6 Badminton Exercises That Will Improve Your Performance on the Court

6 Badminton Exercises That Will Improve Your Performance on the Court

It doesn’t matter whether you are a beginner or a pro badminton player. Improve your athletic skills with these 6 straightforward exercises.

How well a badminton player performs is impacted by numerous factors. Pro players ensure they eat well, get enough rest, and have the right gear including the right badminton shoes.

Looking forward to up your game and become the next Viktor Axelsen? Read here for 6 badminton exercises that will improve your performance on the court and you can also do these badminton exercises at home without any badminton trainers or coach.

1. Strength Training

Badminton is a breathtaking athletic sport. It engages muscles in both the lower body and upper body, and uses several muscles all at once. As a result, there are multiple reasons to develop these muscles for strength. Performing strength exercises will automatically translate to advantages on the badminton court.

Compound exercises are workouts which incorporate various muscle groups at the same time. It is the most effective way to develop your strength in addition to being the most significant for badminton. Compound exercises enable you to lift more weight, consequently strengthening your whole body.

Compound exercises, for example, overhead press, helps to build functional strength. Strength exercises incorporate your core muscles which are one of the most critical areas to work on. Overhead press can also be done through Dumbell or Kettlebell

Exercises that you can do to improve your strength for badminton include forward, backward and sideways lunges with weights. Others include squats, leg presses, leg curls, and leg extensions. To improve the strength of the upper body, perform shoulder presses, chest presses, and lat pull downs.

2. Aerobic Training / Cardiovascular Fitness

Endurance or aerobic fitness is vital for badminton. Essentially, the purpose of this training is to improve the transportation of oxygen and food energy to the working muscles. Aerobic training is any exercise that increases the heart rate significantly for an extended period.

Moreover, aerobic exercises enhance quick recovery from exercise and restores energy supplies needed for the next activity.

A player with superior aerobic fitness can play hard without getting as exhausted as a less fit opponent. Once a player is tired, the frequency of mistakes increases; therefore, aerobic training is associated with success in long games.

Badminton itself is an aerobic activity, thus performing games as part of aerobic training is an acceptable option. Any practice which engages the large muscles (arms, legs) will improve aerobic fitness, so long as it lasts for 20 minutes or more. Suitable exercises include swimming, cycling, running, and other fitness activities.

3. Speed and Agility training

Agility is the physical quickness that consists of the ability to generate massive power and change direction rapidly. Great agility, quickness, and fast reactions are necessary to succeed in badminton. While a few people appear to be naturally fast, and agile, these are abilities which can be acquired.

Badminton players often use directional shots to outscore their opponents. Nevertheless, they must return the opponent’s shots, meaning, they have to run rapidly and repeatedly on the court and change directions to intercept the shuttlecock.

The badminton shuttlecock has a short flight time, and a player has about 1 second to react and intercept it. Thus, badminton requires good anticipation of the shot and on-court agility including both physical and perpetual speed.

Shuttle run (SR) is considered one of the most popular agility training among badminton players. SR involves a frequent change of speed and direction to reach various corners of the court in a determined order. You can also use Agility Ladder for various ladder drills. Another training technique is the reactive initiation training (RIT) which is also implemented on the court, but it’s less demanding. Like to mention you also need good badminton shoes to do all these badminton training exercises so that you don't injure your foot.

4. Flexibility Training

Badminton players use their flexibility to reach, turn and dive while at the court. Flexibility can be enhanced with regular stretching. A badminton player should stretch before badminton training program and competitions. Active stretches such as PNF will improve the flexibility of specific muscles groups.

Stretching exercises will increase your flexibility. Flexibility is very significant in badminton’s footwork since in most cases, you are supposed to lunge forward to the court’s front.  A flexible body allows you to move your wrist, waist, and arm with ease. Also, flexibility stretches will help improve your swing and empower your badminton smash.

Badminton stretches are among the most under-utilized performance improvement techniques. 10-15 minutes of daily stretching is enough to improve your flexibility. And this can prevent sports injury in addition to rehabilitating strain and sprain injury.

Flexibility training comprises stretching a joint through its entire range of motion. Some of the best stretches for badminton include the rotating wrist and forearm stretch, elbow-out shoulder and rotator stretch. Others worth mentioning include the standing toe-up calf and Achilles stretch.

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5. Core Stability Training

Core strength training is a kind of physical exercise, that uses various training equipment and training techniques of the core area of the muscle groups to perform target training, better the human core function, to the body’s center of gravity motion stability.

Core strength training plays a significant role in badminton. It can enhance the stability of players and improve the movement of the pelvis and spine. This, in turn, increases the cohesion of upper and lower limbs, and assists in injury prevention.

The training strategy for core stability usually involves low, static, muscular contractions which may include additional equipment, for example, gym balls.

The best gym workouts to strengthen your core stability include ball push-away reps, hanging knee raise and dumbbell plank drag. Off-court training can be cardio, plyometrics, speed-work and agility drills.

6. Circuit Training

Circuit training is a challenging and efficient way of conditioning. It helps to develop flexibility, coordination, strength, and endurance.

Working out with your body-weight only is a fantastic substitute for the missing gym. This is especially important for junior athletes to develop physical strength.

Endurance athletes, such as badminton players need this workout to develop stamina every session. Among the recommended full body circuit training exercises include squat jumps, skipping, dumbbell squats and swinging.

Cardiovascular equipment (treadmill, cross trainer, rowing machine) makes amazing circuit training, and you are lucky if you own one. Still, if you do your routine workout at the gym, you are at even greater access to various choices. 

Pro Tip

Use a Heavier Badminton Racket.  An excellent way to spur your defensive reflexes is by using a heavier racket. Perform low defensive shots with it before switching to the badminton racket that fits your style.

Above article is not complete if we not tell you about the warm-up exercises and Cool down exercises which are recommended by Yonex for all badminton players. So, here are those...





Many of you are thinking, what's the use of warming up, to answer your question, we wrote a detailed article on the Importance of Warming up before your game.