The sport of badminton requires specific physical and physiology attributes - such as great court speed and agility, with a good background of endurance. Apart from skill (which is a highly important ability), the relative importance of the physiological parameters such as strength, speed, agility and endurance differ in their contributions to making a champion badminton player. The psychological parameters of mental toughness and dedication is also needed in high doses. The table below lists some suggested tests for the different categories of fitness that are important for badminton. This list is not exhaustive, there are many other fitness tests that may be suitable, depending on your situation.

Fitness Component example tests comments Anthropometry

• Body Size tests such as height and weight, and arm span.
• Body fat can be measured using the skinfold method. If this is not available, monitoring body weight changes would give an indication of body fat changes, assuming no change in muscle mass.

Tall players with a good arm length can reach more areas of the court with ease. Excess body fat would affect the player's ability to move freely around the court, and the extra weight will increase fatigue.  Flexibility

• The sit and reach test can be done for lower back and hamstring flexibility. Other flexibility tests should also be performed.

The flexibility tests should be specific to the actions of badminton.  Strength and Power

• The vertical jump test can be performed to measure leg power and jumping ability. Maximal strength tests for specific exercises could also be conducted. A hand grip strength test is also suitable.

Strength (and power tests) should also be done to determine strength levels and to monitor strength changes in conjunction with training programs.  Speed

• Sprint time over 20m, with split times for the 5m and 10m distance should be done if possible.

Running speed is very important in badminton in order to reach all areas of the court quickly. Agility

• The 505 agility test measures the ability to change direction 180 degrees, such as when the player turns and runs back for a high smash. A 90 degree turn test would also be suitable for badminton. Specific badminton. tests can be developed that mimic the demands of the sport on court.

The ability to quickly change direction is important for badminton. The ability to turn to both the left and right direction may be different in some players and should also be assessed. Aerobic Fitness

• If testing large groups of players, the shuttle run (beep) test would usually be the most appropriate test.
• There is a range of aerobic fitness tests.

Endurance is an important component of fitness for badminton. Not only is aerobic fitness important for court play, but you need to be fit for long technical training sessions and extended tournament play.

Article was quoted from topendsports.com

TIP 18.0

When playing doubles, expect to participate in rotation throughout the rally. Avoid playing sides. In any given rally, an athlete may be on a side, at the net, or at the baseline.

TIP 17.0

When your opponent comes in towards the net to return your drop, make sure you are there. Keep your racquet up and make a quick, over-bearing lunge(maybe like a smash attempt) towards the anticipated return direction of the bird(you need to come in anyway in case they may do a drop return). Your opponents' peripheral vision will pick up your aggressive movement, and this could affect the quality of their return as part of their mind is distracted by this looming figure rushing into the net.

TIP 16.0

If you are at the net playing doubles, try to duck low if you want your partner in the back to take an oncoming shot. This also gives greater visibility to your partner when they hit the shuttle.

TIP 15.0

Smashing down the center of the court, or dropping at the "T" is the safest and most effective attack(also can aim for their body). Advantages:

• keeps your partner at the net in the game, as the returns should come straight up the middle

• your partner can cover most of the front court equally and with one step

• the opponents can collide due to both going for the bird, or miss if neither go for it

• the bird can never go out wide, only out length ways

• it is harder for the opponent to do an effective cross court return

• in more advance strategies, the attackers can channel attack*

(*Channel Attack: Your partner at the net moves slightly over one side of the court to which the two of you focus your smashing and attacking on one opponent)

TIP 14.0

At your service, consider where your opponent is standing. If they are too close, flick serve. Try to serve to the "T"(at their body) most times; however, if they are close to the "T" serve to the opposite side. Use all four corners of the service box to your advantage, and to keep them off guard.

TIP 13.0

When serving, consider your opponents' physical characteristics. Flick long high serves to much shorter players, as they may be able to punch short serves easier. Taller players can cut off high serves easier and quicker(they have longer legs), and they have more difficulty with tighter short serves(more effort to stay low).

