Inspired by speCulatius Rasmussen video I started to practice my footwork, slower, but longer. I've noticed, that I hold my breath starting with the split step and ending with the shot. I do this too, when doing strength training (vasalva maneuver). The benefit is obviously, that you automatically tighten your core, the disadvantage is, that you have a momenten of not breathing, building up some kind of oxygen deficite in this kind of slow and long exececise. I tried to delay it (not starting with the split step), but it resulted in unstable movement. Is this normal or bad habit ? What is a proper breathing technique in badminton ?
I'll say the best breathing on court is when you don't think about it, I'm even thinking about saying that it should be mainly induced by your thoracic diaphragm, but I'm not sure if I can really justify that completely, since other muscles will be involved. Now, let's get to your question by starting with another question, "How does breathing work?" Breathing out is a passive action without using muscles, but when deeply breathing out actively relaxing muscles. Breathing in is the part that you need to use your muscles and tightening them. Holding your breath means, you're holding the tension. Even for walking, you need stability (tension!) in your core, even more so for faster movements, so from my point of view, this is natural and useful. As long as you don't stop breathing completely during the rallies, and take deep breaths during the short breaks, I don't think this should be a problem (for a player trained for badminton). Even when stopping to breath for a short period, there's still oxygen in your blood. Taking deep breaths in between will help to get that back to a normal level. Let's have a look as the one part of where the muscle gets its energy from that I think is most important for badminton players. Afer the ATP supply is used up, trained people can get the energy for a (single) muscle by only using the phosphocreatine (PCr) stored in it for 20 seconds or even more. In this part, Oxygen is not even involved: ADP + Phosphocreatine -> ATP + Creatine For most rallies, this should be enough already (What's the average length of a rally? What percentage of rallies lasts longer than 20 seconds?). Badminton uses many muscles at the same time, but they will each get a break in between and PCr is restored constantly. It can be restored completely within seconds (if the muscle is supplied with everything he needs), so it will be restored for the next rally certainly, but even within a rally, part of it will be restored (and reused) before other energy resources are needed. That's where your question about breathing would start, but since you don't stop breathing completely and there's still oxygen in your blood, I don't think this should be a problem. Side note on the video you mentioned: There's different purposes of footwork training, a video with only around 7 seconds per training interval is coming up. The Rasmussen Drill is great to get many repetitions, to work on rhythm and to get your legs tired to get rid of unnecessary movements. My suggestions of intervals of 4 minutes with breaks of 2 minutes comes from the DFB suggesting this for training the repeated sprints during a match (unfortunately they don't mention which 'studies' they're referring to) and that it makes sense that you need intervals much much longer than 20 seconds to completely drain the PCr (due to the quick restoration, the more complex the sport, the more muscles used (with breaks), the longer the intervals needed) and thus get the body working on improving that.
I know the basic energy metabolism and how it works. You are right, that we dont need oxygen for the first seconds, but the issues is, that we build up an oxygen deficit with each action over the duration of multiple rallies to the point, where we are no longer able to take in enough oxygen resulting in a visible performance decrease. E.g. take He Bingjiao, currently ranked at 6, who suffers a lot under this issues. Thought the best way to get rid of building up an too large oxygen deficit is to build up a fitness, which will supply the body with oxygen fast enough. Okay. But we know from older players, that they try to stretch the breaks between rallies, especially when playing vs younger players (e.g. Lin Dan try to delay a lot), so getting enough oxygen in shorter time seems to be a very important topic and therefor the right breathing technique should help here. A common statement is to utilize your diaphragm instead of chest to breath and to save energy (Federer in tennis). But what about the time you hold your breath ? Each second you hold your breath you stop the oxygen supply which will contribute to the oxygen deficit. So for now I seem to inhale -> split step -> hold breath -> move -> stroke -> exhale When thinking about pros, if they would do it in a similar way, they would almost stop breathing in a rally. So, I believe, that there must be a better way to do it. I take it as a video to improve your stamina + reinforcing your movement patterns, therefor I started with 2min intervals for a single movement pattern and roughly 1min break.
I have never consciously thought of breathing during a rally, only between to calm nerves. There is also the fact that I'm an amateur player, so perhaps improvements can be made. That said, what I do observe is that there is always a decent amount of air to expel when doing a smash, therefore I must have inhaled prior to the final stroke. If I think on it, if I have a lot of time (think opponent plays a high lift after my good tumbling net), then I can even inhale whilst making three relatively relaxed crossover steps on the way to the jump smash. I hold my breath once I initiate the jump, and exhale rapidly for the smash movement itself, with inhale occurring immediately after the stroke is complete. I think it is correct that it then follows the only time to inhale is between that stroke finishing and your next split step, which can happen very quickly afterwards if you smashed. If you play a high lift, you give yourself more time to recover tactically, but also physically! You mentioned then that the pros would never take a breath in the rally. If you think of singers, they are able to take a relatively deep breath in a fraction of a second. If you have time to make a split step, you have time to inhale! However, if you are in an incredibly taxing rally, you will naturally build up an oxygen deficit, however efficient you breathing is (because oxygen can only move from your lungs to your muscles so fast). There is always an anaerobic training zone for everyone, even the highest VO2MAX cyclist can sprint and tire out. This is the important of good pacing in a rally as well as a tournament - you can't keep smashing the whole game (unless your smashing wins points quickly), because you build an oxygen deficit faster than retrieving and lifting. Even repeated diving defence is less taxing than repeated smash + followup. Eventually the muscles need oxygen to the point where they will not move at 100% of their capacity, and that is the sign for you to either slow down the rally or finish it off soon.
