Badminton Fitness
Badminton is a popular fast-paced indoor sport. To be successful in badminton you need excellent court speed and agility, with a good background of endurance. The fitness training for badminton should focus on speed, agility and endurance, with also strength and flexibility also important. See what are the relative fitness requirements for badminton.
Badminton Smash!Training should be sport-specific, addressing the specific needs of a badminton player. On court training, such as playing games and badminton drills, will provide some fitness benefits, but it needs to be supplemented with extra off-court training, such as resistance exercises in the gym and other cross training activities. Here is some more information about training for specific physical attributes that are important for badminton.
- Speed — movements around the badminton court are of very short distance, so movement speed training should focus of reaction time, acceleration and agility (change of direction). There are drills to increase foot speed, such as quick feet ladder drills. Training should also focus on strength and power development.
- Strength — resistance training exercises should focus on those areas which are actively involved in playing badminton, such as the wrist, elbows, shoulders, neck, chest, abdomen, back, thighs, knees and ankles.
- Flexibility — The badminton player uses their flexibility to reach, dive and turn to cover all parts of the court. Flexibility is something that can be improved with regular stretching. The badminton player should stretch before each activity (training and competition), plus other stretches, such as pnf and active stretches, to increase the flexibility of specific muscle groups.
- Endurance — Endurance is a very important component of fitness for badminton. Badminton players cover a lot of ground during a match with little rest. Not only is aerobic fitness important for court play, but you need to be fit for long technical training sessions and to recover well between games during extended tournament play.
As with any training program, it is important to monitor improvement so that the program can be modified accordingly. You can do this with regular fitness testing. See fitness testing for badminton for more information.
Related Pages
- Fitness testing for badminton
- A discussion of the fitness requirements for badminton.
- The attributes of a great badminton player
- Badminton warm-up
- All about fitness testing
- Poll: Fitness components for badminton
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