the
authors.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Research
Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean
Government [NRF-2013S1A5A8022563].
ORCID
David M. O’Sullivan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-
8265-9260
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