Great you've clicked on this video which probably means you're not one of those people that doesn't
believe in doing a warm-up! But even if you are we'll hopefully change your mind in this video
by showing you what we believe is the perfect warm-up for badminton players and explaining how
each stage of this warm-up will help you maximise your performance on court! It's going to take you
10 minutes and it can be done in a small space with no equipment needed So let's get to it...
Firstly without going into too much scientific detail a warm up gets your body ready for exercise
delivering oxygen to the working muscles and increasing blood flow to them which provides
things like glucose for energy, it also increases the suppleness of your muscles enhancing their
mechanical efficiency and power and lastly and possibly most importantly it reduces the chance
of you getting any injuries! Yeah so there are five stages to this physical warm-up and first
up are five mobility and activation exercises targeting the joints and muscles that you use
when playing badminton. The first exercise is knee to wall, this exercise is great for mobilising our
calves and achilles ready for the rest of the warm up and for jumping around the court
next we're going to activate our adductors and to do this you should lie on your back like this
and bring one leg up and across your body and then out to the other side
the third exercise is single leg hamstring bridges, again you need to squeeze your glutes as you go up
and try to align your hip with your quad and core so you're in a straight line like this!
Okay we've got two more exercises in this first section we're staying on the floor for glute
activation as glutes are so important in badminton powering all of your movements around the court.
Our final exercise of this section is called thread the needle, this exercise is great for mobilising
your shoulders and also your thoracic spinal rotation! So here's the first section and we'd
recommend doing eight repetitions on each leg or arm and try and keep it fast paced as this
is the boring but necessary part of the warm-up :-) Now that we're mobile and activated we need to
start preparing our body for intense movement we just have three exercises in this section
Firstly we have an arabesque which is great for your balance and further activating your glutes
and hamstrings. Some key points for this exercise are to make sure you keep your hips square
and be nice and controlled as you drive your knee through. Next up we have a squat with rotation
this is a great exercise to put our lower body under continued load whilst further activating
the thoracic spine which is used every time you rotate as you hit an overhead shot. The third and
final exercise in the movement preparation section is clockwork lunges this is such an important
exercise as we're constantly lunging in many different directions in badminton so it's really
important to be prepared for this! Again we're going to do eight reps for all of these exercises
so eight on each leg for the arabesque eight squat rotations and eight on each leg for the clockwork lunges
Okay so you should be about five minutes into your warm-up now and before we move on to
some explosive movement preparation we need to get the blood pumping around your body so for this
you're going to need a small strip of space that you can run up and down in. Start by jogging four
lengths of approximately two court widths or one length of the court then do side steps one each way
next is one length of forward chasse followed by one length of backward chasse this is a badminton
specific movement getting us ready for split steps and push-offs remember to keep your legs
bent and centre of gravity nice and low then move on to two lengths of this exercise we've expertly
named the side twists and do one each way. This requires a bit of coordination which is great
because so does badminton :-D The final exercises in this section are one length of heel kicks
and then one length of high knees and these seven exercises should only take you around two minutes.
Before we move on to section four please remember that your warm-up doesn't have to
be limited to what we're showing, you might want to add in some extra things that you find useful
or your body requires for example we both like to use a theraband to warm up our shoulders
Badminton is one of the most physically demanding sports as you need speed, power, reflexes, strength,
agility and lots more and short explosive movements during a warm-up have been proven
to increase athletic performance so we've got five exercises focusing on this and this
time we're reducing the reps down to six or even four if you get tired as that's not what we want!
Our first exercise is calf jumps aiming for maximum height but also minimum contact time
on the floor this prepares you for quickly jumping around the court with as much
spring as possible! Next up is vertical jumps continuing to get our jumps going whilst also
loading our main muscle groups then we have split squat jumps again this is another exercise to get
you ready for all of the fast explosive lunges that you need to do on court. Exercise number four
is lateral skater jumps here you should focus on having a strong push off with your glute whilst
remaining on balance and in control okay the last exercise in this section is fast feet we're going
to do three sets of 10 seconds of standard fast feet but feel free to mix it up if you want!
Okay so we should be feeling ready to go one final section that we sometimes spend
an extra one minute on is some coordination and reactions so that we're ready to go
right at the start of the match! Most of the time we'll do something simple like throwing tennis
balls to each other but if you want some more ideas of what you can do to improve your reactions
then check out this video up here ^ Another element of the warm-up that's going to help
you maximise your performance is the on court part of the warm-up and we've already done a
video on this so if you want to watch that then click here > and we've also had loads of requests
for the perfect cool down so SMASH the subscribe button so you don't miss that video next week
or if you're watching this more than one week later then it'll be here for you < Bye :-)