Hi everyone! Welcome to day 12 of the GGAB Fitness Training Regime. Today is another day where we challenged ourselves with our fitness training regime. Today was all about increasing our speed with short interval exercises done at maximum intensity.
Before we get into some of the individual exercises, you should first check out the Badminton Training Regime #2 – GGAB Fitness Training post as well as the GGAB Fitness Training Regime – Day 5 post if you haven’t already so that you can get a general summary of the training and be able to compare today with the previous speed day.
Let’s get into how I am increasing my personal speed for badminton.
The Exercises
- Quick jog and stretch
- 10 sets of 10 smash net-kill footwork
- 4 sprints across a soccer field (~100m)
- 2 sprints across a soccer field and back (~200m)
- 2 sets of shuffle, shuffle, jump exercises with weights for half a soccer field length (50m)
- 2 sets of high knees with weights for half a soccer field length (50m)
- 2 sets of butt kicks with weights for half a soccer field length (50m)
- 2 sets of shuffling forward with weights for half a soccer field length (50m)
- 2 sets of shuffling backward with weights for half a soccer field length (50m)
- Cooldown and stretch
If you have read the GGAB Fitness Training Regime Day 5 post, you will notice that I only had 5 activities listed, while for today, I have double that amount.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go to the track again, but we still did our speed training nonetheless.
I made some pretty significant changes for today that I did not expect myself to make. I’ve changed the footwork to a more intense smash net-kill drill, lowered the amount we were running, and added in other movements that we would use our badminton games.
My primary thought process for this was that I wanted to really focus down on speed and add other movements that we would use in badminton a lot like shuffling.
That’s why I lowered the number of sets we were doing pretty significantly but added in more exercises to compensate. This change was an overall improvement as I felt we were really able to focus down on our top speeds and acceleration.
Last time, I talked a lot about weights and how it could be dangerous yet beneficial to our training.
I kept the weighted aspects in for today’s training for the exercises from 5 and on. I prefer adding in ankle weights and weighted vests when we are doing drills where we can focus a bit more on how we are doing it rather than full speed.
It might sound counter-intuitive, but trust me, injuries are the most significant thing we want to avoid.
That’s why I didn’t include weights in the smash net-kill footwork drills and sprinting as going at full speed is where mistakes will be made most commonly.
If you read my last post, I also talked about changing our training to be on top of the grass instead of concrete.
It certainly had its benefit as my knees don’t hurt at all now, but the grass is slightly slippery, especially after a little bit of rain.
This was another reason that I did not want to include weights for sprinting or footwork. I almost slipped during the footwork!
The speed training day still isn’t perfected yet, though. Although we are building our speed up, the problem still lies in being able to keep our pace up for long rallies. While we do have an endurance day to help with it, I still think including some mid-distance runs such as the 400-meter run will definitely be beneficial to the training.
Diet and Sleep
Ah, diet, and sleep. My greatest enemy.
Let’s start with the bad news first.
Last night was my worst sleep since starting this training program. Despite finishing the blog post relatively early, the nap that I took in the afternoon, and the coffee in the evening didn’t help me sleep at all.
In fact, even though I went to bed at 10 PM, I couldn’t fall asleep until 2 AM.
What’s worse is that when I finally did fall asleep, I was woken up at 7 AM so I could get up and get to work. 5 hours of sleep certainly isn’t enough for me, especially after an endurance day.
Waking up early? Check. 
Sleeping early? X.
Getting enough sleep? BIG X.
Those 5 hours of sleep really translated into my actions and emotions for the day. I was extremely restless and cranky throughout the entire day.
I was getting frustrated extremely quickly and angry the entire day. It didn’t help at all with what I needed to get done.
But there is good news, though.
The good news is that I ate 3 meals today!
I had a full breakfast consisting of milk, cereal, and coffee. Then lunch at 2 PM of chicken noodle soup. And finally, dinner of stir-fried lamb, rice, kimchi, and some more of the leftover chicken soup.
No more starvation for the day!
Thoughts and Feelings
Like mentioned in the exercise section, I’m still conflicted on how well today’s training regime is performing. While I certainly felt that I was targeting speed very well, I think some exercises should be swapped out.
What did work out very well was the smash net-kill drill. The smash net-kill drill is probably the most beneficial exercise in today’s speed day and the results for when we play badminton will be visible.
As for the other drills, I am unsure of how effective they are. I am going under the concept that if you always do something as fast as you can, your limits will slowly increase over time.
So it may be impatient of me to try to look at results right away.
Overall, I will keep this section relatively short for today. The thoughts and feelings are very similar to other posts where we can feel ourselves slowly getting stronger, fitter, faster, and generally feeling more emotionally well.
Progress
I included some of our sprinting speeds for today! I’m not sure what the actual size of the soccer field we used was, but I estimate that it was reasonably close to 100 meters. So in that case, huge improvement!
Although there are many factors to consider. Today, we weren’t running against the wind like last time, and we didn’t have the grueling 400 meter runs beforehand. Which means, I won’t get too excited about this…
Person 1:
Weight: 150 lbs
1 Soccer Field Length Times: 13.69, 12.62, 12.03, 12.30
2 Soccer Field Length Times: 34.69, 35.69
Person 2:
Weight: 123 lbs
1 Soccer Field Length Times: 13.25, 13.72, 13.86, 13.83
2 Soccer Field Length Times: 37.20, 37.66
Conclusion
That’s it for today! Tomorrow will be my rest day, so I can rest a little bit. I’ll be sure to do some more activities designed for relaxing and give everyone my thoughts!
For now, I’m getting a little tired, so it’s about time I stop.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them down below, and I’ll be happy to respond to them. As always, good luck in your games and have a great day!