Prevent injuries and improve skills by warming up

Discussion in 'Techniques / Training' started by jajvirta, Jan 30, 2012.

  1. jajvirta

    jajvirta Regular Member

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    If you're anything like me, you've always had a vague idea of the benefits of warming up, but never got around to actually start doing warm-ups. You might also think that warm-up consists of mostly of jogging and static stretches. Well nowadays, apparently, it's a lot more.

    What opened my eyes was a couple of articles linked by Badminton Finland. They referred to a study that reported a 66% decrease in injuries in the floorball teams that had a specific warm-up routine. (The study is written in English.) Floorball is probably even more dangerous to ankles and knees than badminton, but our beloved sport does not fall far behind in this regard.

    The specific warm-up routine they used is described by a lot of strange words like "neuromuscular" and "dynamic", but in practice you don't need to know a whole lot about the theory. The important message is that there are effective ways to prevent injuries, to improve the competitive performance and to increase one's mobility in the long run.

    For me, preventing injuries is perhaps the most important part of the benefits because of my age (soon to be 37). I guess there are injury-prone periods also in teens or so, but I understand that age becomes a risk factor close to middle age and beyond. This is why a good warm-up program might be even more important for older players.

    Badminton Finland has a nice demonstration of an active, dynamic warm-up program on Youtube. (The titles are in Finnish, but mostly you don't those.)

    [video=youtube;tu9OuQINsQw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu9OuQINsQw[/video]

    Here are some nice dynamic warm-up videos by Tommi Paavola (that insipired a lot of the moves in the first video I guess):

    [video=youtube;23IAMXjzISg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23IAMXjzISg[/video]

    [video=youtube;RAET-15Bldc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAET-15Bldc[/video]

    [video=youtube;jntLBTQ6rUk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jntLBTQ6rUk[/video]

    (I'm not affiliated with the site, I just found these videos informative.)

    I recommend trying them out.

    At Badminton Life, Richard Gibney talks about the same themes.
     
  2. Cheung

    Cheung Moderator

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    That's a PhD thesis.

    A few things to be noted when translating those results to badminton.

    1) the study only covers female athletes - they have a higher incidence of injuries and therefore are a group to have most benefit. The same may not be applicable to men.

    2) floorboard has more than twice higher incidence of injuries compared to badminton (Table 1). This is a bit confusing as the author points out the data may not be truly exact. However, the difference looks big enough to suggest that badminton is less of a risk.

    3) The study only covers competitive league players. So the more casual players could have fewer injuries. However, the converse might be true as well :D!

    Overall, the same specific neuromuscular training programme may not show the same magnitude of effect in badminton.
     
  3. jajvirta

    jajvirta Regular Member

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    That's true. I'm sorry if it sounded like I'm claiming that this result directly transfers to badminton. For me, it was just an eye-opener in general and made me want to try out those "new" dynamic warm-up programs. Ultimately, it has got to produce a feeling that the specific warm-up makes a difference in the perfomance too.

    However, there's a section in the thesis that refers to other studies that have made similar interventions and most of them found decrease in injuries (17-80%). There were few interventions too that did not see a decrease in injuries. The thesis author says there are some problems with methodologies of some of those studies.

    In the end, I guess it's a matter of belief so long as no one makes a badminton-specific intervention study. To me, it seems the evidence points to such programs being effective.
     
  4. moomoo

    moomoo Regular Member

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    to me, the best warm up is always it play one set of a non-serious after 10 mins of strokes. thats a pure dynamic warm up :D
     
  5. Cheung

    Cheung Moderator

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    Yes, I agree it looks as thought the program should work for badminton as well. As long as the warmups don't do any harm:) in themselves, we won't have a problem.

    Some methodological nitpicking on the thesis was that I noticed there was no power analysis for sample size estimation and the method for randomisation and random allocation seemed not to be described.
     
  6. jeevan.life

    jeevan.life Regular Member

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    I agree :p.. Non serious play after a round of jog around the court and couple o rotation for shoulders :D
     
  7. Hanjo

    Hanjo Regular Member

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    I guess it is rather subjective depending on the person itself right? Like myself I need to work on my lower body. Or else, one jumping smash and I'll be limping of calf cramp. Or on net kill and my waist is "killed". :D
     
  8. a|extan

    a|extan Regular Member

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    warmup is important for any sport
    not only badminton...

    to prevent injuries due to lack of warm ups.
     

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