I have a few questions on warming up. I did a search but didn't quite find all the answers I was looking for. My situation is that it takes me a very long time to warm up. It takes me 30 minutes just to get used to the bird speed and a full hour of constant hitting, moving around to get ready to go. If I play a game before at least an hour has passed by, my muscles are still cold and it feels like I'm trying to play right after getting out of bed. Very sluggish. So far what I've done is: jogging to the gym slight stretching warmup hits keeping my sweater/long pants on during first 2 games multivitamins stop eating right before going to gym !!! (bad habit) My questions are: What do you guys do for warming up? Anything I'm doing wrong or should focus more on? Any tricks you know of that can speed up the process a little bit? Any advise would be greatly appreciated.
I warm up and stretch intensively about 5 to 10 minutes and hitting strokes. Then I play and go on turbo adrenaline mode. The reason you're sluggish is that your warming up or your games aren't very stimulating. You need to do quick hitting drives so your body wakes up fast. Just a simple analogy: The alarm wakes you up in the morning with a nice soothing music. You hear the music and lazily wake up, still drowsy and asleep. But if the alarm rings a screeching annoying high alert nuclear sound, you'd be up awake and aware in no time
Stretching A caveat regarding stretching In the past decade or so the philosophy regarding stretching has changed quite a bit for most sports. Numerous studies conducted in the past 20+ years have shown that static stretching performed just prior to playing or working out does not appear to prevent injuries -- in a few cases, it appears that it might even increase the likelihood of injuries. Worse yet, static stretching has been shown to degrade athletic performance for 20-30 minutes. With intense or extended stretching sessions, the degradation in power and strength can even last for an hour or more. Several people have told me that their athletic performance suffers for a couple of hours after an long session of yoga stretching. The current philosophy for many pro and collegiate athletes is to include dynamic stretching as part of their pre-game warm-up. I believe that there are other threads around here that have dealt with the difference between static and dynamic stretches. Static stretching is often recommended as a post-game routine -- part of the cool-down after exercise rather that the warm-up beforehand. Another idea is to perform static stretches before the dynamic phase of the warm-up. Allow yourself at least 20-30 minutes before the start of play to stretch statically. The dynamic stretching can be done immediately prior to play. At the conlcusion of play or training, static stretches can, once again, be employed. .
I find that 15-20 minutes of low-impact cardio exercise before heading to the courts can do wonders for getting the juices (adrenaline & endorphins) flowing. Even 10 minutes on a bicycle or exercise bike can be helpful. You might also incorporate a bit of interval training after the aerobic stuff. Once I get to the badminton courts, I'll often do some jump rope, jumping jacks and progressive shadow swings. As part of my on-court warm-up I often include a simple 2-corner drill -- moving backward and forward, alternating overhead drops and net drops.
that assuming the soothing music actually wakes you up at all. i think i've tried using such music to wake up- didn't even hear it.
Yes, 30 minutes is much too long. Of course, ideally you do whatever you need to warm-up, but the problem is that you don't always have time to do what you want during a tournament. Mentally, I like to think about how soldiers, firefighters etc don't have time to "warm up" before they do what they do. They have to be ready at any time. I'm not suggesting that you ignore the warm-up, I'm just pointing out that physical activity is possible without any.
I agree wholeheartedly with SystemicAnomaly's obviously learned answer on dynamic stretching. Aggressively stretching a 'cold' hamstring or calf is inviting injury, especially in a middle aged person. The only addition I would make to the discussion is make sure that you are active on your days away from the court. Stretching and cardio every day will make your body much more responsive to your badminton warm-up on game day.
For me i just "knock-up". I play half court with my partner. First i do clears, then do the drop/smash drill, practice drives and then I practice my smash while partner defends and then vice versa. Do this for about 10min and you'll be all warmed up.
for me, there're to ways.... one, just step on court, hit 4 clears a smash and a drop and say "everybody ready?...let's do some doubles" (sue me, I'm young and overzealous ) For more serious stuff (tournaments and comeptition). I start with running some laps around the hall, do some light dynmaic stretching, then get pretty intensive with some shadow-footwork and dribbeling and tire myself out a bit.... when I start sweating/breathing hard, I stop and do soem light dribbeling. finally get on court, don't get lazy (keep moving) and keep the pace up... within 20minutes I'm ready for serious matches... my advice to you would be to keep it shorter, and more intensive...
I feel pumped. Its long, boring, all you wanna do is play. Well, it gets my muscles heated up. Oh, and add a couple of laps in.
Hiting the birdie couple times, and once i try 200m dash suck all my energy lost my first set but win last two sets LOL
I also do the same with just strokes for 5 - 10 minutes. I do: Drives Clears Back Drops Smash All very simple drills but I start with drives because it its like the alarm analogy. And I have found that when I warm up starting with clears its like jumping straight into a stroke that requires effort, instead of drives that is pretty easy. I have found that this makes my arm feel extremely uncomfortable and it kills my performance.