My name is Philip Warren Gertsson,
and I'm a professional football freestyler.
I'm here in beautiful Odense, Denmark.
I'm here to meet up with Viktor Axelsen,
professional badminton player.
He recently won a bronze medal in Rio.
The weather's not perfect, we know,
but that does not stop an Olympian from training.
Viktor, right? -Viktor, yeah.
-What's up? -Hey, what's up?
-I'm Philip. -Hi, Philip.
My name is Viktor Axelsen.
I'm 22 years old,
a badminton player from Denmark,
and I recently won bronze
at the Olympic Games in Rio 2016.
The weather isn't ideal, but still,
I enjoy coming out here
and doing some different kind of training.
-Should I join you? -Join me.
There are two sets of ropes.
The first exercise, I'll just go both arms like this.
When I reached 16 years old,
I won the World Junior Championships
as the first European player ever.
When I turned 17, I moved to the National Center
in Copenhagen, lived by myself,
and trained alongside the best players in the country.
This exercise really helps
with the endurance of the upper body.
Even though we don't want to be
really, really strong in the upper body,
you still need to be able to produce power
even though you're tired.
My family is a huge part of my career
and life in general.
My dad functions as my manager as well.
Keeping the balance between
him being my manager and dad is a really fine line,
but I think that we are mastering that really well.
We do a lot of jumps, so this kind of exercise
is great for helping improve your explosive abilities.
PHILIP: Something that struck me about Viktor is that
he's still willing to go out and train.
Even if it's raining, it's bad conditions,
he's still wanting to develop to become better at his sport.
What is this? This is creepy.
VIKTOR: I usually come here and train my movement.
PHILIP: How do you use this kind of training,
like, on the court?
The quick, explosive movement from side to side.
It will also help me with some endurance
if I do some intervals and stuff like that.
That was a pretty neat kind of exercise
to work on your mobility, work from side to side.
VIKTOR: Almost every exercise I do,
I focus on being low because this is also
the stance I will have on the badminton court.
-That was really exhausting. -Yeah, it was a good workout.
I think we're ready to go to the gym now.
-Let's do it! -Let's do it.
VIKTOR: I thought we could start out
by doing some warm-up for our core.
I'll just do a short series of three to four exercises.
I will go to the gym to do one-and-a-half
to two hours of strength and conditioning.
And you should feel this in your lower abdominal.
And then we just go down.
I normally train alone, so to have a partner like Philip
was really great.
Now we do a side stand, like this.
Right now, we're just working through our whole core.
This is more from the side.
It's really important that
you have a strong core and you have a strong foundation
for you to be able to keep balance.
It really helps a lot because if you want to
generate power on your smashes.
Opposite arm.
Really think about keeping a straight core
so you don't do, like, this,
but your core's always straight.
PHILIP: You want to have the same stabilization.
VIKTOR: Yeah, the same stabilization.
PHILIP: So you don't get, like, disbalanced.
VIKTOR: Yeah.
-Like that. -Like that, yeah.
VIKTOR: It's good to have someone
to keep yourself on the toes.
We have been talking a lot about today
the broad stance and to be flexible,
so we put a lot of work
into flexibility training as well.
Just stand here, broad stance, and then you just go.
And this again helps to, you know,
just warm up your legs, your hips,
and it just opens up so you won't get any injuries
when we get to the weights.
First, we're going to do, like, a Romanian deadlift
kind of exercise.
We start in this position,
go down a bit, three seconds,
drop it a bit more for three seconds.
And then the last three seconds here.
I want to tire my muscle,
but still be able to move explosively.
One, two, three, explode up.
When we move around the badminton court,
we use a lot of front legs,
and the back as well, so this one is a great one.
PHILIP: Yeah, I can feel it in the back
and in the legs as well.
VIKTOR: Yeah, a little bit in the legs as well, perfect.
After this exercise,
we will go to the next one without any break,
a flexibility exercise for the back of your shoulders.
Try to reach out as far as possible
and you'll really feel the stretch
in the back of your shoulders.
