Hello and welcome back to Badminton Insight in this
video we're going to give you an insight into badminton specific exercises you can do off the court
to help improve your performance on the court yeah we're going to be in the gym showing you five
exercises and also here on court to explain how each of these will improve areas such as your
strength speed muscular endurance explosive power as well as of course reducing the risk of injuries
and these are exercises that the best players in the world are doing on a regular basis so let's
go to the gym for exercise number one the first exercise is an activation exercise you can do at
the start of your weights session here you set a cable machine to around chest height but if you
don't have this machine then don't worry you can use a theraband or a dumbbell so for this you
hold the cable with both hands then lower it into a lunge position bring it close to your chest
and then press it straight out in front of you do eight repetitions then repeat this on your other
leg and as we mentioned earlier you can also do this with a theraband or dumbbell. So why is this exercise so good for badminton? Well it's great for activating your core and strengthening your
lunge position so that you can play better shots from here in a game rather than collapsing your
core and losing control of your body and therefore shot here's what you might look like if you don't
do this type of exercise compared to after doing this exercise that's the practical application
back to the gym for the next exercise and this is a single leg weight transfer here you stand
on one leg hold a dumbbell bring it out to the side of you then bring it to the middle transfer
it to your other arm and bring this out to the side of you we'd recommend doing 10 transfers and
then repeating this on the other leg so let's go to the hall to show you why this exercise is
great for badminton well most importantly it's helping you improve your balance which is crucial for
many aspects of your game one it allows you to land with more control like in your jumps and
we're moving side to side as you can see having better control allows you to recover faster and
therefore move faster! Two, having good balance and being in control of your body means that you have better control of your racket again enabling you to hit higher quality and more accurate shots and
three it helps minimize the risk of injury because this exercise helps strengthen the muscles in and
around your ankle we thought about putting a clip of people rolling their ankles here but decided
against it training your balance little and often will also have a compounding effect over time
helping you in day-to-day life like when standing on a train the weight transfer is also great
for conditioning your shoulders it strengthens the muscles in the back of your shoulder which are
used in the acceleration and deceleration phase of many shots in badminton and because you're training
having your elbow out with more resistance than the weight of a racket you won't have any excuses
to have your racket by your ankles and because of this you'll be able to take shots earlier and
never get tired of doing so now as we we all know badminton is a sport that requires fast changes of
direction and explosive movements and this is why we always include plyometric exercises into our weights
training so let's go back to the gym to show you a great exercise you can do this is three skater
jumps followed by a tuck jump the skater jumps are where you bound from one leg to the other ensuring
you're not collapsing your knee and you ideally want to have a reasonably short contact time with
the ground so why is this exercise good for badminton? well studies along with our own research have
actually shown that the majority of our movements on court whether that's takeoffs or landing are
performed using only one foot and you'll notice this too if you watch others or yourself playing
conditioning yourself to these movements in a controlled environment will build up your strength
and confidence to be able to push off and change direction explosively whilst also being able to
land and recover well in a match the tuck jump at the end then adds an element of coordination
going from a single foot to jump to double and it will also help you improve your jump height too
and of course you can also do badminton footwork in the gym but we want as many people as possible to
do these exercises and we know not everyone will feel comfortable doing a jump out smash in a busy
gym especially if you're trying to make friends in there! Okay so far we've shared an activation
balance and plyometric exercise before we move on to a lower body strength and upper body strength
exercise we wanted to let you know that we've just launched some new badminton specific weights programmes
on our website there's now 12 different programs all designed specifically for Badminton players by
experts in the field to help you improve your on court strength speed explosive power endurance
and minimize the risk of injury there's over 100 different exercises with video and written
demonstrations for each they also come with both a printable and online tracker to track your
progress and in the bundle there's also two badminton specific circuits and two hotel gym workouts for
when you have limited equipment but still want to improve your game these are the programs we're
doing every week and we've also had great feedback from you guys who have been doing programs 1
to 8 for the last 2 years so if you want to improve your game too then check them out on
our website badminton-insight.com and we'll also include a link in the description below so for the lower
body strength exercise we're doing another lunge based exercise as this is such a common movement
in badminton and this is badminton lunges with dumbbells where you do diagonal lunges whilst holding
a dumbbell in each hand you should focus on keeping the lunges explosive moving fairly fast
both into the lunge and also out of it whilst of course remaining in control of your body so
once again you can play better shots adding extra resistance with weights will help your ability to
absorb the force in the deceleration phase of your lunge which then helps your ability to recover
back into court and we'd recommend doing between 8 and 16 repetitions depending if you're focusing
on muscular endurance or more explosive strength and power and don't forget to repeat this on your
other leg even though you shouldn't lunge forwards with your non- racket leg I repeat shouldn't lunge
forwards with your non-racket leg it's important that you don't have too much of an imbalance hopefully
you can now see the benefits this exercise will bring so let's move on to an upper body strength
exercise for badminton when playing badminton you use your shoulders a lot for most people too much
smashing on the court as well as lots of time at a desk hunched over can pull your shoulder
forwards this can cause impingements in your shoulder and a lot of pain so balancing it out
is very important and one way you can do this is by strengthening the muscles in the back of your
shoulder yeah there are many exercises for this but one common one we do is a dumbbell row you
can do this with one knee on a bench and the other foot on the floor to give you a nice strong base
and good posture you then need to lift your arm up in a controlled motion focusing on squeezing your
shoulder blade and not just using your bicep and forearm otherwise it's a fairly pointless exercise
again we'd recommend doing between eight and 16 reps on each arm often people go too heavy with
the weight so don't worry about impressing others with what you can lift try and impress them
with your form instead because this will help you much more on court and as with all of these
exercises if you're new to weights training please be careful and make sure you start with light
weights and focus on having good technique we don't want anyone injuring themselves so let's
head to the hall for the last time to show you the badminton benefits this exercise will bring yeah
so as well as helping to counter those muscles in the front of your shoulder that are pulling
it forwards this exercise will also improve your control in the deceleration phase of your
smash which we know is very important and it will also give you more strength in your backhand clears
drops and smashes so they were our five different weights exercises that will help your performance
on the court and don't forget if you're looking for complete programmes to do then check out
our badminton specific weights programmes the link is in the description below and lastly if you've
enjoyed this video please drop it a like, SMASH the Subscribe button if you haven't already and we'll
hopefully see you on another video very soon! Bye :-)