What are the basic exercises required when playing badminton?

To fully prepare your body for an intense session on court, you need to train, but you also need to exercise to improve your strength and stability. In a game where the shuttle’s speed can exceed 490 km/h, you need the full support of your body to be able to react. To do that requires physical training.

When planning your physical training schedule, you need to work on multiple capabilities, including strength, speed and agility. Badminton is all about speed and reflexes, so for the best reflexes, players need to be firing on all cylinders in each of these departments.

Let’s take a look at some important exercises for Badminton players.

Exercises to improve speed and agility

Let’s start with the essentials, speed and agility. Speed differs from person to person. Some need to develop it through exercise, some enhance it through exercise.

• Shuttle Run: The most popular exercise for developing speed and agility is the shuttle run. In this exercise, you run continuously back and forth between line markers at a target pace. The exercise can be quick or short based on your training goals.
• Reactive Ladder: This ladder uses colour and audible cues to engage the human brain and body during training to develop athletic intelligence and improve reaction time and speed through rapid decision making.

Flexibility Exercises

To move rapidly from one part of the court to another in a split second requires flexibility. The best way to improve your flexibility is through stretching. Here are some effective stretching exercises:

• Elbow-out shoulder and Rotator Stretch: Stand with your hand behind the middle of your back and your elbow pointing out, then reach over with your other hand gently pull your elbow forward.
• Standing Toe-up Calf and Achilles Stretch: Stand upright and place the ball of your foot onto a step or raised object, and bend your knee and lean forward.
• Rotating Wrist and Forearm Stretch: Gently place one arm straight out in front and parallel to the ground, then use your other hand to further rotate your hand upward.

Core Stability Exercises

Having core stability is important in Badminton. Here are a few exercises:

• Ball push away reps
• Hanging knee raise
• Dumbbell plank drag

Circuit Exercises

Circuit Training is a challenging yet effective way of conditioning your body, and it helps to develop flexibility, coordination and endurance. These training exercises include squat jumps, skipping, dumbbell squats and swinging. Apart from this exercise, cardiovascular equipment is also an effective circuit training.

Aerobic Exercises

A ready supply of oxygen and nutrients to your muscles is very important. This can be improved through aerobic exercise, which also benefits recovery and restores energy. Good aerobic exercises are swimming, cycling and running. A minimum of 20 minutes is recommended.

Weight Training Exercises

Weight training exercises will help you improve your muscular endurance and will also reduce the risk of injury.

• Medicine Ball Slams: There are two kinds of medicine ball slam exercises. In the overhead slam, you use your shoulders and core to generate power; With the inside slam, you need to create rotational power, this will help you get better at smashes.
• Barbell Lunges: Some shots are up in the air, whereas some are near the net, players need to do a lot of lunges on the court. This exercise will help you with that.

Some other effective exercises for Badminton Players are:

• Push Ups: You can try out variations of push-ups according to your body requirements, from diamond push ups to Spiderman push ups.
• Squats: These are a standard part of an athlete’s training session. You can also try variations like frog squats, squat kickbacks and squats with leg lifts.
• Burpees: This intense exercise requires explosive power, which helps in building strength in your legs. From a standing position, lower yourself down to a pushup position, transition into a low squat and complete it with a vertical jump with your arm raised.
• Box Jumps: This is another kind of exercise which will help you condition your legs with explosive power. For this, you need some kind of elevation that you could jump onto: a bench, staircase or platform at least 2 feet in height. Stand about two feet away from the box with your feet hip-width apart. With one quick motion, jump onto the box with both feet and then jump back down the floor.

Summary

It is important to listen to your body and its requirements. Exercises and their intensity vary from person to person, but physical exercises are essential, as they not only prepare your body for a hard session on court, but help with recovery, and also help protect you from injury.