Badminton is a physically demanding sport that requires hand-eye coordination, flexibility, and peak physical fitness to endure long rallies and matches. Nearly all muscles in our body are used while playing badminton. Playing badminton involves an amalgamation of upper and lower body strength. While the lower body strength enhances the movement, the upper body enhances the quality of shots.
Strength Training involves physical exercises that help to develop strength and endurance. It is often associated with the use of weights but can be done in many different forms.
Muscles predominantly used in badminton are:
Lower body: quadriceps, gluteus maximus, hamstrings, adductors and abductors located on the inside of the thigh, and calf muscles
Upper body: triceps, biceps, forearms, chest, lower back, shoulders and core muscles
Importance of Strength Training
Here are a few reasons why strength training is important in badminton.
- Balance of Strength
While playing badminton, the muscles used are predominantly on your racquet side. This results in an asymmetry in your body with one side having greater strength than the other. However, this can lead to injuries.
Therefore, it is important to ensure that your non-dominant side strong enough so that you don’t overstretch or overuse your dominant side muscles.
- Speed
Specifically, lower body strength enhances your speed and movement across the court. Having strong muscles will allow you to push and stretch a little further to receive the shuttle. It will also help you to recover easily to your base position and be ready for the next shot.
- Power & Endurance
Well, the power to execute attacking shots does not only come from the upper body. The energy is transferred from the lower body using different muscles along the way. Therefore, increasing strength in both, upper and lower body contributes to power. Also, muscle strength helps you sustain longer rallies and matches.
- Prevention of Injuries
Imbalance in muscle strength due to lack of adequate training can lead to injuries like shoulder dislocation and tennis elbow. Playing badminton can be extremely stressful on your joints. The actions of jumping, smashing, lunging require a lot of strength and power. Therefore, strengthening the muscles around the joints will protect them from injuries as the muscles will absorb the heavy shocks due to excessive movement.
- Stability
Badminton players need to move, stop, jump and smash during a rally. Well, to support all this movement core stability is very important to provide stable support to all the other muscles of the body. Core Stability plays a connecting role between the upper and lower body. Moreover, it enhances energy transfer across the body.
In conclusion, strength training is very important in badminton. Remember to check your form before training with any kind of equipment.
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