TIP 12.0

Singles is essentially a game of chess. He who lasts longest is the victor.

TIP 11.0

If you notice that your opponent is weakening or missing some shots. Do not give them any extra time to regroup.You can do this by getting to the serve line faster, and pick up the pace of the game. Try not to give them water breaks, or change the bird.

TIP 10.0

Watch your opponent play in matches prior to yours. Look for any advantages.

TIP 9.0

Watch out for south-paws. Sometimes we forget there are left handed players.

TIP 8.0

Always communicate positively with your partner(verbally and via body-language). Think positively within yourself as well. If you or your partner miss, say "Good try", or "It's ok". When you or your partner do well, give praise.  Research has given proven links between thinking and doing.

TIP 7.0

Use the 80/20 rule in your badminton play. 80% of the time are staple shots(ie short serve, smashing, pushes, drops, lobs, attacking clears. 20% of the time are flick/long serves, clears, lifts, trick shots, low percentage shots, and all non-attacking shots. Of course, sometimes rules are meant to be broken...improvise.

TIP 6.0

Players must be able to full court clear from any part of the court. The only exception is concerning appropriate developmental expectations at the younger age levels(under age 12).

TIP 5.0

The single most important shot in doubles is the serve. Nail it. The next two most important are the serve-return, and the serve-return-return(first three hits in a rally). All else is secondary...

TIP 4.0

Always remain calm and poised. Your negative behavior can influence your partners' badminton play, and can give fuel to your opponents' confidence.

TIP 3.0

Deliberately serve a bit short to players who love to rush your short serve. They end up having little time to decide if they want to return your serve.

TIP 2.0

Dress according to you game plan. If you want to intimidate your opponents, then wear all the badminton gear (shoes, shorts, shirts, socks, wristband...). If you want your opponents to under-estimate your abilities, then wear whatever.

TIP 1.0

Vary your hold time on your serve. This can confuse your opponent. You have 5 seconds to serve, so use them...

Article was written by Kevin Willington of Badminton for Life

Although the number of badminton gyms continues to grow, there still aren’t many convenient ways to get time on the court. Any combination of time, money, and distance can be reasons for keeping you off the badminton court. Rather than sulk about your misfortune, you can put in some work outside the gym to help you improve your game.

Off-court Practice Tips

While there isn’t a wide range of off-court drills that can legitimately help you on the court, this shouldn’t stop you from working hard if your court time is limited. Here are a few basic rules to follow when practicing outside a gym:

• Practice in a wide-open space: Whether you’re hitting the shuttle or not, you’ll want to have plenty of room to do your exercises. Generally this means being outdoors, which may not always have ideal conditions for hitting the shuttle. If that’s the case, you’ll want to stick with shuttle-less exercises.
• Never hit the shuttle indoors: Unless you’re inside a designated badminton gym, you should never hit the shuttle indoors. Doing so presents a danger to the people and objects around you.
• Visualize the court: With all of these tips and drills, always try to keep in mind how it will translate to your actual on-court experience. If you can visualize certain aspects of the court or a game, then you can cater your exercises to better mimic the movements on a court.

Basic Shot Execution

If you’re having difficulty with basic execution or simply hitting the sweet spot of the racket, there are a few exercises you can do. Ideally, you’ll want to be in an open outdoor space — like your backyard or a grass field in the park. Although the wind is a factor you won’t normally have to deal with, the basic fundamentals of swinging and making solid contact are still rooted in these drills. Here are some exercises that will benefit new or beginning players:

• Service stroke: Having a consistent service will benefit your game tremendously. You can practice your consistency by marking a location to aim for. Since half the length of an entire badminton court is 22 feet, you’ll want to place a marker at least 22 feet away. This will give you a good feel for how far away you need to serve the shuttle.
• Underhand stroke: A simple way to practice your underhand stroke is just to hit more underhand shots. To do this, start by using your underhand stroke to hit the shuttle high into the air. Continue to use your underhand to keep the shuttle in the air. Remember to use full arm strokes to help develop your consistency.
• Overhand stroke: Practicing your overhand stroke can be a bit tricky because hitting the shuttle straight in the air is something you’ll never actually do on the court. Start by hitting shuttle up in the air with your underhand stroke and follow up with your overhand stroke to keep the shuttle in the air. Just keep in mind that this exercise is strictly for finding the sweet spot in your overhand stroke.