You lift up,
hold for two seconds, go back.
It's not so much that you want to put a lot of weight on
and want to be really strong;
it's simply just to keep my flexibility in my shoulders.
Use your fingers to get as far as you can.
PHILIP: Being in the gym really opened my eyes
to what kind of exercises you can do
without having to put so much weight on.
This is way more exhausting than I thought.
VIKTOR: You really have to use the small muscles
on the back of your shoulders.
PHILIP: I think I felt a muscle
that I didn't even know existed.
VIKTOR: Let's jump to the next exercise.
It's, again, an exercise for improving your stance.
We go down, go out here,
stay low, and we go back.
PHILIP: This is really to strengthen up the muscles
that you need to be able to do the side movement.
VIKTOR: Yeah, and also your core as well.
Your upper body shouldn't move at all.
It should be all the way just stable movements.
Like that.
Good.
So it'll really force you to, you know,
use both your legs in a really good way.
(exhales)
That was pretty rough, actually.
VIKTOR: Yeah.
-Like, not only for the core and here,
but I could even feel it in, uh...
-Yeah, you can feel it in your legs as well,
and that's one thing, like, you not only use one muscle,
but there's a lot of things you have to master,
not only the balance but also the strength in the shoulder
and the right movement.
So we arrived here in Odense Badminton Hall.
And Viktor is already warming up.
VIKTOR: Are you ready for some badminton?
-I don't know, am I? -I think so.
We'll make a good badminton player out of you.
I will show you what exercises we're going through.
My sparring partner Stephen will be in the back,
you will be in the front,
and I will move on the defence.
-Is there a special reason why you use two against one
and not two against two?
-Yeah, first of all,
the quality of the feeding will be much better.
The tempo of the rally will be much higher.
Let's try.
That's great, that's basically how it works.
It will be really tough for your legs
because you have to stand low all the time
and be ready for every shot.
Great, let's do it.
-Ah!
I'm really getting the hang of this.
-Your legs are sometimes the most important thing
because if you're not in the right place,
you can't play the right shots.
Nice.
-Was that a point? -That's a point for you.
You should join the other side.
PHILIP: Alone?
Against two seasoned badminton players?
-Against two badminton players.
Are you ready?
-Yeah, I think so.
Nice!
-I'm just, you know, running around
like a five-year-old with a golf club.
You'd think that it's a lot of shoulder movement,
a lot of wrist movement.
There's one more attacking exercise.
It's multi-feeding. I will get more shuttles
and I will stand here with eight shuttles.
When you're around the court,
when you have to try to be offence.
Okay, that's a lot of shuttles.
I know you are a freestyle footballer,
but I have some trick shots
with the badminton racket I want to show you.
All right, let's do it.
This trick shot will be really good
when you're playing the flat game
and you won't have time to do the reaction like this.
I felt that a couple of times,
like, you can't really...
-Yeah. -...when it gets to your body.
You will just let your body drop like this
and then hit it like this behind your back.
Yeah.
-Backhand.
-Like this, backhand like this.
-Can't even do a proper backhand.
-You really have to...
-Yeah, okay, show me.
He goes back just like Keanu Reeves in Matrix,
he turns around, whips it with the back of his hand.
-Now you try.
I will stand beside you.
-Oh! -Hey!
Nice!
And he shows me, like, this cool way
to get the shuttlecock off the ground.
-Try to hit it a bit more sideways.
Just stand like this.
It's a good exercise, too, for your control and your wrist.
-I was thinking that this might be
the easiest thing in the game of badminton.
No.
I can see that I don't have any
wrist flexibility.
-Nice!
-Yeah, there you go.
-Hopefully I can keep improving.
That's the main goal right now,
you know, to keep consistent training going.
I was impressed by your badminton skills.
- Thank you. - It was a great experience.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for showing me.
Hopefully in four years,
I will have another shot at taking the gold.
(speaking Chinese)
Which means, "My name is Axelsen,
I'm a Danish singles player,
thanks a lot for supporting me."