Badminton Training Regime #2 – GGAB Fitness Training

In the most recent news post, I talked about starting a few badminton series and other things to discipline myself into posting more and doing more. The original plan was to start a badminton training regime and then give a personal reflection on each day of the training.

Then I thought, why not continue the Badminton Training Regime series as well?

So here we are with badminton training regime number 2, which I will call the GGAB Fitness Training. This will be a 30-day challenge for myself and my brother to improve primarily our fitness and endurance levels as well as a little bit of footwork.

Now here’s when some people who have read my first badminton training regime will have a few questions. The biggest question is, probably, what happened to it?

Well, it’s a little embarrassing… but I tell everyone anyway.

The basic story is that I did it for two or three days and then lost motivation and stopped. Thus, this time, I’m going to lock myself into a position where I am held accountable. Now with a more substantial following, I want everyone to start yelling at me if I’m not producing my reflection of the day.

Something like “Kevin! Get back on your feet and train so we can see more content!” would be perfect.

Check out the recent news post here and the first badminton training regime post here.

Let’s get into the actual training regime now.

The Regime

This time around, the badminton training regime is a little more unplanned and chaotic. Having just came back from Vancouver, I did not have any time to plan out what exactly I wanted to do.

All I had was my ideal view of strength, endurance, and footwork that I wanted to achieve.

However, this time, I do have a little more of a slight advantage than before because I have gathered much more information on myself and specific training methods. I did not tell everyone this yet, but I did spend a week training with a former Olympian and other high-ranking players in my province about 2 weeks ago.

So much of this training regime will be based on how we trained in that week although to a much lesser intensity (that training camp seriously kicked my ass!).

Although I don’t have the specifics of the training yet, I do have a general idea of what I am going to do during the next 30 days. Ready?

Here we go:

Tuesday- Focus on upper body strength. Lots of bodyweight exercises focused on the core, arms, and other muscles.

Wednesday- Focus on lower body strength. Lots of bodyweight exercises for the lower body such as squats and others.

Thursday- Stability day. A much more relaxed day focused on muscles that provide balance and stability to badminton footwork such as muscles around the feet and ankles.

Friday- Endurance training. This day will be focused on how long one can last. Lots of long-distance jogging as well as skipping.

Saturday- Speed training. This day will probably be the most intense out of all of them. We will be sprinting at our max speeds at shorter distances. Might even add in some training with weights if we can handle it.

Sunday- Rest day, especially after all 5 days of intense training.

Monday- Another rest day.

As for the actual exercises, sets, and reps that we will be doing, I still don’t have everything figured out except for the first day since I have finished the first day already. Plus, during the next 30 days, it will also be about finding ourselves and our limits. So there will definitely be changes.

That’s why, for this time, I will list the actual exercises in with each day rather than all in this one post. I am thinking about a long post at the end though where I give my entire 30 days summary.

What is certain, though, is that for every day except for the rest days, there will be 5 sets of 20 pointing footwork drills, warm-up, and stretching. The latter two are relatively evident as they help prevent injury in this kind of training regime while the former may not be too obvious.

The main reason for it is that our primary goal is still to get good at badminton. The footwork drilling will help improve our ability to play on the court by improving how fast we move and our ability to react.

Then some of you may ask, what happened to the drills practicing individual badminton shots like smashes, clears, backhands, and others?

The main reason has to do with where you can do this kind of training. I want this training to focus primarily on fitness, and I want it to be something that people can do all over the world.

Because one thing that I experience personally way too much, courts are expensive and can be often inconvenient to get to.

That’s a general summary of this 30-day training regime: GGAB Fitness Training. Make sure you follow along with every single day or at least read the last post in 30 days as that will have more specifics on what exact exercises and insights I have while doing this.

Check out other badminton skills and drills here.

Diet and Sleep

Diet and sleep, or at least rest, are the other two major factors contributing to an athlete’s ability to perform in any intense sport. Eating healthy and sleeping lots are things everyone have heard.

However, there are not many things that I will be changing to either my diet or sleep.

I believe that my current situation is pretty good. I don’t eat many sweets or fats, and I sleep for 8 hours or more every night.

But there are a few things that I have decided to improve on. One of them is balancing my diet out a little more. Currently, I’m a bit too heavy on the meat side so the next 30 days I will try to eat more vegetables.

I also want to keep myself hydrated better. I find that I don’t drink enough water all the time, which isn’t too healthy. Thus, in the next few weeks, I will focus on this aspect as well.

However, I feel many of these things will come naturally. By working out more, I should naturally want to drink more water as I’m losing moisture from my body through sweat. Same thing with eating. I will typically eat more because I have burned more nutrients, and I will need to replenish myself.

Current Attributes

I have to admit that this time, we were actually worse at measuring our present attributes. Compared to the Badminton Training Regime #1, we are missing things like height, standing vertical, reach, and 100m sprint time.

Most of this is due to not having the time to set the measurements up, but these stats shouldn’t mean too much.

I will measure sprinting speeds, how far we go in specific times, and maybe even how fast we can do footwork as I do feel like it’s good to measure our progress in actual numbers. However, what we experience and feel is just as important as well.

Once again, there will be two people going through this training. What we got this time that we didn’t get last time though are some pictures! Here are the stats:

Person 1:

Weight: 139 lbs

Person 2:

Weight: 116 lbs

What I Hope To Accomplish

Our goals this time are very similar to the previous badminton training regime that we never completed. From our failures, we have learned that mental strength is the most critical factor in getting anything done.

That’s why our main goal for this 30-day challenge is to keep it going and consistently follow it to build discipline and mental strength. By building our mental toughness, we can proceed to do even more in the future!

Of course, most people don’t look at training regimes to gain brainpower. There are physical aspects we want to get out of this training as well.

After the intense badminton training camp we did, there were some significant weaknesses we identified in ourselves.

The first was upper body strength and badminton shot power. We first noticed upper body weakness when we did their upper body training. My body was totally in pain while doing that training.

I also noticed that I took opportunities to kill the shuttle but didn’t have enough power to finish it off entirely. This led to longer rallies that I eventually lost because I was using all my energy trying to kill the shuttle completely.

Speaking about killing the shuttle, the second badminton aspect we want to improve is our speed and follow up. Every time I play against an opponent with higher skill than me, I notice that I’m often late to the shuttle and always reacting to what the opponent is doing instead of controlling the game myself.

Part of this is due to consistency and quality of the badminton shots a player may play as well as the strategy, but the other half has to do with footwork speed, efficiency, and fitness. The second part is what this training is trying to accomplish.

Conclusion

That’s about it for now! I will post a blog post each day for what specific badminton and fitness training drills we do as well as my personal thoughts and feelings about what happens. Stay tuned for now!

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them down below! Good luck in your games and have a great day.