Basic Footwork Exercises

Probably the best technique to practice off the court is your footwork. While having proper bearings on a court is important, the fundamentals of footwork can be refined and perfected anywhere. There are two ways you can practice footwork off the court:

• Shuffle: Instead of running to build your endurance, you can shuffle instead. To do this, simply skip sideways in one direction, making sure to keep your knees slightly bent and your arms around chest-height. The positioning of your body is absolutely essential to practicing footwork well. You can even hold a racket as you practice shuffling to better simulate a real game. Make sure to switch directions once in a while by simply facing the opposite direction.
• Create a makeshift court: Half of a badminton court measures 22 feet long and 20 feet wide. Measure these dimensions out and place markers at the four corners. With this makeshift court, you can practice your footwork fundamentals. Grab your racket and a friend to help you drill the four corners of the court. Have your friend point to any corner each time you return to your base point, and then shuffle your feet quickly to get to that spot.

Conditioning

While going for a five-mile run is a decent way to build stamina, the best practice is to do exercises that simulate real game actions. This not only means doing footwork for an extended amount of time, but breaking down your on-court movements to simple, relatable motions. Below is a list of exercises that cover the major movements in badminton:

• Lunging: In a given badminton match, you will lunge countless times if you have proper footwork. As you do lunges to build strength and endurance, make sure the knee of your back leg touches the ground each time. Set an amount of time (not a distance) that you’ll do lunges and try to constantly improve upon that mark.
• Jumping: Find an area with staggered elevations — like stairs or the sidewalk — and do repeated jumps. Keep in mind that you want to build up your endurance so don’t pick a platform that is too high. Depending on how high you can jump, anywhere from eight inches to two feet should give you a good workout. Remember to pace yourself since you’ll be focusing on your stamina.
• Shuffling: In addition to improving your footwork, shuffling can be done as a useful form of conditioning as well.

Mental Training

Mental training is a highly subjective area that varies greatly from player to player. Some players prefer having visual aids while others are content to simply visualize. Whatever your case may be, simply follow the tips that cater to you. With that in mind, there are essentially two main ways to train mentally. These are certainly not the only methods, but they are effective nonetheless:

Replaying Games

Naturally, this method is for the more visual folks who can instantly recall rallies and sequences from the games they played the previous day. Of course, there is always the alternative of taping yourself as you play. If you have the means to record your matches, it’s definitely worth a try. During a game, you won’t have the time or the focus to thoroughly analyze your strategy and make major adjustments to your game.

The biggest mistake you can make when you replay rallies in your mind is only focusing on the shot that ends a rally. While sometimes the mistake is made on the final shot, more often than not, it is the sequence of shots before the last that dictates how the rally will end. For example, recalling a great smash that ended a rally only tells you that a well-placed smash is effective. However, it is likely that a great drop or a strong clear set you up for the perfect opportunity to smash.

Consult Badminton Resources

Badminton resources would be any sort of information you can find from a reliable medium (such as coaches, videos, books, iSport, etc.). This is an excellent way to learn new strategies or tweak any you previously utilized. Keep an open mind as you look to other places for advice. You are consulting these sources because you want fresh perspectives on the topic of badminton, so be open to new opinions.

For What It’s Worth

It can be tough to find motivation to practice badminton outside the gym, but if you dedicate yourself to a few off-court practice sessions, it will make a difference when you finally hit the court. Make sure you monitor your progress; any sort of improvement in your shots, footwork, or strategy simply confirms that what you’re doing works. There are certainly limitations to practicing off-court. However, if your court availability is lacking, these drills will help keep your game in top form!

