4 Bodyweight Exercises for Badminton

If we really want to get good at badminton, we probably need to do extra exercises outside of playing badminton. Often times we also don’t want to spend hundreds, if not thousands, on weights and equipment. So here are 4 body weight exercises for badminton other than running.

Push Ups

Push ups are one of the most standard body weight exercises. It’s one of the easiest exercises to do to build muscle because it targets chest muscles, shoulders, triceps, abdominals, and the “wing” muscles underneath your armpit.

To do a push up, start off in a plank position with your pelvis tucked in, neck straight, and hands underneath your shoulders. Then you want to go down until your elbows bend at 90 degrees. Make sure to keep your back straight. Then you want to push yourself back to the original position.

There are a few variations you can do with push-ups too. If you find the standard push up too difficult, you can get on your knees and do them. On the other hand, if the standard push up is too easy, I encourage you to make it more difficult by adding claps in front or behind your back or even doing one handed push-ups.

A good start is 3 sets of 5 push-ups and you generally want to push it to at least 3 sets of 10.

Planks

Believe or not, abs are one of the muscles used to generate power in your overhead badminton shots. This is because when you smash, clear, and drop, you make a rotation to generate power and the power of that rotation comes from your abs. This is why working your abs is crucial and plus you get a great looking body!

Planks are one of my favorite body weight exercises for core muscles. To do a plank, start off with your elbows under your shoulders. Then push your body up and hold your chin close to your neck. Squeeze your muscles and hold this position.

Generally you should do around 3 sets of 20-30 seconds or 1 minute if you’re more advanced.

Pull Ups

Like the push-ups, pull ups are another great exercise for your upper body. While push-ups work out the front of your upper body mostly, pull ups will work out your back. Your back is another heavily used muscle in badminton. Every time you make an overhead swing, you have to push up your arms and use your back to propel yourself up a little.

The first step of doing a pull up is to find a bar that’s high up. Next you want to grab onto the bar with your hands slightly wider than shoulder width and facing away from you. You should be hanging all the way down at this step. Then you want to pull yourself up until your chin is above the bar, hold for a moment, and then lower yourself slowly.

Pull ups can be extremely difficult to do if you’ve never done them before, even for fit athletes so just try to do 1 in the beginning. As you advance, you should aim to do 3 sets of 5 pull ups or more.

Lunge Jumps

But what about the parts of the body that we use most in badminton? Not arms or back but the legs. While your legs are not going to make contact with the shuttle, they are the body parts allowing you to reach the shuttle. And what better way to exercise them (other than running) than to make movements that are actually used in games? A great exercise for your legs is lunge jumping.

Here’s how you lunge jump. First you want to start off with a lunge. Take a big step with your right or left leg and shift your weight forwards so that your heel hits the ground first. Then lower the leg you took a step with until its thigh is parallel to the ground and shin is approximately vertical (knee can go a little forwards but not past the toe). If you’re flexible enough, you can touch your other leg’s knee to the ground.

So now you have your lunge. To add in the jump, you would do a hop and switch your legs so that you end in another lunge except with your other foot in front. If jumping is too hard, you can stick to just alternating regular lunges.

Start with 10 lunge jumps on each foot and move to approximately 25.

Conclusion

Now you have 4 body weight exercises you can do for badminton. There are many more exercises you can do and these 4 are great to do with other exercises. Another note is that don’t do these exercises intensely every day. You want to make sure that you give your body plenty of rest. I recommend doing these exercises every other day so that your body gets at least 24 hours of recovery.

Make it consistent! Keep training and you will definitely get good at badminton. Improve your physical strength and stamina but don’t forget about technique! Make sure you read up on technique and practice that as well. On that note, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below and as always good luck in your games and have a great day!