Do I Need A Badminton Training Racket – Costs and Benefits

When I was younger, I used to see all these pros use training rackets when practicing. Being my young age at the time, I didn’t understand why they would use the training rackets; I just thought badminton training rackets was what separated professionals from casuals.

But after playing for a while, I can tell you that badminton training rackets have specific purposes. Do you really need a badminton training racket? Read on for more.

What Is A Training Racket

A training racket is essentially a regular badminton racket but heavier. Usually, these rackets come in at about 140-160 grams versus the 70-90 grams of regular rackets. Training racket weights are quite noticeable especially in a fast-paced sport like badminton.

Usually, training rackets also have pre-strung strings at lower tensions and cannot handle restringing at higher tensions. But this isn’t much of a problem because you shouldn’t be playing full games with a training racket.

Apart from weight and lower string tensions, there isn’t much of a difference between a training racket and a regular one. You cannot tell the difference until you pick it up.

One thing to note is the difference between a training racket and a sweet spot trainer. A sweet spot trainer is a racket with a much smaller head designed to help you out with hitting the shuttle at the correct place while the training racket I’m talking about here is a regular racket that is weighted.

What It Can Do For You

There are many benefits of using a badminton training racket. Various benefits include faster reactions, more strength, more stamina, and more control over your racket.

The most apparent improvement you’ll quickly see is more strength and stamina. Like any other sport, using weights will improve your strength which translates into more endurance when you take off the weights. After you play with a training racket and then switch back to a normal racket, you’ll feel that you don’t need much strength to hit it far which means you don’t consume as much energy.

Another benefit of using a training racket is faster reactions. If you play drives with a training racket, you will find it extremely difficult to react to fast drives coming at you. It’s all because of the weight. But if you practice driving with a training racket, once you switch back to a normal racket, reacting to drives will be a breeze for you.

It also won’t just be your drives that are better, all your other shots will be awesome as well. Playing with a weighted racket will give you more control over your normal racket. You’ll feel like your normal racket is so light and smooth and that you can play just about any shot.

Just trust me on that.

The Problems

Playing with a training racket isn’t all good though. It does have significant consequences if you fail to use it correctly.

Like all weights, if they are used wrong, you can cause yourself a lot of joint pains and body pressure. With training rackets specifically, misusage can seriously harm your shoulders. That’s why you be playing fully and comfortably with the proper technique before even using training rackets.

Over-usage is also something to be careful of. Depending on your strength and fitness levels, you want to make sure you’re not destroying yourself when using weights. Some people can train longer, others can’t.

Recommendations

Problems from training rackets such as injury are why I need to list some of the recommendations of usage here.

I want to clearly emphasize that you have proper technique before even using a training racket. Bad technique will stress body parts such as your shoulders and cause long-lasting injuries that may completely mess with your badminton career or even life.

That’s why badminton training rackets are not suitable for beginners or even intermediates who haven’t developed good enough technique.

But if you’re at an advanced level or higher, training rackets might come of great use to you. Here are some recommendations on how you could practice with a training racket.

There are three places I recommend you to use training rackets, during footwork, warm-up, and fundamental drills. Never ever use a training racket during games and matches no matter how good your technique is because there will always be those times where an unexpected shot from your opponent makes you use bad technique.

The three places where you can use training rackets are all times where things are predictable, and you can use impeccable technique. Switching out a regular racket for a training racket will definitely help you get stronger and have more control over your games.

What Training Racket Should I Get

So to answer the question of the article, you should get a training racket if your technique is perfect and you want to enhance your strength, endurance, and control further.

If that’s you, your next question should be what training racket you should get, and like all products, there are so many different options out there.

Personally, I’ve used the Yonex Isometric TRO for quite some time and definitely like it. There will be a link to a review of that training racket under this sentence once I have written it.

See my Yonex Isometric TR0 Review!

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or experiences, please share them below and have a great day!