Article was quoted from isport.com

In badminton, players must hit the shuttlecock back over the net before it touches the ground. A player win points when her opponent cannot return the shuttlecock or when her opponent hits the shuttlecock out of bounds or into the net. In singles badminton, one player must cover the whole court. Because of this challenge, singles badminton requires certain different strategies than doubles badminton.

Create Movement Pressure

The Badminton Bible recommends that singles players focus more on creating movement pressure rather than shot-making pressure. When you create movement pressure, you force your opponent to move into different areas of the court so that she no longer holds the optimal position for covering the court and making offensive shots. Alternate long shots with drop shots, for example, to keep your opponent moving. Force your opponent to travel the longest possible distance by hitting shots to the corners of the court.

Hit Low

Try hit the shuttlecock so that it passes just over the net. Low shots require your opponent to hit a defensive shot, hitting the shuttlecock upwards rather than downwards. When your opponent hits the shuttlecock upwards and high over the net, you will have a better opportunity to attack the shuttlecock and hit it downwards toward the surface of your opponent’s court. Beware of smashing the shuttlecock when your opponent is near the net; he could simply block it back onto your side of the court.

High Serves

Force your opponent to move to the back of the court by serving high and long. Though a high serve can give your opponent the opportunity to attack the shuttlecock in a downwards motion, a high and long serve will require her to surrender the center of the court. From the back of the court, your opponent will not be in as good a position to attack the shuttlecock.

Variety

Vary the placement and speed of your serves and shots. Serve to different parts of the service box and with different amounts of force. Vary the amount of time you take to serve the shuttlecock. Serve and shot variety will keep your opponent guessing, and will make it harder for your opponent to predict your shots.

Recovery

In singles badminton, you will often find yourself running to an extreme end of the court to hit the shuttlecock before it touches the court’s surface. If your opponent pushes you to the edges of the court, recover by hitting a high and long shot that will give you time to return to the center of the court. Be prepared for another attack from your opponent, as any high shot will give your opponent the opportunity to smash the shuttlecock. In many situations, however, the high shot will be your best option.

Singles Strategies

At first glance, badminton appears to be a simple game. Opponents use rackets to hit a shuttlecock, or birdie, back and forth over a center net. However, you can use many different strategies during a badminton match. And strategy is all the more important in singles badminton, where players face off head-to-head without the assistance of teammates.

Tiring

The first and most obvious strategy in singles badminton is simply to tire out your opponent. Without a doubles partner, singles competitors have twice the ground to protect. Covering all four corners of the playing surface can prove an exhausting exercise. Using the entire court and running your opponent from side to side and from the net to the back-line can tire him out and lead to easy winners.

Returning

Keep a close eye on opponents when they're serving. If the server displays a tendency to step backward after service, try to return with short drop shots to the front court. On the other hand, if the server charges the net after service, employ deep lobs to exploit the exposed back-line. Varying the depth, pace and location of returns keeps opponents off balance.

Serving

Smart singles badminton players use service to set up their opponents. Consistently serving high, deep shots into the opposing back court can lull your opposition to sleep. Once you have established the pattern of high serves, firing a low hard serve can catch your opponent by surprise and help you capture a quick point.

Pinning

In singles badminton, use the entire length of the playing surface. Pinning your opponent to the back-line with repeated deep shots effectively stretches the court. Continually pinning the opponent along the back-line opens up the front court for short drop shots. You also can pin opponents into one specific back corner before placing a shot in the opposite front corner.

Defense

You must control the angles in singles badminton. While hitting shots to the corners can produce scoring chances, it also provides your opponent with more advantageous return angles. Hitting a shot into the middle of the court robs your opponent of any beneficial scoring angles. If your opponent seizes control of a rally, dropping shots into the middle of the court can slow the pace down and provide an opportunity to regroup.

Smashing

Reserve overhead smashes for decisive blows. Soften your opponent with effective clears and drops before attempting a forceful smash to win the point. If used too early or too often, smashes lose all significance and only serve to sap needed energy.

Article was quoted from LiveStrong