Hey everybody, welcome to Day 3 of the GGAB Fitness Training Regime. Today was a much more relaxed day focusing on strengthening balance and stability. It still has its own benefits and exercises that certainly challenged my brother and me.
Before we get into day 3 of the training plan, you should first check out Badminton Training Regime #2 – GGAB Fitness Training as well as the other two training days to catch up.
Let’s get started.
The Exercises
Stability exercises. Honestly, I could have done more research into yoga and pilates for this day, but I didn’t and whipped out this training plan on the whim:
- Quick jog and stretch
- 5 sets of 20 footwork (Last set, focus set, I explicitly worked on backcourt defense while my brother worked on the same thing as day 2)
- 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 10 lunges (no jump) both sides
- 3 sets of 30-second planks
- 3 sets of 30-second side planks each side
- Hold a partner back by the legs while your partner tries to move forward with his hands
- Cooldown and stretch
Unlike the previous two days, doing all of these exercises took less time; a little more than 1 hour.
I included this stability day to build some more strength as well as balance within the body. I don’t know how much this exercise will improve actual balance during badminton games, however, in theory, it should provide some decent results.
Some of the body parts that were worked out in this exercise were muscles around the ankle, the toes, overall legs, and the core. While a strong core and legs are known to improve badminton footwork, you may not know about how much muscles around the ankle and your foot can help.
According to one of our coaches in the badminton training camp I did recently, building ankle and foot strength will improve your footing and make you much harder to put off balance.
That’s undoubtedly a good thing considering the number of deceptions and high-quality shots some people may play in badminton.
After hearing this, I was excited to incorporate it into some of my own personal training. So here we are in day 3 working on some stability exercises.
Like I mentioned earlier, I should have researched a little more on what other balance exercises there 
were, but I was not ready for it. This ended up with me overlapping some activities with the other days such as planks, shoulder flexibility exercises, and lunges.
These exercises are still excellent, however, and I definitely recommend them.
On the other hand, I tried to experiment with an activity where I hold my brother’s legs back while he tries to crawl forward and then switch. It didn’t work; however, as the moment, I use a little strength to push him back while he was trying to go forward made him lose balance and fall. The same happened to me while I was crawling.
I will probably remove this exercise in the following weeks.
Diet and Sleep
Diet and sleep. Nothing much has changed.
On day 2, I was so tired from the exercise, all the work I had to do, and helping my parents out which ended up with me coming home at 11:00 PM and instantly falling asleep.
Then I ended up waking up at 9:00 AM, which meant I slept 10 hours!
The schedule for today also went a little differently. Instead of getting up and starting the exercises right away, my brother had a dental appointment, and I had to run a few errands, so we ended up doing the workout in the afternoon after eating.
Definitely ate a little better today.
For brunch, we had a meal at Tim Horton’s consisting of a chipotle chicken wrap with potato wedges for me while a large chili with bread for my brother with an Iced Capp and Frozen Raspberry Lemonade to drink respectively.
Then for dinner, we had rice, mashed potatoes, and spicy beef stewed with fish tofu and Chinese cabbage.
It’s a little better than yesterday except that we are still running only 2 meals a day.
This is definitely because of how late we wake up, so again, we need to improve ourselves by sleeping earlier and waking up earlier. Hopefully, we can put ourselves on that path relatively soon.
Thoughts and Feelings
This day was much more relaxed.
Other than the footwork drills, the activities we did barely caused a sweat. Don’t get me wrong though, 
muscles were still working and the exercises burned. We just didn’t have as many large movements that would cause multiple muscles groups to work.
Like mentioned a few times in this post, I do feel like I should do some research into pilates and yoga and add elements into this training plan. Let me know if you have any pilate or yoga knowledge down in the comment section below!
The relaxing element is a good thing, though from what I had experienced in the previous day.
I didn’t entirely expect this to hit me, but I was quite sore from day 2! My calves and parts of my upper leg were and still are sore. It’s actually been somewhat difficult for me to walk normally!
Luckily, we were able to get through footwork just fine and proceed to exercises that used less of the muscles that were in pain.
I think most of the soreness comes from a few select exercises from day 2; namely, the calf raises and squat jumps. I’ll probably leave those exercises just as is and then perhaps increase the reps for the rest of the activities.
Now back to day 3.
From what I felt today, I think I would probably move the side planks to the upper body day and remove all planking from today. This is not because the planks were too intense or easy, but more about making space for other exercises.
I will probably add in 5-10 other exercises all related to holding certain positions that strengthen some part of the body or increases flexibility.
I will also either get rid of the lunges completely for stability days or make variations of them to do.
Otherwise, this day has also been pretty good, and I plan to continue having a stability day.
Progress
Now for some progress. Pictures still look relatively the same, but both my brother and I are feeling changes to ourselves already. We feel stronger everywhere, a little bit taller, and having lost fat and gained muscle despite not necessarily looking like it or having stats that show for it.
Person 1:
Weight: 139 lbs
Person 2:
Weight 114 lbs
As you see, my weight still hasn’t changed since day 1, and my brother’s weight remained the same from day 2. But from how we are feeling right now, I think things will definitely change.
Conclusion
Day 3, the stability day. It’s something interesting that I either see people only do it or people not do it at all. I feel balance and flexibility is an essential quality for badminton success so I will likely continue including stability days. It also serves as a great break day in between some strength body training and the endurance running that’s about to come.
You got that right. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s endurance running where my brother and I will run for as long as possible plus some other exercises!
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them down below, and I will give my best answer. For now, good luck in your games and have a great day!