Welcome everybody to stability and control day! Today was a day focused on developing balance within our body, which will allow us to move around on the court more fluidly and in a way where we won’t lose control. I’m basically trying to develop footwork as stable as Chen Long’s.
Once again, before we get into today’s post, you should check out Badminton Training Regime #2 – GGAB Fitness Training as well as the GGAB Fitness Training Regime – Day 3 so you can catch up on what we are doing here and compare today with the first stability day respectively.
Let’s get into some of today’s balancing activities.
The Exercises
Today’s exercises were heavily revamped compared to the previous day.
- Warm-up and stretch
- 10 sets of 20 pointing footwork
- Move forward 5 meters only using your toes
- Balance on 1-foot eyes closed for 1 minute for each leg
- Pelvic curl 10 times
- 3 sets of 10 shoulder flexibility exercises
- 3 sets of putting an arm and the opposite leg straight out from a crawling position for 30 seconds (doing both sides counts as 1 set)
- 3 sets of 30 second “cobra” stretches for the back
- Hit a badminton shuttle up 50 times without stopping on one leg and then switch legs
- Stretch
I added many new exercises and removed many of the old activities.
Things that were removed were the lunges, planks, and holding a partner back by the legs while he tries to move forward using his hands. While lunges and planks are great exercises, I felt that they were redundant for today since I included them in the two days before today and wanted different activities for today.
On the other hand, the third exercise was utterly useless. I initially thought that it could potentially build balance and strength in the arms. However, the timing between when I use power to pull my partner back, and when my partner moves forward was entirely off, which could potentially lead to injuries if my partner’s hands should slip.
Instead of these exercises, I added two yoga and pilate poses in the form of the cobra stretches and putting the arms and legs out as well as an essential badminton control exercise with an added variation of standing on one leg.
And I must say, these were significant improvements to my stability day.
I especially like the hitting the shuttle up drill. It really brings a little more “get good at badminton” feel into this training regime than just a full fitness workout. As it is my stability/control day, I thought improving racket control would be a great idea to supplement and enhance the training.
Hitting a shuttle up and down is a drill that I took out of my Badminton Tips and Tricks #7 – How To Improve Control blog post so make sure you check that out if you would like to see more tips on improving badminton control.
Although today was a significant improvement from the first stability day, I felt that this day is still missing elements that prevent it from becoming great. That’s why for the next stability day, I plan to add some more and maybe remove some exercises to fully optimize it for our training.
Diet and Sleep
I did mention that I wanted to completely change my sleeping schedule and amount of meals I eat every day on day 8 of the GGAB Fitness Training Regime with this new plan that I created.
Then, if you have read day 9 of the GGAB Fitness Training Regime, you’ll know that my plan ultimately failed as I was finishing writing the blog post at 10-11 PM.
What’s even worse is that I didn’t even sleep right after finishing the blog post. I went into bed and couldn’t fall asleep until 2 AM! Maybe that large Iced Capp in the evening was not the best idea…
And sleeping at 2 in the morning led to a wake-up time of 10 AM, which is even worse than 9 AM!
With my wake up time at 10 AM, it meant that I ate two meals again consisting of milk and cereal for brunch and chicken, tomatoes, and rice for dinner.
Talk about the irony here… When I plan to change myself for the better completely, I get changed for the worse.
Despite this de-motivating experience, I can’t give up. If I have expressed my concerns and my will to change, I must.
So even if I am writing this blog post at 11 PM, I will try my best to change my habits slowly.
Thoughts and Feelings
Like you have probably read in the exercise section, I felt that this day was an improvement compared to day 3 of the GGAB Fitness Training Regime, but it was not yet fully optimized for ourselves.
I think for the next stability day, I will add in some more badminton related exercises. There will probably be variants of the hitting a shuttle up drill such as putting limiters such as slicing only or only one eye open.
After all, the end goal is to improve our badminton skills and although fitness will be the end decider between who can win a badminton match, improving our racket control will significantly help with consistency too.
Another thing that some of you may be thinking right now is, “Are 10 sets of 20 pointing footwork too much, especially after a leg day?”
This is a very valid thought that I would like to address. 
In day 8 of the GGAB Fitness Training Regime, I actually talked about why I increased my amount of footwork from 5 sets to 10 sets. And I can’t believe it! Even 10 sets are becoming more relaxed even when we’re putting just as much or even more intensity into each set.
Although for now, I won’t increase the number of sets except for tomorrow’s endurance day, I might plan to increase the sets even more in the following weeks.
This is solid proof that our footwork is becoming more efficient and our fitness is getting increasingly stronger.
So to everyone that’s reading and haven’t started their own workout schedules, I highly recommend you get started right away. Because even if you start at a leisurely pace, you can slowly build it up and after a few weeks passed, you won’t even recognize the difference between what you were and what you became.
I highly recommend you get a consistent training schedule.
Progress
So now that I talked all about how much fitness improved and so on, let’s look at some physical growth shall we?
Person 1:
Weight: 137 lbs
Person 2:
Weight: 121 lbs
Some of the things that I found were that although we have been consistently toning down fat and gaining more muscles from the pictures, the weight for both us has been very inconsistent. And from an article that I have read, this can be due to lots of things such as water and the food in our body.
Overall I still think things are improving, and this training has definitely been beneficial.
Conclusion
That’s it, everyone! Make sure you stay tuned for future posts!
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them down below. Good luck in your games and have a great day!