GGAB Fitness Training Regime - Weekly Recap 2 (Day 14)

Day 14 of the GGAB Fitness Training Regime is here, and that means, it is time for the second Weekly Recap! Today, we will briefly summarize the exercises we did, our diet and sleep, and my thoughts and feelings on the week.

Just like the first weekly recap of the GGAB Fitness Training Regime, I will not be including what we did today as it will be remarkably similar to GGAB Fitness Training Regime Day 13. But since today, had a few changes towards recovery and rest, I will list some of those in my diet and sleep section.

If you’re here and don’t know what I am talking about, it’s good to get some information by checking out the Badminton Training Regime #2 – GGAB Fitness Training blog post as well as the GGAB Fitness Training Regime – Weekly Recap 1 so you can catch up.

Once you have done that, come check out the rest of today’s post.

Table of Contents

The Exercises

Day 8 (Upper Body) Exercises:

Quick jog and stretch

10 sets of 20 footwork
3 sets of 20 push-ups
3 sets of 45-second planks

3 sets of 30-second v sit
3 sets of 20 rotation v sit with weights
3 sets of 20 touch heels

3 sets of 20 touch knees
3 sets of 20 tricep pushdown
3 sets of 20 supermans

3 sets of 20 bicep curls on each arm
3 sets of 30 wrist curls
Stretch

Day 9 (Lower Body) Exercises:

Quick jog and stretch
10 sets of 20 pointing footwork

3 sets of 20 squats with hip rotation
3 sets of 20 squat jumps
3 sets of 20 calf hops

3 sets of 20 calf raises
3 sets of 20 lunge jumps
3 sets of 45 second regular fast feet

3 sets of 45-second side fast feet
3 sets of 45-second front and back fast feet
3 sets of 10 laps up the stairs

Cooldown and stretch

Day 10 (Stability) Exercises:

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

Day 11 (Endurance) 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

Day 12 (Speed) 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

Significant changes were made to many of these exercise days for this week. I’ve added in the improvements that I wanted to add in from last week’s recap, but I also added in more exercises and increased some of the sets or reps to compensate for our improved fitness.

For the next week, I will likely do something very similar. First, let’s get into some of the finer details on each day and the changes I would like to make right away.

The upper body day just continuously gets better! Day 8 was definitely a vast improvement compared to day 1. The intensity was much better by adding in weight lifting, and the exercises that I removed were not missed. It still isn’t perfect, however, and there is something I want to experiment with the upper body day.

Right now the biggest problem is the pacing we are doing these activities at. For the next upper body day, I plan to make changes in the form of increasing sets but lowering reps. This way, I can hit more of the high-intensity interval training tactic that many athletes train in to get more optimal results.

It’s the exact same situation with the lower body day. While all the exercises have been working out very well, increasing the sets while lowering the reps will be beneficial. The lower body day does feel better than the upper body day, which means it will require way less modification.

Day 10 was our stability day. This week’s stability day was much better than the previous week’s stability day, but it still isn’t as refined as I would like it. I will need to do some more research into stretches and exercises that can improve my range of motion. There isn’t enough information gathered yet for me to make any reliable recommendations, but hopefully, I will find a method that will suit my brother and me.

After the stability day comes the endurance day. My endurance day was the one that was least changed. The only difference was in the footwork where I decided to implement a drill that Olympic Silver Medalist Ardy Wiranata gave to us in the club before. Definitely, a great decision and the endurance day will probably remain the same, unless we have improved to the point where things need to be increased in intensity.

Day 12 was our speed day. Unfortunately, we were unable to get access to a track, so we had to use a nearby soccer field for some of our training. In day 12, we did make some changes such as reducing the reps and sets so that we could increase the speed we were going at. It definitely helped, but I still feel like using a track would help us much more. Most of these exercises will remain the same, and hopefully, we get to use a track!

Some things you may have noticed when comparing today’s weekly recap to our previous weekly recap is that many of our exercises, especially our footwork drills, have increased in either sets or reps. Our bodies have been handling this training regime very well, and we can see ourselves improving every day.

It’s to the point where 10 sets of 20 footwork have become the norm for us! With this kind of improvement, we will be dominating on a badminton court in no time.

Diet and Sleep

Unfortunately, I cannot give as much praise as I did to this week’s diet and sleep as I did with the exercises. While food has undoubtedly improved where I am more consistently eating more and drinking more water, sleep has not improved at all.

In some aspects, sleep has maybe gotten even worse…

So just like the first weekly recap, I can only say that my goals are to change the times that I sleep at and improve the way I eat.

Something I do want to talk about in today’s post, however, is meditation and power napping. This is something that I came across and just started implementing today. So far, I’ve been liking it.

The meditation and power naps have helped my ability to stay more energetic and thus, more productive throughout the day. I’ve found the power napping strategy particularly useful.

Here’s what I did today that I feel like I would do more in the future.

At around 2 PM, I took a nap of about 30 minutes. This 30-minute nap felt particularly useful because it did not push me into a deep sleep. So instead of feeling sluggish when I woke up, I have fully refreshed and was feeling energetic again.

It’s also an excellent strategy because I know that my most unproductive time of the day is during the afternoon. During this time, I would get very sleepy and end up not wanting to do anything. Then I would start watching videos, and then I will probably end up sleeping at 4 PM for 2 hours.

This 2-hour nap, however, is not beneficial. After about 1 hour or so, your body gets put into a state where it’s much harder to wake your body from sleep. So when I wake up, I would be sluggish for about an hour.

The other problem is that the nap is way too late. Whenever I fall asleep at that time, I end up unable to sleep until 1 or 2 AM, and that doesn’t help at all with my originally late bedtime.

I am yet to find out if I’ll be able to sleep at night with this strategy, but for now, it certainly feels better.

As for meditation, I am yet to see good results from it. Although not much can be said as I wasn’t even able to meditate for a full 10 minutes. It was undoubtedly rushed and not planned out. For the next few days, I want to research meditation a little more and plan aside time where I can do it.

These are two strategies that I would love to experiment with and show everyone the results after. Let me know in the comment section if you have any tips for meditating or power napping!

Thoughts and Feelings

Whoo, the second week has passed, and our excitement to get back on a badminton court only increases.

Every day, both my brother and I are feeling stronger, more energetic, and prepared to go back on a badminton court and win. The GGAB Fitness Training Regime has definitely helped us build more muscle and strengthen our endurance.

There are so many things not related to physical fitness that are improving because of this training regime as well.

My work ethic, mental strength, and happiness have indeed gone up since starting this training regime. My fat levels have gone down, and my skin is looking increasingly better. The effects of exercising are consistently kicking in.

That’s why I highly recommend you get a training plan a follow it with all your heart whether you’re trying to get good at badminton or not. It will help you in life so much!

But after all, our primary goals with this training regime is to improve our badminton game. Although doing these footwork drills have certainly helped our badminton game improve, I feel just a little something is missing.

Then I had my little epiphany while watching a video on how Fu Hai Feng smashes.

I learned that he trained for two months without any shuttles just practicing his swings. And I thought, couldn’t I do the exact same thing?

Having limited access to courts currently and an understanding of technique triumphing strength makes this training strategy very appealing. Something I might add to the other training days will probably be a few hundred swings of a specified kind without any shuttles.

I do have to make sure it’s perfect technique and will likely spend time watching some pro players swing.

When I get back on the court then, my shots should all have more power and a cleaner feel.

Progress

Ah, there are so many stats that I want to include on here that I haven’t measured. Things like vertical jump height and speed of footwork are things that may be interesting to add. But for now, we got things like pictures, weight, and some sprinting speeds.

Person 1: