Birdievents.com

Tournaments are long, grueling affairs that can end in an instant if you go cold for a game. Knowing how and when to warm up will help you stay sharp. You’re only as strong as your weakest link, and so being insufficiently warm will severely affect your ability to perform at your peak level. In this guide, you’ll find warm-up exercises and tips to give you the best chance to succeed on the badminton court.

Work Your Muscles

Part of being warmed up is making sure all your muscles and joints are ready to go. Although stretching is commonly associated with warming up, it can actually be detrimental to do before a match. When stretching, you are holding a pose to get your muscles to relax. This relaxation actually ruins your muscles’ ability to contract quickly, which effectively messes with your reaction time. If you do feel a bit stiff before warming up, you can stretch, but don't hold a pose for longer than 10 seconds. The brief exercises below will simulate badminton strokes and movement to properly prepare you before you hit:

1. Ankles & Wrist

Loosen up your ankles by putting the tip of your foot on the ground and rotating your ankle. Repeat this for the other foot. As you do this, rotate your wrists in a circular motion to loosen them up as well.

2. Calves

Warm your calves up by doing small two-foot hops from side to side and front to back. This exercise will make sure you’re adequately warm to do proper footwork come game time.

3. Quads

Here you’ll want to take a few big hops while bringing your knees to your chest. Do no more than three or four jumps to keep from exerting too much energy.

Warm up your muscles while you wait for your next match. Warm-up time is limited, so you won’t want your stretches interfering with that. This is also a great way to release tension before a game. The last thing you want is to feel tense or nervous during an important match.

4. Back

Warm up your back muscles by rotating your upper body to the left and right. Keep your arms bent while trying to touch your elbow to your back.

5. Shoulders

Doing jumping jacks is an excellent way to incorporate lateral movement in both your arms and legs. This side-to-side motion in your arms and legs is especially prevalent in badminton.

6. Pecs

Start by holding your arms back as far as you can while keeping your arms straight. Then bring them forward and cross your arms so that they wrap around your body. Repeat this action a few times to help simulate your forehand and backhand shots.

7. Forearms

Warm up your forearms by holding your arms out in front of you with your palms facing the floor. Flap your wrists back and forth a couple times. Then repeat that action with your palms facing the ceiling.

Hit It Out

Now that your muscles are all warmed up, you can begin hitting with your partner. If you’re hitting with an opponent for a singles match, just kindly ask to work on a certain shot and your competitor should oblige. Here is a quick list of shots you should do in order:

It’s also important to use your time wisely because most tournaments will enforce a five-minute warm-up rule. If you feel one of your shots needs work, then allow yourself more time to work out the kinks. Here are a couple drills you can use to get the most out of your warm-up time:

• Clear-drop-drop: This drill is designed to work on your baseline drops and net drops. This sequence repeats itself to alternate shots. First you clear to your partner, and then he hits a baseline drop. You then return the shot with a net drop, and your partner then re-starts the cycle with a clear.
• Clear-smash-drop: In this drill, your will be refining your smashes and smash returns. Start off by clearing to your partner, which he will smash back to you. Drop the smash back, and your partner will then clear to you.

To simplify these drills, you can adjust them to either “clear-clear-drop” or “clear-clear-smash.” In addition to refining on your shot execution, these drills will also get you working on your footwork. Being able to work on multiple aspects of your game at once is invaluable during your short warm-up time.

Stretch When Appropriate

Although stretching before a match can work against you, this doesn’t mean there is never a good time to do it. You should stretch after a match while you are cooling down, and any time your muscles feel stiff and tense. Stretching after a match will actually prevent you from becoming too stiff or cramping during the next match. Cramping is a sign of a muscle being overworked, so if you feel that sensation, you’ll want to stretch to help relax the muscle and prevent further injury.

Value Your Time

While you should have ample rest in between matches, you should aim to find the balance between being well-rested and adequately warmed up. The key thing is to remember there is no set routine that works for everyone. Every player has a different skill set with different strengths and weaknesses. It is part of your responsibility as a player to identify these aspects of your game in order to best prepare yourself for a match. As long as you can accomplish that, you should have no regrets, regardless of the outcome.

Article was quoted form isport.com

The serve is one of the most important aspects of badminton, especially during a doubles match. Unfortunately serving is a weak point of many badminton enthusiasts. This is a problem that badminton lovers are trying to solve.

There are lots of instructional materials out there, such as videos, books, web articles etc. that can help out a lot, but all of these materials can only teach you the theory. There is still only one way to get real skills, and it is, you guessed it, by doing lots of practice.

Most of the time when people rent a badminton court, they use it to play games and not many people use the time to practice their serves. In an average length game of around 15 minutes, every player only has a limited opportunity to serve. This is why there are a lot of players out there with years of experience by still have a lackluster serve.

There are ways you can practice serving by yourself. You don’t necessarily need a court to practice. If you are doing long serves, then you’ll need a large space, like outdoors, to practice. As long as you have good posture and enough forearm and wrist strength, long serves shouldn’t be too difficult to master. In modern times, the type of service that decides the game is the short serve. You don’t need a lot of space to practice short serves. A 3m x 2m space will do fine. Here are the steps you should take to set up a good practice session:

1) Determine where you should stand (In a real game: the inner front corner of your service area);
2) Determine the target of your serve (In a real game: the inner or outer front corners of your opponent’s service area);
3) Put a string half way between your position and the target and make the string as high as the net. If you have a real badminton net available, use that instead.
4) Find some sort of open top container, such as a box or bucket, and put it on the target area.
5) Get lots of birdies (24-30) and practice your forehand and backhand short serves. You want the bird to fly just over the “net” and land inside of the container. At the start you might miss a lot but after a while most of the birdies should hit their target. You want to be accurate at least 90% of the time. Of course, 100% accuracy is even better.
6) Monitor and mentally note down your posture and the quality of your serves. Try to adjust yourself to improve your accuracy.
7) If you have a large enough space, you can have to containers and pretend that they are the two front corners of the opponent’s service area, so that you practice switching between two different targets.

If you keep practicing, the accuracy, quality, and consistency of your serves will improve.

Article was written by Tony Jiang

Every badminton player, from inexperienced novices to seasoned veterans, strives to improve his/her badminton fundamentals. At the present time, other than using books, videos and online resources to improve your theoretical understanding of badminton, practicing is best way to improve your skills and there is no better way, unless you manage to meet a skilled player who is willing to give you a few pointers.

There are many skills involved in playing badminton, and most players are at least interested about how to practice these skills. The best condition for practice is of course having your own court, a professional coach and skilled “sparring” partners to help you. Most recreational badminton players, however, don’t have this luxury and any courts they rent would usually be used to play games. Without a court or a partner, all a person has left is him/herself to practice with.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of fundamental skills you can practice by yourself, even exercises that require the use of a shuttlecock. The methods aren’t difficult and the requirements aren’t high for a little bit of self practice. Maybe a lot of readers already know what I’m talking about, but I’ll share my method anyways for those of you who don’t know how to practice by yourselves.

Hopefully most people know how a person can practice ping pong or tennis by oneself. The only thing needed is a flat vertical surface like a wall, and one can hit the ball off the wall. You can do the same thing with badminton too. The bounces may be a bit irregular but the exercise is useful nonetheless. You can practice clears, drives and net shots against the wall. If you find a place with a ceiling of around 14-16 meters high (around 45ft), you can hit the bird against the ceiling in order to improve your strength. If you practice regularly and correctly, then your skills should improve, and the fundamentals will eventually become a piece of cake.

Article was written by Tony Jiang