i'm here today to save the people that take breaks or decide that they want to. DONT do it. i took just one week off badminton because of summer skool starting. now i dont even want to go back to playing, and i SUCK. i tried playing last friday and its like all my muscles were on heiatus. my footwork was off and it was hard to hit the bird at the sweetspot(if at all) on the first 4 strokes. not sure if i'm gonna get it back any time soon either "><. any idea wut i should do now? i'm scared to go back to playing cuz its sad seeing myself play like that...><
what the.......i was just considering taking a break to concentrate more on studies. are u sure it's that serious lol. anyway i think if u'd been playing long enough, an hour or 2 is more than enough to get back to your original form. so no worries
relax.. The way i see it is taking on another new challenge. Sometimes breaks can be a good thing. Here's a situation where breaks are a good thing: For the past week and a bit i did not play much badminton because it became not FUN for me anymore and winning started to become more important. That was a terrible feeling. My shots were terrible and i had no confidence plus i had a tournament coming up. So i decided to take a break from the game to re-energize myself and to hopefully come back to the game just wanting to play and to not worry about the outcome. Fortunately the tournament i was playing at is more of a fun oriented tournament (University of Waterloo's Survival of the Fittest). I was happy to just play again and taking a break really helped a lot for me. From a mental aspect, after you take a break your expectations would probably be lower (b/c timing may be off, etc). For me, this just makes me more focused and concentrated when hitting all my shots. Think of it as another form of training. Don't be scared wing.... You're still young... this is just another bump in the road....there are far more difficult obstacles. Good luck! Maybe we'll play sometime when i come back to BC on vacation
you lose a lot especially at high level singles in a week. good news is though you get it back really really quick.
replying to posts: 1) i've been playing for almost 3 hours. everytime i take a break it kills me. 2) seems to me like the only time breaks are good are when ur playing or mentality is seeming ugly for a bit. i completely agree with that. however, taking a break when ur at or near the top of ur game is DEADLY. 3) i rly hope thats the case. so the better u are the faster u regain it? sounds good for me then. XD jkjk
jeez lol now ur making ME worry after taking a two week break while i was in hk and taiwan =P (i've got serious jetlag now too) "i've been playing for almost 3 hours" ... u mean 3 years..rite..hao?
Try to re-frame your break as somethinig that you want. For example, do any of you guys use a long-term periodization for your training? Knowing the times of the year during which you won't be able to train as much, you can set them aside as rest weeks. They can be a time where you can work on other stuff, allowing your body to heal, recover and supercompensate. Then when you get back to playing, mentally you'll be pumped to play, and play hard. Planning out periods like this will help you avoid getting stale when it matters.
I find taking a break can be a good thing, as long as you keep in shape. After taking a couple weeks off during exams, I came back and was playing a much faster and more consistant game.
That's what crosstraining is for. You do other stuff to challenge yourself. Badminton do get repetitious and boring after awhile, especially when you're playing with the same group of people every time. When you find that you're physically taxed, do something mentally stimulating like learning a new skill or read a book. Players who are still in school or in the research field got it good cuz they're constantly getting stimulated/tested. Badminton becomes their break instead.
OMG. after not playing for 2.5 weeks i just went to a drop -in today..and everything was off @_@ i coudlnt hit the sweet spot 80% of the time and i kept stumbling and even twisted my ankle. THAT was really discouraging..and thoughts of quitting baddy started clouding my head.. it happens EVERy time i take a break over a week long. I don't know wut's wrong with me :crying: i hope training later this week will help get my game back..
calm down. I took a break of 10 years!!!! And came back, after a few months I am playing better than I ever did. Anyways, a break can be a very good thing, if you lose heart in the game, or need a break to concentrate on another area of life. When you ceom back, you might need a week or two to get back to seeing the shuttle, but when you do you feel a lot better about playing and training. Thats how it works for myself.
Only 1 week and it affected your game so much? I took 1 mth off due to overseas training and my shots were less sharp but after a week, it resumed to normal.
See also: http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10214&highlight=taking+break http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5484&highlight=taking+break Personally I don't see 1 week as a long time for a break. I am Lucky to play once a week! Any lossese quickly lost in this space of time will just as easily found.
Take it easy. Everyone has a good day or a bad one. Some days, everything just seems all against you. If you think your timing is off, extend the warm up / drill sessions a bit longer, to get the "feeling". Also, winning is not the only point of a sport.
well. the total is 3 weeks now in break time. when i first posted i forgot to count the week that i had skipped b4 so that makes it 2. i cant do math so w/e =D i played again on friday and it felt a bit better then the last time. when i first got on the court, i couldnt hit clears properly. they were too flat(like lobs) and didnt rly go anywhere. i had a hard time getting my footwork back. moving and lunging to the front was RLY ugly and i'd find myself losing balance, always towards my racket side. my smash seemed to have increased in power for some odd reason. however, 2/5 times it'd go into the net right below the white tape. as the day went on, i found that it was just too frickin hot to play badminton. went for a drink of water and rested for 10 minutes. came back and lost a 7-point singles game 7-2. came back later and then played up to 15 points. beat the same guy 15-13. total playtime: rougly 1 hour. total drop-in time: 1 hour 30 minutes. its finally starting to come back a bit. sometimes its best to play badminton to let go of every other ugly thing thats happening in life. pick up a racket, but try not to smoke someone in the face =)
confuzzled: If you're puzzled about the "overseas training" bit, it wasn't badminton training. Was job training, so 1 week off didn't really have any huge impact. A few sessions resume my game to normal.
breaks are not nessesarily bad things, even professional players take breaks. For instance, during chinese new years, many pros go back to visit their familys for a week or so. If you had read Gong ZhiChao's article in this forum, you'll see that it was because of a small break she took that inspired her to become an olympic champion.