Endurance and fitness are crucial for a badminton player. Without the ability to endure, one will play a few rallies and then end up exhausted and unable to continue at high speeds. That’s why doing the GGAB Fitness Training Regime is so important to me.
The main goals are to improve fitness as well as a few technical badminton things mostly revolving around footwork.
Today was all about endurance. The exercise list is relatively short, but those three activities will tremendously improve your ability to maintain long badminton rallies.
Before we get into the rest of the post though, I want to go check out the Badminton Training Regime #2 – GGAB Fitness Training post so you can get a quick recap on everything that is happening.
Let’s get started on today’s post.
The Exercises
- Quick jog and stretch
- 5 sets of 20, 2 sets of 40, 1 set of 50, and finally 5 sets of 15 pointing footwork
- Jog for 30 minutes
- Skip for 10 minutes
- Cooldown and stretch
Yep, the exercises are exactly the same as day 11 of the GGAB Fitness Training Regime.
There really isn’t much left for me to perfect in our endurance days. The target goals are slightly above 
what we can do, but not so far up that we can’t achieve. That’s the main reason I’m keeping the exercises the same.
It’s a great benchmark to see how much closer to the goal we are getting after each week.
If you have read the recent posts such as GGAB Fitness Training Regime – Day 15, you’ll notice that I’ve been working some of the high-intensity interval training (HIIT) concepts into my practice.
However, for today’s endurance day, I preferred not to do any changes regarding HIIT.
This is mainly because of having a mix of anaerobic and aerobic exercises is definitely more optimal than opting for just one kind of training.
Anaerobic exercises will improve muscle strength vastly and helps a lot with sports like badminton because of how HIIT is modeled. HIIT involves training at high speeds for short periods with small breaks in between much like how there are small breaks between each badminton rally.
Aerobic exercises will, however, strengthen your heart, which will lead to better blood flow and allow you to use your muscles more efficiently. That’s why having a balance of aerobic and anaerobic exercises is critical.
Today’s endurance day was both HIIT and cardio. The footwork drills are meant to emulate a real game situation and are categorized as a HIIT exercise. The cardio was consisted of jogging and skipping.
All three of these exercises have shown to be extremely effective at building stamina, which is why I have not made any changes to the workouts I do on endurance days.
Diet and Sleep
Again, diet and sleep have been the same story. Eating three meals and sleeping late has been the big 
thing I have talked about for the last week.
Sleep was a bit worse than the usual with my bedtime ending up at 1 AM due to some work I had to finish. It was still 8 hours of rest, however, which meets the recommended amount of sleep that an average person should get.
The late sleeping schedule really needs to go. My day really isn’t as efficient or productive as it should be with this schedule. Maybe it’s time for me to ditch the all-natural wake-up and start using an alarm clock…
As for the three meals, I had peanut butter and toast for breakfast, fried rice for lunch, and rice again with lamb, carrots, and bonk choi. Simple. Not too healthy nor unhealthy.
One thing I do want to note that is that I have been drinking more fluids recently and when coupled with a few power naps, I’ve definitely been feeling better, and my skin is looking nicer too.
On the topic of more thoughts and feelings…
Thoughts and Feelings
Today I want to talk about personal emotions and how a training regime can benefit it!
I want to talk about this because sometimes it just seems like everything is going against me and that the world is a horrible place to live in. And I know some people will express the same emotions as me.
I’ve been so angry these past few days.
I failed a driving test for a mistake that I shouldn’t have made only to find out that I would have failed anyway because the driver examiner could not see me shoulder check and picked on nitpicky things like stopping a few millimeters onto the stop line.
Plus the poor customer service received by both the registry workers and the driving examiner herself. They demanded things out of my parents and gave them no time to respond. Treated us like absolute shit.
And all that money wasted! First, the actual test cost, then the rental car because the registry workers didn’t give us time to go get the other car/insurance, and now I have to pay for a second road test!
It’s not just the cost either. Because of the new government system, the next available time I can test will be in November, two months from now! And should I fail again, I have to wait another two months!
All these thoughts only make way to more bad memories. I started to think about all the ways the 
government has been doing no good, then thinking about all of the people who make fun of me, and then sad thoughts where I think the world just doesn’t want me to succeed.
But in the end, the mistake was in my hands. It was my fault, and I can’t blame it on anyone else. Life is too short for me to be angry about everything. Now I’m letting things go, and looking at the bright side and planning where I can go from now.
How did I get myself to a more peaceful state?
While I’m not in full zen mode yet, this training regime definitely has its life-saving effects. But pushing out all the anger by training harder, I’ve been able to unleash the rage in a way that doesn’t cause harm to anyone else, but in fact, benefiting myself.
You can’t imagine how many push-ups you can do while you’re angry.
But as I train and take breaks, I reflect. I think about myself. Who am I? What is my purpose? What kind of person do I want to be?
And I decided that I am not a person that wants to be angry and sad all the time. I don’t want to be that cynical person who can only complain and not take action. I don’t want to be the guy that blames everything on everyone else.
Then I remember what I’m doing this training regime for.
I will not be the guy who continually wallows in his past mistakes or glory. I am one who will bounce back even higher with each passing day. I will not lose all the tournaments and get laughed at. I will train harder than anyone else and come back to win it all.
So when one can finally re-define their ambitions and return to the path they want to walk, you can rid yourself of many angry or sad emotions, and through exercise, you can safely do that.
But that’s enough of me venting. In some other post, I might talk more about these topics. They really do interest me, and I want to help you out if you ever fall into the same situations as me.
Progress
Now it’s time for some pictures and stats! Unfortunately, my brother actually didn’t do the exercises with me because he was busy with other activities, so I will have no stats of him for the 30-minute run.
Person 1:
Weight: 145 lbs
Number of km ran in 30 minutes: 3.43 km
Person 2:
Weight: 121 lbs
Although I did complete the entire 30 minutes of jogging, it wasn’t perfect. I started walking occasionally and also had short breaks mainly because of intersections with traffic lights which I needed to cross.
Conclusion
Day 18 is done now! Stay tuned for tomorrow’s speed day as well as the day after tomorrow as we have something special coming up.
Yes… we might finally use one of the two extra days in the 30-day training to play some badminton!
For now, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them down below. As always, good luck in your games and have a great day!