Hey guys and welcome back to our channel! Now after you finish playing badminton,
do you often feel like this...
but want to feel like this...
of course you do!
Badminton is one of the
most brutal sports on the body, so today we're going to take you through six of
the best stretches you can do and explain why each of these are great for
certain shots! And make sure you stay tuned to the end of the video where we
go through the best stretch to help you increase your smash power! So let's get to it!
Firstly we're going to stretch our lower back, this is really important as
having a tight back will not only lead to injuries in your back it will also
cause injuries and many other areas of your body! And also having that
flexibility in your lower back will enable you to generate that rotation
through your trunk when you're hitting your overhead shots.
So to do this stretch we're gonna lie on our back and bring our knee up and across
our chest and with our opposite hand gently pull your knee towards the floor
and to increase the stretch look the opposite way.
In badminton we are always lunging which creates lots of force going through your glutes and hips
So this stretch has two stages, firstly we're sat down with one leg in front of us
at a right angle and the other behind us, also a right angle, and we simply lean over
our front leg. If you feel a good stretch then remain there, but if
you want to advance then straighten out your back leg,
Square your hips off and lean over and down. And this is known as the pigeon stretch.
If you don't keep your gluts and hips loose then they become more and
more stiff over time which is going to limit your movement and especially your
lunging. We all want to be playing when we're 80 years old right?!
Next we're going to stretch our quad. This is really important as having a tight quad will lead
to sore knees and there are lots of sore knees in badminton! Having a loose quad
will help ease the pressure that we continuously put through our knee joints
when playing badminton. So we're going to do this stretch by lying down and gently
pulling our foot towards our glute.
So if you can't reach your foot with your hand then wrap a towel around it
Now our hamstrings are key to our overall movement and efficiency and we
need both strength and flexibility in them. So to actively stretch our whole
hamstring we're going to lie down with one leg in
the air, interlock our hands behind the leg bend the leg and then straighten it
and keep repeating
As you do it try and pull your leg further and further back so you really
feel the stretch through the hamstring.
Next we're going to stretch our calves,
as we showed in our leg strength video calf jumps are really important for
rebounding using that spring to generate both jump height and quick movement!
If you don't have the ability to generate spring then you won't be as effective on
court, so we're going to stretch out our calves using the yoga pose known as down
dog walking out our calves alternately and
this is also another great hamstring stretch!
We find that after a period of core our shoulders are always the first thing to tighten up, and during a full
week of training or competing we're putting lots of strain through our
shoulders, especially when we're smashing a lot!
If the muscles around your shoulder are stiff then we won't be able to generate
as much rotation or racket head speed, leading to less power in your smash!
So we start this three-in-one stretch in Child's Pose with our arms out in front
of us, leaning back and we're going to lean into one
shoulder, really feeling that stretch through the lat
and we're gonna hold this for 10 seconds
we're then gonna bring the arm round with the thumb and index finger on the
floor and again lean into it and this should stretch it out your pecs and also
your bicep. And again hold for 10 seconds.
After we've done that we're gonna bring the arm through and stretch out the back
of our shoulder, again leaning into it and you should also feel a stretch through
your lat in your opposite hand on this stretch. Hold for 10 seconds!
As well as stretching your shoulder you also need to strengthen your shoulder and we've
done a previous video on this if you want to check that out!
It's widely researched that to get the benefit out of stretching you should do each stretch
for between 30 and 40 seconds, in total that's only 10 minutes of
stretching at the end of every session and trust us is definitely worth it!
We suggest you do these daily and if you feel extra stiff in a certain area then repeat that stretch.
Now stretch that arm over to the thumbs up and smash the
subscribe button while you're there! They were our six best stretches for badminton players!
We hope you enjoyed them, see you next Sunday!
Oh and let us know in the comments
section below if you want to see a future video on a really good cooldown!